It can be tough. It can be a real nose to nose fight, but those local SEO results are as valuable as gold itself and you cannot afford to let your competition get the better of you. This may call for good old fashioned, old school ways of negotiating with clients and potential clients, but it also means you’ll get that brick and mortar clientele along with your online ones.

Local SEO is often underestimated by webmasters and marketers. They get lazy or ideological about SEO, thinking that one way solves all problems. It doesn’t. SEO is now a teeth gritting, eyes blazing field of expertise that gets more scientific every step of the way. Not only that but it also calls for old fashioned ways of pulling in the clients, even if it means hitting the sidewalks and roads to reach clients and chat face to face.
The art and skill of personal presence to enhance SEO is what marketing and sales have been built on since the beginning of commerce. People used to meet in person or over the phone but a good handshake was still part of the deal along with a lunch or dinner. Salespeople used to have to resort to all sorts of tactics just to get a client reeled in. The more powerful and wealthy the client was, the more goodies and goodwill has to be lathered on. It took skills of personality and presence because some clients had egos to feed. Knowing just what to say and when to say it called for panache.

Today, although it seems you can get things done faster online, it always isn’t the case with local SEO. You’re dealing with a limited yet valuable market and you’ve got to take advantage of everything you can get your hands on.

First, make sure your website is local SEO friendly. You’ve got your contact and location data on each page and if possible in all your copy and photo, video, and graphics tags. This is important as your content will be indexed in separate categories on Google and your local data will be part of it. Once you’ve analyzed and applied the right corrections, the next step is to fine tune your inbound and outbound links. Make sure they’re relevant to your business and get those inbound local links from high profile sites like local commerce or sports teams, radio stations, even holiday municipal events.

Next is to beat feet over to the various stores that can link to you from their sites exclusively or offer bonuses and discounts exclusively through your site. This calls for visiting and handshaking and maybe even a cup of coffee or two. Make the company feel like they’re getting the bargain for little or no effort. This way they’ll incorporate your site links in their updated copy on blogs and even on social media posts. See if they’ll allow you to take pics and videos of your friendship or even those special people who make that company run. You’d be surprised at how much traffic a popular person can pull in. For example, let’s say you’re trying to get that hard earned inbound link from a top company in your locale. You notice an old timer working there or some extra jovial person. Ask if they could go on video explaining the benefits of using that company’s goods and services and plaster that video with description and tagging with your contact and location data in it. People will then share and like that video on social media and you’ll have gained dozens of inbound, organic targeted traffic.

It’s not that this is a new approach, problem is people, marketers especially have forgotten what made marketing and advertising what it is today, hands on and friendly relationships. Getting that high traffic, authoritative link from a local company’s site makes your site look like one of value to the surfers in Google’s eyes, and your position on the search engines should rise accordingly.

There used to be an old advertisement slogan from AT&T that said, “Reach out and touch someone.”, well that’s how some things are done nowadays as well. There’s no harm in exercising your personal negotiating skills with your local SEO campaign.

Citations are those posts of information regarding your site that people post on directories. They’re like mini reviews about your website and business that allow for surfers to find you when they query search engines. These citations are far more valuable as they may seem, and there are ways to gain the upper hand, especially for local SEO.

You’re going to have to do some work to maximize the value of the citations about your site. Find as many as you can and triple check them for accuracy. It’s not always a matter of having lots of citations as it is in having accurate citations. Having the wrong name and location or phone number and other contact and descriptive information can ruin your chances of getting maximum efficiency in search traffic, especially that treasured targeted organic traffic. If someone is surfing for your site, let’s pretend here that your site has query data for “Joe’s Aquarium Supplies in Los Angeles, California, 123 ABC Street” and the citations have “Joe’s Aquarium Store in California, ABC 123 Avenue” instead, then you can see the damage being done. Surfers are getting your site’s name right but the address is all wrong. This could be due to a typo in your promotion or some other site goofed up. Either way these things have to be corrected and depending on the volume, it could take a while.

You’ll need to do some backtracking to find out where and when the error occurred and get to work immediately on correcting things. Of course this means the tedious chore of contacting each site to edit the info that you can’t and they may or may not be reluctant to do so depending on how difficult it could be. If it appears that things will be difficult, then respond to the citations themselves with the correct information. At least the correct information will appear next to the incorrect data.

The same goes for the products and services you provide. You can get far on synonyms, but only so far. Descriptions and lists of your products and services has to be correct as well. If you’re lucky enough to have an advertisement jingle that accompanies your promo, all the better. People like to post popular jingles to commercials they like, especially on social media. If you do have an audio video commercial with a jingle, make sure it’s posted on all the social media video sites and in those ads, announce the correct products and services as well as contact and location info. Never leave anything to chance. Establish your ground and keep it.

