hey in this video i'm going to show you my complete local seo process so you can rank at the top of google's local pack and watch until the end because i'll share the one thing that 99 of people are not doing to increase their local pack rankings let's dive right in hey so my name is nathan gotch and i'm the founder of gotcha seo and i've personally led hundreds of successful seo campaigns since 2013 and i've helped thousands of seo professionals reach mastery status inside my training program gotcha seo academy so in case you're new
here this is video 8 in this complete seo mastery training series there are links below this video to watch the other lessons after you finish this one and one last thing please subscribe now and hit the bell notification because you'll get first access to the next video in this training series so before i can show you how to do local seo you need to know the core ranking factors and many of the factors that determine traditional organic rankings also influence local pack rankings however ranking within the local pac does have some unique variables according to
google there are three core variables that determine local pac rankings so the first local seo ranking factor is number one relevance we must aim to be the most relevant result given the search query or in google's words relevance refers to how well a local business profile matches what someone is searching for and we can control this ranking variable through proper on-page seo and by building topical geo-targeted relevance now the second local seo ranking factor is number two distance now according to google distance considers how far each potential search result is from the location term used
in a search if a user doesn't specify a location in their search we'll calculate distance based on what we know about their location in other words if you want to rank in a given location you need to have an address that is central to that location for example if i want to rank for st louis plumber i need an address in the heart of st louis city if my address was in one of the surrounding cities like chesterfield then it would be detrimental to my local pac performance in st louis and the third local seo
ranking factor is prominence according to google prominence refers to how well known a business is and you can perform well in the local pack if you nail the first two variables with low competition keywords however if you're in a highly competitive vertical you'll need to optimize for prominence and there are four core actions that will improve a local brand's prominence first is review count plus score on your google my business listing so there should be an active initiative to land more five-star reviews on your google my business listing ideally these reviews should come from people
who are located in the target area the next are backlinks getting more niche relevant and geo-targeted backlinks from quality sources is one of the most important ranking factors next is citation accuracy so focusing on increasing your napw which is name address phone and website accuracy across the internet you need to focus on increasing your napw which is name address phone and website accuracy across the internet and once that's accomplished then build more citations on relevant and high quality directories next are organic rankings so performing well in google's organic search results can actually lift performance in
the local pack more on this in a second so now that you know the core local seo ranking factors let me show you seven ways to improve your rankings number one optimize your google my business listing so go into your google my business listing and benchmark your performance which means looking at all the data and setting the benchmarks to improve upon then go through and optimize the info section and then respond to every single review that you currently have and this is the easiest action that most businesses never do it actually adds depth to your
gmb listing so just keep it simple reply to all good and bad reviews then add at least 10 unique images to your listing once again do everything in your power to add depth to your listing because most competitors won't do it and the key is to use unique images 10 is the minimum but more unique images are a good thing next thing to do is create product listings so services are also considered products so take advantage of this section to add even more depth to your profile inject your primary keyword where it makes sense then
if you can create frequently asked questions so first brainstorm some frequently asked questions about your products and services second have your friends family or co-workers go on to google and ask these questions on your listings ideally the question should be asked from people who live in the primary location or who are close by number two create a gmb posting schedule so gmb posts aren't a direct ranking factor however they can indirectly improve the performance of your listing because they can lead to more engagement so gmb posts expire in seven days so you should aim to
publish at least one new post a week first i recommend reviewing google's guidelines for gmb posts and this will make sure you don't violate any guidelines that could jeopardize your listing second google has a free tool you can use to create assets for your local business that's worth checking out however you should create content on your gmb that hits each part of the sales funnel so at the top of the funnel you might have blog posts youtube videos or even podcast episodes at the middle of the funnel you might have webinars or white papers and
then at the bottom of the funnel which are the most important pieces of content to produce are going to be review posts which is just simply reposting your google my business reviews testimonials case studies company updates local charity events that you're involved in new products and services that you're launching new team members that you've added upcoming quarterly or annual promotions and sales product or new feature launches company updates or annual holidays the list goes on and on number three clean up your citations so go to semrush click on local seo and go to their listing
