We may not always win your business, but at the very least, we want to make sure you work with a digital partner that has your best interest in mind.
One of the recent ways we’ve seen companies get taken advantage of is in the realm of Local Search. We’ve seen the emails from companies that insist they can “help you get found.” But, when we dig a little deeper, we find that some of these shops are cutting corners or taking advantage of their clients.
So here are five mistakes you don’t want to make when it comes to Local SEO.
Creating Fake Google My Business Locations
There are some shortcuts to take when boosting your presence online, but creating fake anything is a bad idea. It might trick the search engines for a minute, but eventually, algorithms will adjust to weed out the cheaters.
We’ve seen this happen time after time throughout the years, and it’s always a mess to clean up. So do it right the first time—ethically—and you’ll be much happier with your (real) results in the long run.
Forgetting to Add Geographic Modifiers
You’ll obviously make mention of where you are here and there in your page copy, but here are some other areas you won’t want to miss:
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Image alt tags
- Link text
Not sure how to update these yourself? Any reputable professional with will make sure they don’t miss this detail.
Keyword Stuffing
You’ve probably seen this before: you scroll to the bottom of a page and instead of copy that engages you or directs you to the next point in your buying journey, you get something like this:
If you live in Boise, Idaho, you should definitely hire ABC Business. People of Boise, Idaho all agree that ABC Business is the best and consistently reach out to ABC Business to get help in Boise, Idaho.
Not only is this copy clunky and of little use to an actual customer, search algorithms are smarter than they used to be. So you might think you’re playing the Local SEO game, but in reality, you might be scoring points against your business.
Forgetting to Claim/Update Directory Listings
Is your address on Yelp the same as your address on your Facebook business page? Are you on Angie’s List, Thumbtack or other online societies?
Make sure that wherever your business has a presence, however small, that your listing is consistent. If you’re working with someone to help you with Local SEO, have them perform an audit and verify that everything matches.
Paying for Links
Just don’t. Really.
Ready to get the most out of Local SEO? Let us know how we can help.
