Local SEO

What is Local SEO?

Search engine optimization is applicable to sites of all sizes, including those that rank in local organic results (known as the local 3-pack).

These results are primarily driven by a presence in local listings (including Google My Business), optimal site performance and content that makes your company stand out.

Who Can Use A Local SEO Strategy?

Any small, locally focused business struggling with their visibility and traffic coming from Google can benefit from a local SEO plan.

• Plumbers
• HVAC
• Roofers
• Electricians
• Landscapers
• Coffee Shops
• Attorneys
• Financial Planners
• Doctors
• Real Estate Agents
• Restaurants

Take a minute to search the most relevant terms related to your business and see where you rank. If you find yourself on the 3rd page of results or beyond, you’ll want to focus on working on a localized marketing plan.

How We Get it Right with Local Search

At Octiv, our approach begins with a technical overview of your website. Most small-to-midsized business websites are built on WordPress or a similar content management system, which contain a lot of out-of-the-box functionality that can easily be improved for SEO. We take an in-depth look at your pages, the site’s speed and identify any areas that could pose issues to a search engine crawling your site.

Next, we turn to the competition to size up the opportunity for your keywords. After taking a look at the local SERPs (search engine result pages), reviewing your competitors’ strategies and identifying new areas of opportunity, we create a content strategy to implement on your site. With well-rounded content covering all of the topics relevant to your site, you’ll be putting your best foot forward for search engines and your customers. We also establish a blog and can create a monthly content development plan to ensure your content is always new and fresh for your visitors.

Finally, once on-page and all content optimizations are complete, we turn to your off-page strategy – claiming and enhancing your Google My Business page (where reviews are collected on Google), building citations from highly-relevant locations, auditing your backlinks (removal of any spammy links that could be harming your site) and finding ways to optimize your social media presence. A strong off-page strategy combined with well-developed on-page SEO can take you from page three in Google all the way to the top of page one and you’ll find results in Google’s local 3-pack.

Consider Complementing Local SEO with Paid Search

While crafting an SEO plan for long-term results, you can still run paid search ads on Google and Bing for immediate results. With paid search, you target the keywords that are most relevant for your business, set a bid for how much you are willing to pay for each click and then watch the traffic come through. You may also want to consider a YouTube campaign or display banners to jumpstart your brand’s recognition.

Local SEO FAQ

1. Why Does A Local SEO Campaign Matter?

Google receives millions of search queries a day and many are focused in your local market. Without a locally focused SEO campaign to optimize your visibility, you might miss out on customers in your regional market.

2. Where Do You Start with Local SEO?

Like any other SEO campaign, it starts with a technical audit of your website. We’ll identify structural SEO issues, run a crawl of your site and try to best understand how Google is reading your site. Next, we optimize content with a focus on your local market. Finally, we improve your on-page presence in local directory sites.

3. Do I Need A Google My Business Profile?

Google My Business is required to rank in the local 3-pack of results in Google. We’ll claim and optimize your location’s business page and use its information to develop citations.

4. What About Facebook, Yelp & Other Sites?

While these third party sites are valuable to your overall marketing strategy, they are especially important to a local SEO campaign. Google looks to these sources to verify your name, address and phone information. However, you’ll need your own site design to be competitive in local search results.

5. How Long Until I See Results?

Every small business owner wants to see their pages at the top of Google’s results. With the right strategy and execution, you’ll achieve page one results in approximately 90 days. This estimate may change depending on the keywords you target, competition in the market and a few other factors.

6. Do I Need a New Website?

A new website is dependent on the status of your current site. If your site is missing key components and functionalities like being mobile friendly, it could be impacting your SEO performance.

7. Who Works On My Website?

Our SEO experts dig into your site for technical enhancements and content development. Technical enhancements include understanding how your site is crawled by Google and capitalizing on any opportunities to preserve crawl budget, improve page speed, resolve broken code on the site, etc. We then improve your content through keyword research, competitor research and building out new pages that help you rank better.

8. How Will I Know SEO Works?

We provide transparent reporting so you know exactly how your campaign is performing and how pages rank in Google including the local 3-pack of results. You will receive monthly reporting showing increased impressions, clicks and conversions. We’ll align our reporting with your internal analytics tracking (typically Google Analytics) and set up dashboards you need to fully understand how our changes grow organic traffic.

9. Why Is SEO So Expensive?

SEO techniques require expertise and a history of success, as well as access to proprietary tools. To achieve the best results, you have to hire the best.

10. Are the Results Guaranteed?

Because we do not own Google or its proprietary algorithms, we simply cannot guarantee your rankings. In fact, no SEO expert can or should offer a guarantee for any SEO campaign. We’ll deliver a plan that sets you up for long-term success, keep your site on track with any algorithm updates from Google and be as transparent as possible about your results.

Pricing for Local SEO Plans

Local SEO plans begin at $500 / month with a 3-month minimum contract to prove results. Pricing will differ based on competition, keyword difficulty and technical hurdles involved. We offer Starter, Intermediate and Pro packages to cover the following areas of on-page and off-page SEO work:

LOCAL SEO PACKAGES	STARTER	INTERMEDIATE	PRO
Keyword Research
Meta Data Updates
Technical Audit
Claiming, Optimizing Google My Business
Google Analytics, Google Search Console Setup
Directory Listings & Citation Management
Blog Setup
Implement Structured Data Markup
Monthly Content Development
Monthly Backlink Development
Rank & Traffic Reporting

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