Precise information in those citations could mean the success or failure in this area of SEO. As you gain more fans make sure to bring to their attention that if they mention you in any citations to include the info you provide for them. Do this especially if you have a mailing list. Sometimes people get lazy or drunk or are in a rush and while posting info about you and your business site, they make mistakes. Getting them to correct them is just too much of a task, but you can at least try.

Remember, citations are just part of the arsenal you have to improve your local SEO rankings. Don’t underestimate their value nor shirk your responsibility in making these citations as accurate as possible.

Landing pages aren’t what they used to be thanks to the updates that Google has been doing, and marketers who haven’t been on their toes are seeing the miserable effects of not having adapted.

Landing pages used to be a great way to get traffic, by adding dozens of landing pages that pointed to the main site or sales page. Marketers and SEO pros would name a new sub domain after anything they could use to point a landing page to the main page or sales page of a site. Well, that isn’t working anymore and for good reason.

Google got tired of this tactic. Their new procedures penalize marketers and local SEO prose for trying this. Instead, what’s really working is the old honesty is the best policy procedures. Basically, your site had better have the right spelling, layout, relevant data, relevant links, blogs that engage and are well written, properly tagged photos,
If you think you’re going to outsmart Google on this, you’ve got another think coming. It’s not going to work. Stop right now and get on the good foot of local SEO.

So what do we do with our landing pages now? Well first of all, don’t put up landing pages with the same or similar content. Google will see this as cookie cutter type webmastering and SEO and that will cost you dearly. Your landing pages should have a sub domain name that is relevant to the ‘action’ of the page, not just the location. If you live in New York City for example and own a plumbing business, you should first have a landing page for your exact location with proper data like name of company, phone number, etc., especially zip code. Now to get other people to zero in on your page, you need to have landing pages that focus on an ‘action’, but put the location in the copy. For example, If you wanted to get the traffic going to Queens, NY, but your office is in Manhattan, you would put up a subdomain that says, yourdomain.com/plumbing/fix_clogged_pipes.html and in the copy, put your location and what you do in Queens and add important info like the zip code for that area and a landmark if possible.

This all adds up in the short and long term and it shows that you’re not just trying to snag up all the traffic, but the relevant traffic regarding the exact services you’re providing.

There are many changes on a theme here, but being straightforward, and being professional will get your local SEO and landing pages in good standing and profitable.

When it comes to local SEO, there are old and new, tried and true strategies that call for logical and precise application.

There’s no room for error here.  One needs to know the game and study from top to bottom as the landscape changes fast, but if one has their fundamentals in, they’ll be able to adapt to the changes and dominate.

The basics of local SEO success start with the same responsible tactics and strategies that held fast in the past and present.  First of all is knowing your market and location.  Having a set work agenda with precise goals.  You want your goods and services to be at the top of the roster regarding your location.  When people are shopping, you want them to know you’re the place to be, not your competitors.

This calls for studying on many levels. Know what your competition is doing as well as their strategies.  Once you get a good picture as to what you’re up against, you’ll be better able to plan and execute your plans.

Utilizing a variety of venues, like social media is a start.  Optimizing your site for get targeting and data ecosystem are also paramount.  This takes skills, and you had better either learn them, or hire someone of reputable character to do so. Don’t go with any fly-by-night company that makes ridiculous claims, like they’ll get you to the top of Google in one night.  That’s BS in capital letters.  A real, ethical, and responsible company will chat with you, go through the motions, set a time table, a sound budget, and strategy for the short and long term.  Just read up on the reviews of the company and ask if they’ll be along for the long ride.  A pro level company will stick with you through thick and thin.

That, out of the way, the techniques and strategies call for steps that are sound and have the ability to be examined and scaled up.

You’ll need to utilize “store locator” options.  Some require precise programming so you’ll need to either study up or hire someone.  This will allow you to list our store locations and the most minute details so that the search engines an other directories can list your data accurately.  There’s software for doing store locator local SEO and strategies you can do on your own, once you’ve studied thoroughly.

Social media and search engine local listings.  This is where you’ve got to really go to work.  Input your data on all these types of sites and link to it and have your links in them.  Google, Facebook, and the rest, even YouTube, have local listing features.  Once you put your accurate data in, they’ll interlink and boost your search engine presence.  Remember, local SEO also calls for relevant, well done content and professional websites.  If your work looks sloppy, you’ll either get penalized or receive negative comments and reviews.

So the bottom line is to study, apply, and do the professional level approach. Don’t shy away from hiring a pro if need be, and keep your eyes on the prize.