Local SEO Services by Webology The #1 Local SEO Company

 

We’ve been in the local SEO game for about 10 years now. If you’re interested in learning more about our methods in a free SEO audit, fill in the form below and book some time with Blake, our lead SEO.

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Not Ready to Chat With a Local SEO Agency Just Yet?

All good! We’ll help you get started with our best local search engine optimization tips below. Keep reading to learn how to DIY your own campaign…

Let’s take a deep dive into generating leads through local search results.

As a business owner, you know competing in today’s economy takes work and dedication. It’s a fight! You may have also heard that SEO is one of the best ways to bring in new customers and win the battle against fierce competition. [It’s True!!!]

But you’re probably also weary of marketing teams that over-promise and under-deliver on results. You’ve been B-U-R-N-E-D before…

Let’s be real with each other. The agency space is notorious for this.

When it works it works though…Local SEO’s like MAGIC! And that’s probably why you’re still reading this! Digital marketing can generate an insane ROI for local companies when it’s done right but, which company should you trust? Finding a good agency partner is the real challenge these days.

What does a good local SEO campaign even look like these days? How do you know which agencies are innovating and which ones are just hoping to add a new service to your retainer? It can be a headache for sure.

You probably get pitched search engine optimization offers in your email inbox every other day and it’s super-annoying 🤬😡

But only because you know they’re probably completely full of it. You’d be interested if it really work and got you good leads. Who wouldn’t? Let’s help you find a good partner by understanding what an innovative local SEO company actually does.

What Does Good SEO Look Like for a Local Company When it [ACTUALLY] Works?​

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of ranking higher in popular search engines like Google, YouTube, Yahoo and Bing. Local SEO services focus on ranking for both service keywords and specific locations, so that the right customers find your business instead of a competitor. It takes a bit of strategy, content writing skill, technical know-how and more than anything…EXPERIENCE. SEO doesn’t have to be a mystery though. There’s nothing to it! Local search engine optimization is an internet marketing discipline with one primary goal: Driving targeted traffic to a website to sell a product or service. In this case: Locally. What you sell is needed in a given geographic area you can service. It doesn’t matter if it’s medical, dental, home services, beauty, retail or anything else…The playbook changes a little bit year after year, but it works for any industry.
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We can help you capture that business, just like we did for these local SEO clients:

Dermatologist SEO Campaign
HVAC Marketing Campaign

Exterior Cleaning Case Study

It’s EASY! How we do it all can seem mysterious at first though. SEO gets a little complicated! You have to be a nerdy map pack 🧙‍♂️ these days! But that’s still pretty simple if you understand it’s all based on the kind of math you learned in high school…With all the talk of different ‘hats’ and gurus, it’s easy to think of it as some sort of online marketing magic that only a few understand. That’s not true! Local SEO is just 1’s and 0’s…

It’s easy, especially local SEO…

It all gets down to simple math!

You compete with other websites based on quantifiable ranking factors. If you ‘out-math’ your competition, you rank higher in Google.

It’s really that simple.

If all the sites ranking on page #1 for ‘licensed roofer near me’ have about 1,500 words of content, you’re going to struggle to show up if your sad little page only has 500 words on it 😩 There’s more ranking factors of course, but now you get what I mean by simple math. It’s all based on easy to reverse-engineer averages…At Webology we hack Google to generate revenue for small businesses in local markets.

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Local SEO is a little different than a national or global campaign to dominate the search results though. It involves a 2nd algorithm that controls what shows up in the local map results. When most people in our industry think of local SEO and map rankings, they think of the three P’s: proximity, prominence and participation. A good local SEO vendor understands the importance of optimizing your Google Business Profile against these ranking factors. Here’s my take on the three P’s:

The Three Primary Local Ranking Factors for Google Maps

Proximity is pretty straightforward. Your business should be as close to your customers as possible. This can be done in a number of ways, but one of the most common methods is using local keywords to help Google understand your location.

