50% of users who do a local search on mobile for a business end up visiting one of the listed stores within one day. This means it’s essential that your business ranks high in the search engine results page (SERP) and Google’s “Snack Pack”.
For this reason, we’ve put together the Ultimate SEO Checklist for Local Brands
Keywords
First, make sure target keywords are present in the following places:
- Optimized Website Pages
- Online Directory Listings
- Online Reviews via Responses
- Social Media Sites
Then, make sure your website is connected to:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
Competitor Research
Make a list of competitors in your area and compare these SEO stats with your own.
- Google My Business ranking for top keywords
- Organic rankings for top keywords
- Review Quality across relevant review sites like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc.
- Number of links
- Number of Citations
- Site Speed
- Social Media Stats
Google My Business Listing
- Ensure you’ve claimed and verified your GMB Listing
- Make sure all business information is present and accurate.
- Properly categorize your brand on GMB
- Add images of your brand, products, and/or services
- Post regularly to GMB, just like any other social media platform
- Make sure you’re getting reviews on GMB
- Respond to all reviews
- Add a Q&A section for frequently asked questions
Reviews
First, make sure you’re getting positive ratings and reviews on these core review sites.
- Google My Business
- Yelp
Then, make sure you’re getting positive reviews on vertical-specific review sites like these.
- Houzz
- TripAdvisor
- Healthgrades
- SureCritic
Links
- Have multiple relevant local links on your website
- Have links with industry or vertical topics
- Have links with high domain authority
- Avoid spammy, off-topic links
- No links from resource pages that contain hundreds of links
- No links from guestbooks that contain hundreds of links
Citations
- Provide correct name, address, and phone number in all structured citations
- Provide correct name, address, and phone number in all UNstructured citations
Schema-Markup for Local
- Make sure the schema markup is correct on the website.
- Make sure the schema markup is correct on pages and posts.
Main Pages
Keyword Optimization
- Have keywords in meta tags (title and description)
- Tite lengths for each page or post are about 65 characters
- Meta description lengths are 225 to 300 characters
- Include Keywords in page titles.
- Include keywords in URL
- Include brand name at the end of SERP title
- Maintain a 2-3%keyword density across posts and pages
- Ensure the content length is at minimum 570 words per post or page
Image SEO
- Include relevant alt tags on all images (include keywords, but do not stuff keywords. Maintain relevancy)
- Include keywords in image titles and descriptions
Website Speed
- Ensure site loads in less than 3 seconds
- Ensure Google PageSpeed Insights Score is at least 80 on mobile
- Ensure Google PageSpeed Insights Score is at least 70 on desktop
Site Engagement
Check analytics to measure and improve content based on
- Time spent on the website
- Pages per session
- Bounce rate
Website Content
- Determine a cadence of blog posts to your website that you can easily maintain (once per month, twice per month, once per week, once per day, etc.)
- Research keywords and questions users are searching in regards to your industry, products, and services
- Write content that responds to and answers the most common search queries
Social Engagement
- Monitor the number of people who follow you on Facebook
- Monitor the number of likes, shares, and comments on each post
- Compare this to local competitors
- Monitor the same or comparable engagement on all your relevant social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, etc.)
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