Jeremy Ashburn

Achieving More With Less: A 30-Minute Local SEO Every Week

Focus on these five areas to grow your local search presence if you want to enhance your local SEO but don't have much time. Maintaining a steady set of outputs will enable you to distinguish yourself in local search results in times like these. Here is a list of the five things you can achieve in 30 minutes or less if you have only one hour of local marketing time each week.

Focus on these five areas to grow your local search presence if you want to enhance your local SEO but don’t have much time.

Because of the current economy, marketing teams are being stretched thin and must accomplish more with less. If you are a marketer striving to generate revenues from local markets, you know that competitive opposition will be waiting to slow down your local marketing efforts.

Maintaining a steady set of outputs will enable you to distinguish yourself in local search results in times like these. Here is a list of the five things you can achieve in 30 minutes or less if you have only one hour of local marketing time each week.

1. Improve Your Google Business Profile And Social Profile Listings

In local SEO, having a comprehensive and verified Google Business Profile listing is one of the cornerstones. Marketers make the greatest mistake by simply publishing minimal information to Google Business Profile (GBP) and then placing it on autopilot.

Having all your NAP information complete, including pictures, categories, and hours of operation, as well as your address, phone number, and name, is one of the easiest ways to get your business listed higher on local search results. Once your GBP listing has been completed, you must verify it. You can verify it through telephone, text, email, or video, as well as through this procedure. These are the steps you need to keep in mind.

It’s necessary to keep an eye on your listing after it’s been verified so that you can respond to customer reviews or questions. Make sure to log in at least once a month (if not more) to post new pictures and monitor the performance of your listing in GBP.

Local search queries on social media have increased tremendously in the last decade, and you want to ensure that you can be found on Google just as quickly as you can be found on Facebook and Twitter. Follow the same procedure for your primary social media accounts.

2. Ask For A Review After Completing A Job

A significant presence on local search engine result pages (SERPs) is one of the most practical ways of getting more five-star reviews. By raising the average rating and the volume of ratings, local SERPs tend to position those results higher. Social proof from five-star reviews is an excellent method for customers to trust your brand.

Before you begin efforts to generate reviews, you must be cautious about how you ask customers for reviews. On platforms like Yelp, ‘review filters’ will eliminate specific reviews or penalize your business listing if you appear to have unnaturally solicited them from the business owner.

Here are two ways to get more reviews without having them filtered (they are effective):
Manually: After completing a job or delivering a product or service, ask for a review and leave a link (on the invoice) where customers can post their reviews.
Automated: There are several tools, such as GradeUs, Birdeye, and GatherUp, that make it easy to request customer reviews via social media. This is efficient and simple if your company receives more than three to five new customers per week (rather than requesting the review manually).

Here are two ways to get more reviews without having them filtered (they are effective):

Manually: After completing a job or delivering a product or service, ask for a review and leave a link (on the invoice) where customers can post their reviews.
Automated: There are several tools, such as GradeUs, Birdeye, and GatherUp, that make it easy to request customer reviews via social media. This is efficient and simple if your company receives more than three to five new customers per week (rather than requesting the review manually).

3. Make Localized Blog Or Website Page Content

Localized content on your business website is crucial to rank locally in search. Search engines are less probably to associate you with your targeted geography if your website doesn’t have local signals.

Here are a few ways to localize your content:

Services Pages/Product –
Include localized modifiers within the copy and image descriptions on your product/service pages so that your audience makes the local connection. A common mistake local businesses make when building their product pages is making the copy so generic that the page could be utilized for a business in any city.

The worst thing you can do is stuff your web copy with local terms. Search engines are good at identifying when your content looks unnaturally stuffed with local keywords and demoting it. The best way to consider whether you have included too many local keyword modifiers is to read your text aloud to a friend. If it sounds bizarre to either of you, you’ve probably gone too far.

Galleries –
Provide a few localized modifiers to describe the type of product/service you provide and show pictures of your work if you provide services in your area.

Branch/Store Pages –
If your business has multiple locations, each should have its webpage on your site. On these branch pages, you should include the following:

Your NAP.
Hours of operation.
A description of your branch.
Photographs of your location (if possible).

In addition to linking to their GBP page, these branch pages should also include a link to their webpage.

4. Use Your Network to Build Backlinks

Building links to your site can be done by generating them from the businesses with which you maintain a relationship. It is often possible to enhance your local SEO and link building without building thousands of links. In most circumstances, you only need a handful more links than your competitors to help your SEO.

Here are a few examples of the types of links you could seek out as part of everyday business activities:

A realtor often refers to their network of clients as an electrical or HVAC company (word of mouth). The service provider might gain a link to the realtor’s site if it has a ‘trusted local providers’ section on the site.
Every year, a business owner funds a booth at the local fair. This is a terrific chance to get a citation and a link by securing your business listed on the fair’s website.

Make a list of all the business connections you have in your area and why these connections would link to you as a first step.

5. Build Local Citations

Citations are primary entries that list your company’s name, address, and phone number on a website. Local directories like Google Maps are the best places to find citations. Senior living facilities, like APlaceForMom.com, are excellent examples of niche-specific directories.

Google views the mention of your business name as a sign of local authority. You don’t necessarily have to have a link in your citation to get value. Here are two ways to increase your citations:

Manually – The most convenient method to acquire your first few citations is to list your business on Google Maps, Yelp, Bing, and Facebook. Consistency is critical when you’re filling out your company profiles on these websites. If your business address is on a boulevard, avoid using different spellings or initials each time you create a new listing.
Automated – There are several automatic citation-creation tools from firms like Moz, BrightLocal, and Semrush that you can use. Although these tools have a price, they allow you to enter your business information and have them create all of your listings for you.

I prefer a combination of both strategies because automated listing tools cannot always fill out every field of information or verify user accounts.

Focus on Google, Yelp, Bing, and Facebook to get things going. Then look for 5 to 10 niche-specific directories (that frequently list your target keywords) and strive to get your business listed there.

In conclusion, Even though local SEO doesn’t take a lot of time, you can still achieve great results. You must be smart about how you utilize your time and which topics you focus on.

Spending 30 minutes a week on the five areas we discussed above will result in more traffic, leads, and customers for your company in a matter of months.

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