For example, if you own a pizza shop in Los Angeles, you would want to use keywords like ‘pizza Los Angeles’ or ‘pizza delivery Los Angeles.’ in your website copy. The same applies to your Google Business Profile description content. But the main thing to consider with proximity is how close your location is in relation to the person searching Google. You can’t control this factor short of moving to a new location, but the other 2 P’s allow you a chance to cast a wider net in Google’s local search results pages like this client did:

Next on the list is local business prominence…

Prominence has to do with how well-known your business is. The more popular and well-known you are in town, the easier it is to rank in your city. There’s a number of ways to increase your prominence, but one of the most common is by getting listed in local directories. At Webology, we’re pros at finding and listing websites in high-quality local directories. What’s more, we OPTIMIZE those listings by making sure they’re complete and accurate, with all the important information about your business that customers need to know. This information is commonly referred to as your NAP data.

NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone Number, but your business data also includes facts about your brand like your hours of operation or your different products and services you offer customers.
It’s important to represent yourself accurately, everywhere customers might be looking for you online…Get it right, and you’ll win at local search. Mess up your NAP data and, well…
If your Yelp listing looks shitty, it ain’t pretty…call us! We’ll fix it!!!

The last P, participation, is all about how often you’re active online…

This can be done in a number of ways, but some of the most common are blogging and being active on social media. How does social affect SEO and local search results, you might ask?

Lots of ways…Social media is a great way to connect your business with potential customers and create a community around your brand. That community can generate traffic that helps your site rank better. But did you know that it can also help your SEO in other ways?

That’s right, social media signals are one of the many factors that search engines take into account when ranking websites.

…social profiles affect your E-A-T scores!

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What’s E-A-T??? Authority-Building Local SEO Services

It stands for Expertise, Authority and Trust. E-A-T is how we make Google trust your site as an authority on your topic in a local area. This is a recent development in the SEO world where Google is trying to filter out bad actors that are trying to scam consumers. Optimizing for E-A-T signals is a new thing, but we’ve tested it and it works.

To rank high in search engines, your website needs to have ‘a high E-A-T score’. And one of the best ways to increase your E-A-T score is by having social media profiles that are complete and accurate. Real brands show up all over the web, and SPAM sites just do the minimum to get by. Google’s already onto that shit!!!

One of the most important things real sites in any industry have in common is that they link to their social profiles from their websites. They also list an email or phone number so you can easily get in touch with them. Spammy sites, generally don’t include that much contact information.

So if your site isn’t generating sales from local search, it could be because you’re being filtered out for looking spammy, even when you’re 100% legit. Is it fair, no but it’s also the best way they have right now for sorting through the billions of websites out there. So you need to build your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and many others as soon as you can.

Once you get ALL your social profiles built, you need to – BOOST – them by:

 

  • Linking your website to your primary social profiles
  • Adding important social profiles to your schema markup
  • Building a ‘social fortress’ around your brand online
  • Making sure your ‘same-as’ data is complete
  • Ensuring NAP data consistency everywhere
    • NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone and includes your business hours also!
    • Consistency is easy to achieve if you list all your business info in a single spreadsheet
    • Reference that sheet for each business profile and social account you build
  • Generating quality customer reviews on each platform
  • Monitoring for brand mentions and controlling your online narrative

At Webology, we can help you set up social media profiles for your website. After all, we’re a division of the very best social media company in the world that boasts a number of high profile clients and many more amazing brands…

We know a thing or two about social media for sure!

So what are you waiting for? Give us a call today and let us show you how local pack SEO can help your business grow!

Or read our Case Studies if you’re still on the fence… For everyone else, let’s keep looking at the specific tactics it takes to be competitive in reaching your audience on local search these days…

How to Use the Scientific Process to Dominate Local Search Engine Results Pages [SERPS]

 

Step 1 Optimize Your Google Business Profile
If your small business is not quite ready to contract with a local search company to handle your marketing, that’s okay! There’s still a lot of simple steps you can take to do your own competitor analysis. Start with your GMB profile for the best results.

Identify your primary keywords and see who already has a good presence on the maps. You will want to start by seeing which categories they list as primary and secondary. You need the same categories as businesses that are already ranking on your listing. Next, you can read through their descriptions and identify the keywords you see the most. Add those to yours. Finally, you can check how often they post to their profile each month and plan a similar content schedule.

