Local SEO: 5 Best Practices to Stay on top of your local competitors

So you’ve nailed your local SEO, or at least are working on it. You found some low-hanging fruit with citations and reviews and figured out the hours of operation for your business.

Your site is ready to go, with a great responsive design optimized for mobile traffic and a lovely new Google My Business page waiting patiently for customers. But now what? Now is when things get tough. Now it is time to keep up with the little guys and stay on top of your local search engine marketing solutions.

Your small business has something that customers need, whether it’s a great service or amazing products. Your job is to let those potential customers know they exist and how to find them, and you can’t rely on the search engines to continue ranking you for keywords related to your business if you don’t work at it – by making sure everything from customer reviews to social media mentions is tied back to your site and local listings.

So we’ve narrowed down some of the best practices out there, both free and paid strategies guaranteed (or your money back) to any business ahead of their competition.

  1. Set up a Google Alerts Account – And keep an eye on it.

Every company wants to see its name online as mentioned by Indianapolis SEO, but nobody wants to be the negative results that come with searching for your own business. That’s why it is so important to set up a Google Alert for yourself and your brand. Any time your company or its relevant keywords pop up somewhere new, you’ll hear about it right away from those alerts – even if you didn’t want to know about them!

  1. Take advantage of Local Citations – Everywhere!

There is no such thing as too many citations – except when they are wrong or incomplete – and businesses can’t afford not to have themselves listed everyplace possible. Sites like LocalStack allow you to submit your company name and address for free and let you build a list of citations that can be reviewed and optimized by experts.

  1. Make sure reviews are consistent everywhere – Especially on Google+ Local

Local businesses with multiple locations need to make sure that they’re consistently adding those locations as well as consistent business listings across the board, especially if those sources link back to different addresses or phone numbers. Make certain that everything matches up and is consistent between sites like Yelp and Google+.

  1. Take Advantage of Opportunities for Promotion – Social Media!

St Louis SEO Company said that every social media site out there provides excellent opportunities for local SEO – whether it’s Facebook’s check-ins or Instagram’s geotagging – but it takes work to stand out from the crowd on sites like Twitter, Reddit or Google+. One of the best ways to find out what promotions are upcoming is to sign up for businesses similar to yours and keep your eye on what they do.

  1. Use Proven Strategies – Get Outside Help!

While setting up Google Alerts, submitting local listings and optimizing company profiles might seem like enough work all on their own, just putting in the time doesn’t guarantee that your business will stay ranked where it needs to be. That’s why hiring experts like David Mihm or Moz Local can help make sure that you’re doing everything possible to ensure success with local SEO services campaigns.