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5 Sure Fire Ways to Rank Your Local Business to the First Page of Google Lickity Split!

1. Claim your Google My Business Page.

These are the pages that show up first in Google local listings. Like this one.

 

2. Make Sure Your Name, Address and Phone Number on All Your Websites and Others (NAP)

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<p itemprop="name">COMPANY NAME</p>
<p itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<p itemprop="streetAddress">ADDRESS LINE 1</p>
<p itemprop="addressLocality">CITY</p>,
<p itemprop="addressRegion">REGION</p>
<p itemprop="postalCode">POSTCODE/ZIP</p.
<p itemprop="telephone">PHONE NUMBER</p>
<meta itemprop="latitude" content="LATITUDE" />
<meta itemprop="longitude" content="LONGITUDE" />
</div>

You definitely want to have your listing here with as many reviews as possible. To rank your Google Business Page you will need local NAP citations, local reviews and My Business signals. Here is an article which goes into detail on setting up your Google My Business Page.

NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number)

You need to be consistent. It is vital that your full Name Address and Phone number appears on every single page of your website in EXACTLY the same format. On top of that you need to make sure that your NAP stays the same wherever your business is mentioned on other websites and even in the descriptions of your YouTube videos. Everywhere! All these mentions can be considered “Citations” which will help build your Google My Business Page rankings.

You should also put a special code on your website called Schema.org markup showing your NAP. This code is the format that the search engines prefer you use to help them find your correct business information.

You’ll also want to use Schema.org markup on your NAP to give the search engines all they need to display your company information correctly.

Just fill in your business details where it says “Company Name, Address Line1” etc. in the above code example.
Then place this code at the footer of your website pages. By the way you can find the Longitude and Latitude of your business here.

3. Get As Many Local Reviews As You Can!

4. Make Sure Your Website is Optimized for Local SEO

Here are some basics:

• Add your City/Region, and a relevant keyword, within your landing page title tag.
• Add your City/Region,  a relevant keyword, within your landing page H1 tag.
• Add your City/Region, plus a relevant keyword, within your landing page URL.
• Add your City/Region, plus a relevant keyword, within your landing page content.
• Add your City/Region, plus a relevant keyword, within your landing page image ALT attributes.
• Do not forget to Embed a Google map with your business marker into your website. Here is a website which will give you the code to embed a Google map on your website.

Make sure your website is mobile friendly. If your website is based on wordpress there are some plugins which will automatically make your website mobile friendly. Here is an article on the top 5 wordpress plugins to make your site mobile friendly. Here is an in depth article on how to make your website mobile friendly. You might need a web designer for this one.

Mobile friendliness is a definite factor in your rankings in Google. It is no longer optional. Here is a website to test if your website is mobile friendly.

Do local links and “citations” for your website. Citations are simply mentions of your local business on other websites. You should focus on local based links more than regular general authority sites though they can help as well. Here are some ideas on how to get more citations:

1. YouTube Videos. Do YouTube videos about your business with your local keywords in the title and your NAP in the description and these can count as citations for your business. Plus YouTube videos get ranked themselves very quickly for local terms. Put your phone number in the title and people will not even have to click the video link to contact you. Your phone number will appear in the SERPS in the title. Here is a site that can help you create and optimize videos for local seo.
2.  You can use a service such as Whitespark to find and place local citations for you.
3.  Check out the list of citations on Moz website and manually submit them yourself.
4. Use tools like Ahrefs, Majestic or Open Site Explorer to run competitive link research and find citations that your competitors have scored.
5. Create your own local directory of your own! Use your keywords in your domain name. I did so for a local plumber directory and got ranked very quickly for my keywords.Here is a great article on how to get more local links.

5. Make Sure Your Search Engine Listings Have High Clickthrough Rates

Make sure you have high clickthrough rates when visitors see your listing in the search results. Here are some tips on getting people to click through to your website.

• Make sure you have your Schema.org on your page. Include reviews.
• Have clear title tags.
• Have a detailed and intriguing meta description. Entice your readers. Do not think just about SEO. Think about real people reading your descriptions and what would entice them to click through.If you found this article helpful please share on social media. Thank you?

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