SEO is Not Dead – It’s Gone Local

Oh the old saying, “SEO is Dead. ” Can it actually be old news this early in the infancy of the Internet? It seems most marketers and web enthusiasts are either on one side of the fence: “SEO is king,” or “SEO is smoke and mirrors.”

As a web technology company and a team of web entrepreneurs, we can happily stand up and say, SEO isn’t dead; it’s local.

What does that mean exactly?

If you think about our last post about the latest trends of 2016, you’ll know that everything has become hyper-local, and local mobile search will be the biggest trend of 2016. So ultimately the emphasis in SEO should be localized content as well as mapping and claiming your business or location. If you have a business with multiple locations, one of the best ways for you to rank high organically in search is to make sure your business locations are claimed on Google My Business, Bing, Yelp and Apple Maps. These top four location and review sites will give you the best SEO value as long as you have up-to-date and consistent listing information. Even if you’re a single business, claim it on these sites! Search has gone local. Search is mobile.

The Future of SEO

If you really want to rank locally for locations, you need to create local pages on your website for each location and direct each location on the map pages to those specific location pages.

For example: Say you’re a pizza franchise with 20 locations in Arizona. One option is to create localized pages within your website for each location as a subfolder. The other option is creating subdomains for each location.

So the URLs could potentially be: AZpizza.com/Scottsdale or Scottsdale.azpizza.com

From the entertaining and wonderful world of SEO chat rooms, the majority of the gurus claim that subcategories (AZpizza.com/Scottsdale) is the preferred way of locally listing locations. This subcategory gives you local, relevant content and allows you to better optimize your site for mobile users and those searching near your location.

Claim Your Listings

One of the biggest SEO values we recommend here at I-ology, is claiming your business listings on all the major map and review sites. For Google, make sure you have a Gmail account and then go to Google My Business to claim your business on maps and Google+. Make sure to update all the content and business information, provide a good image and logo where applicable. Do this on Yelp, Apple Maps, and yes, even on Bing. By claiming all of these listings and map locations, you’re increasing your search value and providing potential customers or website visitors the necessary information to contact you or easily find you in search.

So don’t forget: Claim your business; provide localized pages on your website and point the maps at those pages; provide relevant content on both your website page and the listing page for that location, then watch your analytics and Google listing insights to measure the traffic.

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, digital marketing and web technology services, contact us.