management tool then just enter your company name and semrush should populate the location and then run the scan scrmes will then show you all of your existing listings and other opportunities that you're missing out on right now semrush also gives you the ability to clean up your listings which i recommend taking advantage of because it's super time consuming number four get more reviews now there's overwhelming evidence that reviews are critical to local seo but they're critical for business reasons as well in fact according to review trackers 63 of consumers say that they are likely to
check online reviews on google before visiting a business and more than 6 in 10 consumers look to google for reviews and lastly customer reviews can increase conversions by 270 percent so reviews are super important and the first step to getting more reviews is to establish a target so open up google enter your most important local keyword in this example i'll use st louis plumber now get the average total reviews for the top three competitors this becomes your low end review count target ideally you should aim to beat whoever has the most reviews now the question
is how do you get more reviews well the most obvious way is to do great work and that will produce the most organic reviews for example in saint louis there's a local pizza place called melos that's only open two days a week and i heard some hype about it and decided to give it a shot little did i know that this was literally the best pizza i've ever had so i went out of my way to lead them a google review praising it and they didn't tell me to i was inspired to leave a review
because it was so incredible that i wanted other people to experience it so what i just described is how you can generate reviews at scale now the second way is to simply ask so first you'll need to generate a gmb review link so go to the target gmb listing click on share review form and copy the link you can now send this link to your happiest clients here's a simple template that you can use but at the end of the day your review collection process needs to be a part of your company's culture and processes
seek feedback from your customers and ask for reviews that will put you ahead of most local businesses number five optimize your existing pages so at the most basic level your primary keyword should be in your url title h1 tag first sentence and last sentence but to take things up another notch i recommend using scm rush's on-page seo checker so go to the on-page and tech seo section click on the on-page seo checker and start a new project click on import keywords and pages and then select your preferred option in this example i'll use manually enter
your target keyword and the exact keyword phrase you want to rank for and then click collect ideas as crush will then show you how to optimize the target page from a strategy content semantic technical ux and even link building perspective so just make sure you benchmark your performance today and then execute on all of these recommendations and in addition to that you should also prominently place your address on the target page and use schema markup there's some evidence that it may help to embed a google map on the target page as well number six is
create geo-targeted content so creating content for local seo is one of the most misunderstood topics of all and at the end of the day the best type of content to create will be topically and geotarget irrelevant so my favorite method is to find ideas on the national level and then use them for inspiration for localized content so for example let's say i was trying to build topical relevance for a stainless plumber i'd go into semrush go to the keyword overview tool and enter a broad topic like plumbing then go to the questions section and look
for ideas that may have different answers based on the location for example how much does a plumber cost well this keyword is super competitive on the national level however i could change it to how much does a plumber cost in st louis and create a data-driven piece of content then i would do the same thing for the seed idea when was indoor plumbing invented but instead i would create an asset for the history of plumbing in st louis now the key to the strategy is to avoid slapping a location on a topic that isn't variable
based on the location for example a keyword like how do you spell plumber won't change based on the location therefore creating a page like how do you spell plumber in st louis would be spammy and wouldn't make sense number seven is acquire local backlinks so using a content centric approach is the best way to acquire local backlinks however there are some push methods you can use like local donation or sponsor links so go to google and search list of donors plus st louis or the city that you're targeting or st louis plus sponsors and you'll
have to dig through these opportunities to find pages that actually leak out however these are golden opportunities and you should also tap into local bloggers who want to cover local businesses and you can collaborate with these bloggers and score some decent links so just go back to google and search city plus blogger and add these to your prospecting list and then send them a very simple email like this so keep one thing in mind the perfect local backlink would be topically and geo-targeted relevant however getting links that are just geo-targeted relevant are helpful as well
and getting links on the national level that are just niche relevant will also help you build website authority and increase seo performance so the ultimate goal of link building is to build page and website authority which will increase rankings and i covered link building in great depth in a previous video in this seo mastery series and i'll have a link below this video so in the next video i'm going to walk you through my complete seo checklist so please subscribe like this video and drop a comment below to show me you're excited about the next
video thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one
