Defense and attack: 10 basic rules for local advancement

Now the middle of one of the most exciting football seasons (here the author means American football), my favorite team has no equal.

In one of the interviews for the NFL channel, the team coach answered the question “ what is the secret of their success this season? ” Answered “ we are simply stronger than our opponents in defense and attack ”.

Although for most fans, these words sounded like "we are cooler, so we win."

In fact, the coach meant something completely different, namely, “ our opponents ignored the basic rules on the battlefield, ” so their score was lower.

If you draw an analogy with the local search (address search) , maybe your positions fell because " defense and attack weakened "?

Fast repetition of 10 basic rules of local search.

1. You must add your website to the main local search services: Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing Local [and Yandex.Adres approx. trans.].

There is nothing easier. Firstly, this is a free way to declare yourself, tell about your company, secondly, if you have a website, then you will collect a greater level of trust in search engines, and this will favorably affect its ranking (of course, if you try cheat your position, you can fall under the sanctions of search engines).

2. Add your company to the main reference services: Localeze, infoUSA, and Acxiom — by contacting them through UniversalBusinessListing.org.

Most business owners of small businesses have heard of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. But a small percentage of them (I would even add a few Internet marketers) are aware of the other “three pillars” of local search — Localeze, infoUSA, and Acxiom. These reference services have their own databases, local indexes and other features that are unique to search services. Simply put, these three services can be considered the backbone of local search.

Amazing fact, but you cannot add your company data online, the only way how to do it, as far as I know, is through the Universal Registry of Companies (Universal Business Listing).

in relation to Russia - there are Yellow Pages, which should not be neglected, as well as the popular DublGis and Skynet regions.

3. Add your company to quality catalogs.

One of the main steps on the road to success in local search is to add your article to high-quality directories, which play an important role if you want your company to be in search queries you need. Very often search engines use directory information in local search, so do not ignore this feature.

naturally, if we are talking about the Russian-speaking segment, then YAK is important for us.

4. Information about your business should be consistent.

Google especially loves it, he wants to see the same information everywhere regarding a particular company, because it increases the level of trust in this company and the search results will be the most correct. This means that you do not need to insert a long tail from keywords in the field where the company name should be. Also, contact information should be the same everywhere, another important point that I would like to draw your attention to is the format of writing the number, it is desirable to adhere to the standard.

5. Your contact information must be in hCard microformat or add a QR code to your site.

It is extremely important that search engines see the name of the address and phone number of your company (also known as “NAT” —a good abbreviation from Localeze's Gib Olander) during the process of indexing your site. If this information is in a flash animation or graphic image, then the search robot will not be able to read it and add it to the index. Therefore, general advice is that your address should be written in text format in HTML, or at least in hCard microformat.

6. Create a KML file and upload it to Google Webmaster Central.

Most SEO professionals are familiar with XML site maps. Ok, now imagine the KML file as a "topographic map." This is a specialized file format in which information about the company is stored, from the physical address with all the data from the site and even geographic coordinates to detailed information about the company’s website. Dutch SEO specialist Martijn Beijk has written an excellent guide to compiling KML files, it will be useful for all who have just started promoting their local search.

7. Use the official company name in the "title" tag for your contact page.

This advice is one of the freshest, which I began to give after reading the post Mike Blumenthal on the forum dedicated to Google Maps, as well as his report on SMX East last month. Bill Slawski focused our attention on this in his article Strategy for Local Search strategy back in 2006 (!), But then I did not pay attention to this advice, and only when I heard the report Mike decided to use and this opportunity.

Writing in the "title" tag of the contact page the official name of your company, you seem to subscribe to Google in that this is indeed the most accurate spelling of your company name.

8. Use geographic names in the "title" tag for your contact page.

This is one of the general recommendations: use the names of geographical locations in the "title" tag for your contact page. For example, if your company sells car tires in Detroit, then the title should contain something like the following "Detroit tires" or "Tires in Detroit" in addition to other title pages on your site.

9. Your site should have Google Analytics installed.

Think of analytics as watching a football game. To know how your team will play in this match, you need to know how it played in past games. Analytics will help you to find out by what search queries most often visitors come to your site, and which pages are the most effective for your business.

10. Monitor your competitors.

Always keep an eye on the status of organic and targeted search results for your key requests. What are your competitors? Use tools such as Linkscape or Yahoo Site Explorer to identify the sites that link to them but do not link to you (with reference to the Internet, you can use the convenient SEO-Budget service). Look at the categories in which their sites are registered, but yours is not there.

Always learn from your competitors : see what they are better than you and make conclusions for yourself.

Always learn, but do not copy 1 to 1, it is always walking behind a competitor, and not ahead of him.

Perhaps there are still some thematic blogs or forums where you are still not "lit up"?

Perhaps the topic of advancement in local search is not as interesting as Internet marketing on Twitter, however, these are very good tips that will certainly help improve the visibility of your site and attract new customers.