Local SEO Signals (And How to Master Them) – Module 1 – Lesson 2 – Local SEO Unlocked
– [Neil] Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel, and today is another day
of "Local SEO Unlocked," where I teach you how to
dominate the local SERPs. Today we're going to be
focusing on local SEO signals. Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel. If you're on YouTube, click
the alert notification, and if you enjoy this course, you know, please tell other people about it. If you missed the very first lesson, because it's the second
lesson in this course, you can go to neilpatel.com/training, click on "Local SEO Unlocked," and that's where you'll find
all the previous lessons, as well as the cheat sheets, the PDFs, the worksheets that go along with each and every single lesson as well. So some signals that matter
when it comes to local SEO, and I know we discussed
this in the last video, so I'll go over them pretty quickly. Business signals, like category, location, reviews, the number, the
quality, the ratings, off-page signals, like your
name, address, and phone number, citation volume, of what other
aggregators say about you.
On-page signals, like your on-page SEO, the keywords, the domain authority. Link signals, like other
sites linking to you, and the authority of those sites, how many social shares you
have, your click-through rate, all those things matter. So, let's first start off
by identifying keywords for your business profiles, because it's all about keyword research. Remember, people are searching Google to find local businesses all the time. And this is the foundation of local SEO. If you do this wrong, you
won't get much traffic, if you do this right, your
business is going to change. So first off you can use
a tool called Ubersuggest, you can find it at
neilpatel.com/ubersuggest, that's U-B-E-R-S-U-G-G-E-S-T.
And using this SEO tool, you can see keywords that are
popular within your region. When you're using Ubersuggest
in the search bar, you'll notice that
there's country selected. If you click on that dropdown, you can actually type
in the name of the city, and you'll see the
keyword results adjusted for city-based data. So make sure you check that out so that way you can get insights. Now when you're doing keyword research, you want to look for keywords
that ideally don't have too much seasonal trends that are consistent or popular
all year round, ideally, if not, seasonal ones are fine. And you want to look for ones that are popular within your region, and that's why I recommend Ubersuggest because it can tell you
how popular a keyword is within your city. So let's now go over the business signals. At an advanced level, Google
looks at two main things, category and location. So when you look at categories, there's roughly 4,000 Google
My Business categories as of 2020, and that
number is just increasing. Google allows you to
select up to 10 categories, but you can only select
a one primary category.
So when it comes to
choosing these categories, be as specific as possible,
add the least number of Google My Business categories possible. Describe your business,
not your amenities. And I want you to be systematic to make the best category choices. You just don't want to pick
random ones or popular ones, you want to pick the ones that
are best sorted to your needs of what your business is so
you can get more business. Failing to categorize your business can have a negative
impact on your rankings, so you want to choose the ones that best locally represent you. And you may not find the right category if you're in a very niche-y business, in that case, choose what is the best fit, and that's okay as well.
Now, Papa John's could use
the category of pizza delivery and pizza takeout. Wendy's, they offer desserts, but it mainly is a hamburger place, so it could use like a
fast food restaurant, but I wouldn't recommend
using dessert restaurant for Wendy's, or ice cream
restaurant, just to give you idea. Like even the Wendy's or
McDonald's can offer ice cream, but they're not really a ice cream joint, they're more of like a fast
food/hamburger type of joint. Location's also important. You want to add a map
of all your locations, and include the address, the phone number, and name of each of the locations in the footer of your contact page, and please avoid trying to
use virtual office locations, this isn't great, people don't like them, Google doesn't like it, you want to use real physical addresses.
And when it comes to business signals, you also want to put the keyword in your business title if possible. You can use Ubersuggest to
do some keyword research, find the primary keyword to target, find long tail variations, and include it within your business title. And as I mentioned, as you can see in this
screenshot of Ubersuggest, it says KFC near me, on the right side, it says
English United States, you can click on the English United States and type in your city, and then it'll adjust
the results to your city.
Some other signals is proximity, right? People search for pizza
near me, sushi near me, the list goes on and on. And for businesses, this is crucial, those near me keywords
are very, very popular, and, is your business close to
the location of the searcher? And this is why the name,
address, phone number, right, they call it NAP, is very
important in local SEO. The future of local SEO, look, Google's always
enhancing their database of personal information. I think more and more
is going to be adjusted based off of not just what you like, but also your friends like, based on, you know, your Android device, and we're going about that.
Google is tracking you within reason and with your permission, I think eventually as you
opt in for more permissions, they'll know what you like,
what areas you tend to go to, and they'll start showing you places that are closer to that. The next factor is review signals. You know, with reviews sites
like Yelp, Angie's List, Better Business Bureau, Glass Door, those are all examples of
review signals and sites. And with reviews, you want
a lot of positive reviews, the higher the ratings, the better, you want to make quantity, and you want reviews with
your keywords in there, your location in there, and you want reviews with
responses, diversity, you don't want them all
to say the same thing because the more diverse they are, we'll also find out if people talk about a specific product or service, and a lot of people
started talking about it, you'll start generating more sales for that product or service as well.
And you can use tools like Podium, which is what we tend to use, it's a messaging platform that helps you increase your reviews without breaking their terms of service. You don't want to do things like say, "Hey, I'll give you a free dessert if you come to my restaurant in exchange for a review." Some platforms are okay with that, but most of them don't like that, and that's breaking their terms, so I would not recommend that. Instead, you want to use tools like podium to increase your reviews, and they have a free version
of their application as well.
