{"id":372,"date":"2015-03-18T09:10:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T16:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evisible.co\/blog\/?p=372"},"modified":"2015-03-12T10:17:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T17:17:11","slug":"a-primer-for-understanding-local-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evisible.co\/blog\/a-primer-for-understanding-local-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Primer for Understanding Local SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Local SEO is absolutely critical for any business that has a local customer base. Whether you are a restaurant looking for more diners or a car dealership looking to attract more customers, your main focus of online marketing is to attract the attention of people in your area who are interested in your products and services.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So how do you go about improving your visibility with local customers? Local listing optimization<\/a> happens when you focus on the right avenues for promoting your business online. There are many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can help you to determine the effectiveness of your local SEO work and find out which tactics are right for you. Several of these tactics involve effectively gaining citations with local directories.<\/p>\n

\"local-seo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the KPIs that you need to track your local SEO performance:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Track Local Rankings for the \u201cBig Three\u201d Search Engines<\/strong>: Finding out where you rank in your local areas for searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing is the easiest way to get a sense of the strength of your local online presence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go Beyond the Big Three As Well: <\/strong>You also need to track your rankings for search engines, directory and niche sites outside of Google, Yahoo and Bing. This can be an extensive process, so it\u2019s a good idea to use automated tools to help you to stay current.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check Your Rankings on Local Search Sites: <\/strong>Do searches for your keywords on sites such as Yelp, Superpages and Citysearch to see where you are ranking. Make sure you do enough searches on different variations of keywords to get a strong sense of your rankings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maintain Consistency:<\/strong> If you have out-of-date or incorrect business information on a local search site listing, you are confusing your customers. This can also be confusing to search engines as well. Perform regular searches to make sure that your listings are up-to-date.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Track Your Links: <\/strong>You need to know how your website\u2019s visitors are interacting with the links on your site. Tracking these links allows you to review the layout of your site and its content to see if changes should be made.
\nMonitor Review Quality and Quantity: <\/strong>When a potential customer reads lots of great reviews about your business, it gives them confidence in your goods or services. Along with checking local search sites about the quality of your reviews, it\u2019s also important to be concerned about the quantity of reviews. It\u2019s possible that having more reviews will improve your search rankings. Get creative with ways you can reward customers for reviewing your company on sites like Yelp.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are many different types of local search sites — each of them are potentially great placement opportunities for your citations. Some of the options include:<\/p>\n