Now that your Google Business Profile is set up for great local SEO success, it’s time to spy on your competitor’s website and learn how to end their reign in the top local SEO ranking.

Step 2 Identify Local Search Performance Signals
Now that your profile is optimized, let’s figure out boosting your presence in the local organic results. Much of your audience will skip the local pack and instead prefer to call a small business that’s put in the sweat equity needed to show up in organic searches.

Competitor website analysis is the best way to show up there ASAP. Focus your efforts on the most common deficiencies and you’ll quickly dominate the local search engine results in your market. If 9 out of 10 successful businesses in your area have an About page and you don’t, that’s a very easy fix to write some content and add to your site.

Pages like Team, About, Contact, etc. are all E-A-T signals that play a big role in visibility and rankings. Use competitor averages to build the most important ones for your particular location, and you’ll see incredible results.

Step 3 Build a Brand Fortress
The concept of a ‘brand fortress’ is an old one in SEO, but it still makes a lot of sense because you need to protect your online presence against brand pirates and would-be competitors. It’s important for your reputation that you control your company name on all the top social media sites, but the effort can be a bit overwhelming!

There’s literally a million sites out there you can list your local services on, so which ones do you work on first?

Start with the popular ones like Instagram, Facebook, Tik-Tok and LinkedIn. But don’t stop there! While you may not post on places like Reddit or Medium, good social media management practices demand that you secure your profile on the top 50 social sites. Your local SEO results will benefit from this if you just start claiming a few profiles per month.

Step 4 Identify Opportunities and Build Citations
Citations are simply mentions of your business that include important details your customers need to know like your name, address and phone number or NAP for short.

Make sure your NAP info is consistent wherever you’re represented online so that Google fully understands who you are and what you do for the local community in your area.

Step 5 Develop a Strategy for Reviews
Reviews are a very important local business SEO component. Everyone knows how helpful Google reviews are, but did you know that it helps to get them on other listings?

Encourage your client base to review your store on Yelp, the BBB, YellowPages and as many other listings as you can. Your efforts will be rewarded as Google sees the ‘richness’ of your citations in comparison to the other companies that just spam reviews to Google and ignore their reputation elsewhere.

Step 6 Boost Your Google Business Profile
Next up, you’ll want to increase local search performance by linking to your business listings on Google and other business directories. You can also share your business map listing from Google on quality websites to quickly boost rankings and overall map visibility.
Step 7 Consider Additional Local SEO Services
At this point, you’ve done a lot to enhance your local SEO performance. Good job! It may be time to consider some 3rd party local SEO services because you’re probably starting to get busy working leads. If you’re still not quite ready to hire a local SEO agency for this on a monthly basis, there’s plenty of one-off SEO services to choose from.

You could start with a small link building strategy that targets local media outlets for guest posting to improve your local thought leadership in the community. Google will reward you with higher rankings if you earn links on websites that get a high percent of their traffic from your local service area.

Another option is to hire a content strategist to help you figure out a good blogging cadence. If you’ve already built out a page for all of your services and you also have a location page for each area you work in, it’s time to start blogging!

Whenever you are ready to work on your campaign every month, our team of SEO experts are more than happy to help you take your strategy to the next level.

Below you’ll find our most recent blog content on local SEO. We cover local SEO tips on everything from link building to optimizing your WordPress settings.
For even more local SEO tips, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Other Services by Webology

As you can imagine, we offer comprehensive services that go beyond local SEO. If you need a website, we’re pros at WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, Wix and many other software platforms. We also manage PPC advertising campaigns in Google and multiple social media platforms. Our service offerings even extend into email marketing, social selling, video production and influencer marketing.

Let’s Work Together!

We’d love to get started building your website. Let’s schedule a brief 15 minute discovery call so we can discuss your project.
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1601 5th Avenue North Suite 124 Birmingham, AL 35203
blake@webology.io
MON–FRI 9AM–6PM
205-671-2790
Call Us today to take your business to new heights with SEO, PPC, and Social Media Automation.