Article

Daniel Doherty
Daniel Doherty 27 November 2013

10 Commandments of Local SEO

Kevin Gibbon of Blue Glass talked about local content marketing at Local Social Summit last week.

I was fortunate enough to attend the 5th Local Social Summit last week in London. This was by far, the best “Local Social” event I have ever attended and I left with lots of useful tips. I will share the details of one of the talks below, of which I thought it was so important - I have titled it the 10 Commandments of Local SEO.

 

This event was an enormous treat for me personally, having been interested in “Location Based Services” especially thinking that local/social was going to be a game changer for a very long time.


I believed in Local, Mobile and Social so much so, that I put my money where my mouth is and invested in a UK, location based social network back in 2006! Rummble was ahead of its time and indeed way before Foursquare the now de facto LBS who spoke at the event (and Gowalla which was later bought by Facebook). Even my first (cringeworthy) blog post was about local Social way back in early 2010!

 

So as we approach 2014, I think we are at an interesting cross roads with the proliferation of smartphones (supercomputers in our pockets) and the spread of Social Media. Business owners who have a physical location and want to survive, really must ensure they are found by the people viewing life through the lens that is their mobile phones.

 

One of the talks, by Kevin Gibbon of Blue Glass, focused on local content marketing to such an extent that it seemed like a blueprint for how businesses should maximise their local businesses from an SEO point of view.

 

Kevin mentioned a fascinating infographic by David Mihn that looks at the Local Search landscape in 2012 and then proceeded to detail the steps his company had taken to help an online dating client succeed in local search recently.

 

I thought this talk was fantastic, so I scribbled down as much as I could and have called my notes The 10 Commandments of Local SEO! (I hope Kevin doesn’t mind).


1. Ensure your business is listed on Google local - As this is the information that shows on your Map Listing!

2. If you have multiple locations, ensure you link to a specific page about the local area you want to rank for. The example Kevin gave was an
Oxford dating site client.

3. Get to know “power reviewers” for your local websites on review websites like Google+, Yelp and foursquare as these are the reviews Google are likely to pull in. N.B. DO NOT try to bribe these people to write positive reviews, it will come back to bite you on the _________.

4. Local advertising = Geo brand signals to Google.

Aim to “Build a brand in a local area” N.B. - Not trying to delude Google

5. Promote locally using Social Media. Your links shared via social media give search engines social signals that affect search results.

6. Look at “
Twitter Advertising

7. Join local communities/forums and
get listed on local directories.

8. Connect with local bloggers/influencers try things like
Topsy or Twitter Advanced search.

9. Optimise for search by creating the best content possible, create something useful for the end user. Do your research and make it NEWSWORTHY. (Infographic, insights)

10. Then scale it by repeating for different areas. Using a blend of social, organic and paid traffic to your website.

Kevin also highlighted Tripadvisor as a company who really have nailed scaling local quality content. Tripadvisor have produced high quality/user generated content (UGC) covering 2.5 million keywords and get far more search traffic than competitors.

 

A huge thank you to the organisers of Local Social Summit and I very much look forward to seeing you next year!

 

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