How to Local Business SEO
The title here may sound bit odd How to Local Business SEO but in the world of online marketing, it is better to be prepared so that your website is fully taking advantage of all the new changes for your internet business.
Is Local SEO Different to Normal Optimization?
Yes and no, Yes because if your business is a local business targeting only people located in the City or Suburb you are doing business in. And No, if your website and business is targeting the visitors globally.
Google My Business for Local Marketing and SEO
If your website is not in Google My Business listing to show up in Google Maps, then by all means go and verify your website now to advantage of latest changes in Google. For example: now the right hand sidebar Ads are gone from Google search results page, so you would have noticed Local Business Listings show up on the right hand side of Google results page. That’s where you want your local business to show up as well.
Login to your Google account and press on this link to manage option
Once you press Add a Single Location you will be directed to Google Maps for searching for your Business to see if Google already has information about it (even if you didn’t verify your business listing, Google may have information about it (in which case you can verify and claim your listing)). Simply follow the prompts and you’re done.
Google My Business Account Versus Google+ Page
Don’t confuse your verified business listing with Google Brand Pages because you can have many brand pages (think of them as Google+ page for various reasons) and think of Google Business Listing as to do with Google Maps listing for your Local Business.
What If You Already Have a Google+ Page
You can still take ownership of the business listing and connect a Google+ Page if you already created one. However, only do this if you already have followers, if not, start a new with a brand new listing with a brand new Google+ page.
Focus On Content Sharing on Google My Business
Most small business owners just create their Google Listing and simply forget about engaging with visitors or customers, or they often just #hashtag and share links. If anything, you want to be regularly updating social media profiles such as Google Local Business Posts. Don’t let it go stale with no content. Furthermore, find creative ways to get reviews for your Google Business Listing as that will influence Google Maps Rankings in 2019 not to mention the benefits of reviews as Social Proof for your online business.
Video Lesson Explaining How Google My Business Works
Use Schema.org Markup for Local Businesses
Google officially supports the different types of structured data markup including opening hours and customer support phone numbers. Use these techniques as they are great for Google knowledge graph for your Local Business. This will also help Google algorithms to better understanding your business when it finds information on external sites.
Hi Tolga,
I’ve had the local business schema plugin installed for about 1-2 years now and just decided to fix the image and price errors showing in Google structured data test tool. I watched your video and inserted the line of code (with my details) in plugin and got some errors. The errors stated that my address, phone, city, state, zip were not recognized as an imageobject.
Can you help?
Hello David, it is clear that you’ve placed the required information within < a div that blurts out the imageobject. That means you would simply cut/paste the inserted information within < a div that has localBusiness information
Tolga, Please disregard my last comment. I noticed where my error was….thanks you!
I am using your local business schema markup plugin on several sites and I’ve noticed a recent (new) error in the local business structured data – “image – a value for the image field is required”. Also says priceRange – the priceRange field is recommended. Please provide a value if available.
Is this something that should concern me?
Hello Al, thanks for the comment mate, I created a video and a text file that shows you how you can quickly and easily remedy this.
https://www.rankya.com/assets/LocalBusiness_plugin_update.mp4
https://www.rankya.com/assets/LocalBusiness_plugin_update_for_image_and_PriceRange.txt
Please let me know the outcome
Tolga,
Thanks for your effort. I tried your “fix” but it threw and error for me on my test site:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘else’ (T_ELSE), expecting function (T_FUNCTION) in /home/frontpag/public_html/wp-content/plugins/rankya-localbusiness-markup-schema/rankya-localbusiness-markup-schema.php on line 573
I run a directory with local businesses in the ‘bus and motor coach with driver rental’ industry. For the Company Profile Pages
We are currently using the Schema.org tag ’local business’ but are wondering if
a) https://schema.org/AutoRental
or :
b) https://schema.org/TaxiService
Would be better options?
They are both categories that are related but still different than ‘bus and coach with driver rentals’ What would be a better category? Can anybody share his thoughts on that one? I would be grateful to learn from you!
Hello, it actually wouldn’t make that much of a difference, because at higher level you are still LocalBusiness branching out to different itemtypes. However, it is only wise to follow AutoRental because there are more websites using this. Therefore, search engines will have more of a data to make judgements on these type of markups. So I would go for AutoRental in this case. Also, if you can do us a favor, recently a valued client of #RankYa hired us. And your website is perfectly related to obtain a backlink from, so if you can from anywhere of your site link to https://www.heathrowgatwickcars.com/ (heathrow airport transfers) that would be great, in return, I will also provide a mention of your business in RankYa spam free (also advertised) mature social profiles (so its win win for everyone). Thank you for considering
Thanks for making this and for making it free recently! I think the link for the LocalBusiness plugin currently goes to your YouTube schema plugin instead.
Thanks Eagan, its all working great now I hope you are enjoying the plugins please share them around as well
Great update! Geolocations are hopefully going to be very important in the future for SEO, it is quite a handy feature that will benefit both the company and customers.
Thanks for SEO Online Updates Topics.