And this allows customers
to easily leave reviews with a click of a button. You don't have to send
people to all these URLs, or complex places, or give them
these complex instructions, literally, Podium makes it all
simple with a single click, and that's why I love it. And we've seen businesses
reviews skyrocket, you know, going from little to no reviews to thousands of reviews, just because of the
tool, and as I mentioned, they have a free version as well. And the key that we've seen when it comes getting a lot of reviews and a lot of high-star reviews is by providing excellent service, setting expectations, and going above and beyond them. Determining the right timing, right, on when you want to ask for a review, typically after they've experienced
your product or service, you don't want to wait too
long, like weeks after, and you want to reach out
with the right message. So now let's dive into
some off-page signals. So some of them are IYP or aggregator, and name, address, phone
number consistency.
So, data aggregators compile
data about each business, such as, you know, registration records, chamber of commerce, et cetera. Having all this, making it available, making sure that people know that you guys are a stand-up business, and you guys have renewed
your incorporation, or whatever your business
address is, or your lease, this is all good. Now, IYP is an online version of traditional yellow pages directory, which is very popular. Assuming some of you may
have not known what IYP is, which is fine as well, but just
think of like yellow pages, that book, right, the old school book that they used to give
out years and years ago, but now it's just the
online version of it. Now, when it comes to name,
address, phone number, and there's also name,
address, phone number, and website, right? You don't want to not have a website, having one will drive you more sales.
And these are the main
four basic important things when it comes to your
business for search engines like Bing, or even Google. And when you're leveraging them, make sure they're consistent. You don't want your website
to have a different name, address, phone number, then
your Google My Business, or than another directory site out there. By having it all consistent when Google crawls this
information all around the web, it'll help you rank better
if you're consistent. Now let's dive into some on-page signals. Look, when it comes to SEO, Google pretty much wants a
website to be SEO-friendly, and optimized for their crawlers. And I'll go into a little
bit more in depth on that in future courses, but those
are the main two things, and you can use a Ubersuggest
site audit report.
So if you go to
neilpatel.com/seo-analyzer, and put in your URL there, it'll tell you what you need to fix from an SEO standpoint to
be optimized and friendly. So other on-page signals, your
name, address, phone number needs to be there. I know I've said that
probably 10 times now, but I can't emphasize that enough. You want to have keywords in your title, you want to optimize for your authority, and of course you want
to use SSL certificates because Google doesn't like
ranking non-SSL sites as hot. So now let's dive into some link signals. Links are pretty basic, it's other websites linking to you. The more websites linking
to you, the better, the more websites linking
to you that are related and within your local region, the better, the more links that have
maybe the name of the city, or your business in there, or
keywords, the better as well, and links are like votes, the more of them that you
get, the higher you'll rank. The next factor is social signals, and if people have a great
experience at your business, you want them to share
everything on the social web, even though that doesn't
help you directly, indirectly, it helps your SEO, because it helps get your brand out there, and brand signals
indirectly help with SEO.
So ask people for tweets,
social shares, Instagram posts, even if search engines
can't crawl them, it's okay, it does help in the long run, and that also all helps with
behavior signals as well, because if you have a strong brand, people are much more
likely to click through it when they see your listing on Google, actually go to your place, not click the back button
when they're on your website, and even click that call
button with your phone number so they can get ahold of you. So, some metrics to also
watch out for is bounce rates.
You don't want people bouncing away, Google metrics will tell
you your bounce rate, and the more people stay
on your site, the better, that's called time on site. And the more interactions you get with your Google My
Business panel for bookings, you know, click to calls,
driving directions, the better as well. And there's literally, you know, a lot of case studies out
there and I have one for you that's a hundred million
dollar-plus example of a case study, and that is Yum Brands. For the second consecutive quarter, digital sales increased by over $1 billion versus the previous year to set a single quarter
record of $4 billion. That's a huge case study. As I mentioned, I have tons
and tons of more of them, but this just shows you the
power of digital marketing. And here's another one, KFC, this is case study number two, they're getting a lot of traffic. And as you can see, it's mainly
coming from search, right? 75% of their traffic is search, going to similar, which is huge.
And the number of listings
for their 920 locations grew to almost 50,000. All the information such as opening hours were updated efficiently, and KFC saw an increase
in online visibility, which led to a 60% increase in clicks on directions resulting in a 16% increase in revenue from local search. Then there's Whole Foods, Whole Foods has localized
their social media, each store has its own social media pages, and the replies of hundreds
and hundreds of customers every single day. They even have call now buttons, and this has caused people
to engage with Whole Foods, and that's also caused
them to get, you know, social traffic, search traffic,
and even direct traffic. So as I mentioned,
there's a lot of examples, from Yum Brands, to Target, to Home Depot, the list goes on and on. So make sure you go to
neilpatel.com/training, click on "Local SEO Unlocked," and you can go to video two, and you'll find all the worksheets, PDFs, and everything like that underneath that.
Thank you for your time. If you have any questions,
leave a comment below. If you enjoy the video, like it, share it, tell your friends about it. And if you need help
with your local business, check out my ad agency,
Neil Patel Digital. Thank you very much..
