Use MOZ Local to easily optimize your local search listings in key directories to get results like this.
Have you ever whipped out your phone and searched for something like "chiropractic snohomish" or "feed lake stevens?" If so, congratulations. You have participated in local search. If not, please call me. I want to meet you.
Local search is basically people looking online for local businesses. How big of a deal is it? Consider this: as of 2012, 50% of mobile search was local and climbing. It's a pretty big deal.
Businesses can be displayed in search results for searchers who either use a place name in their search phrase ("chiropractic snohomish") or are in a geographic area where there are businesses related to the search term (physically in Snohomish when searching on "chiropractic"). Results for local businesses can take priority over other results because they are often deemed more relevant to the searcher (Google thinks: Oh, you want chiropractic care? Here's a practitioner two blocks away from you.)
If you are a local business, you want to make sure you capture this local search traffic. Building an online presence and publishing or taking ownership of (if your business/site has been around, you might have already been indexed by some providers) your business profile with business listing services is a good place to start. Once you have a presence then you can start getting reviews from customers and make other optimizations to promote your business.
A quick note regarding reviews: notice the two local listings below Wrona's Feed Company in the image above. Both have reviews. The extra information, screen space, and credibility that reviews provide will draw more attention and get you more clicks. You should try to get reviews often and from a variety of sources. It can be as simple as asking customers for one and giving them a paper handout or an email with a link to a webpage on your site which has links to review sites (see example here). Check out this Complete Guide to Google+ Local Reviews by Phil Rozek for an in-depth review of reviews.
Check and Improve Your Listing Score In One Place
Back to getting listed in the first place. Do you know how your business rates? Use this excellent search tool provided by MOZ Local to see how your business is listed online. (Follow this link to see Inquisitek's in-progress results.) The search tool will scan for your business listing in key directories and report the results to you.
You'll then want to fix any incomplete, inconsistent, or duplicate listings, which all reduce your impact. The tool will give you links to each of the directories where you can manually update your profile in their site. OR, for a small fee, you can use their submission engine to build your profile once and automatically push it out to all the directories. I recommend this. It's quick, easy, and works great.
MOZ Local helped a client climb from a score of 20% (index through organic crawling) to 93%.
Enjoy going local! It's the craze, right?
Items to Note
- Per MOZ, in order to qualify for a local business listing in any index, your business must meet all four of the following criteria:
- Have a business name or DBA (Doing Business As)
- Have a local phone number that matches your city of location (not a shared phone number, toll-free number, or call tracking number)
- Have a dedicated physical street address (not a shared address, PO box, or virtual office)
- Make face-to-face contact with your customers (business is not conducted virtually)
- Create and/or claim a Facebook Page and/or a Google+ Page for your business before submitting your profile via MOZ Local. This will help validate your listing.
- On October 1st, 2014 Moz Local increases to $84/year per location. You can lock in your subscription now and take advantage of the current $49/year per location price before the prices increase.
- It can take anywhere from one week to several months for your listing to be approved and updated by all the listing providers.
Need help promoting your business? We would be happy to take care of this for you.
