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Episode 169: 5 Website Optimizations for Local Businesses
1.3k Plays2 years ago
Find it Quickly Here (In the Episode):
0:00 Intro
2:30 Website consultations
3:15 What your website can do vs what you need it to do
4:34 5 things local businesses should focus on when it comes to your website
5:16 Revisit Google Business Listing
7:40 Get reviews
10:02 Website structure
12:39 Website designer to help organize content
14:36 Page Structure
15:34 Give your page an optimized title
20:27 Local PR
22:36 Google Ads
23:07 Create content on a weekly basis
Show notes and other resources: https://daveyandkrista.com/local-businesses-seo/
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Transcript
Role of Website Designers
00:00:05
Speaker
So this is where a website designer does come in handy, right? This is where you probably want the help of a website designer to organize that content. Some of that content should go into your top level navigation. A lot of the examples we just mentioned could either live in your footer or they could just be strategically linked to around the site, but they wouldn't go in your top level navigation.
Introduction to the Show and Focus
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to The Brains That Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:38
Speaker
These past few months I've gotten back to doing something that I used to do a lot of and that's website consulting and it's something that I really enjoy doing as well. This looks a bit different from business to business but typically I'm brought in to help organize content or consult on SEO or user experience or to give feedback on new features and often it's a combination of different
Optimizing Local Business Websites for Search
00:00:59
Speaker
things.
00:00:59
Speaker
Today's episode stems from a few calls that I've had with local businesses. Basically, the question that we're trying to answer in this episode is, if I was a local business trying to optimize my website for search, what exactly would I focus on? Although I get into the weeds in one or two areas, this episode is meant to focus on those things that I believe would have the biggest impact for local businesses.
00:01:22
Speaker
If you're interested in booking a call with me to review your website, send us an email at support at dvandchrista.com and we'll get you the details. I take on a limited number of these calls each month. And of course, if you have any questions about this episode, you can DM us on Instagram. You can send us an email at support at dvandchrista.com.
00:01:39
Speaker
or reach out to us on our various social channels. Be sure to check out the show notes at dvandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Branstad Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at dvandchrista. Now, on to the episode.
Consulting Experiences and SEO Tips
00:02:02
Speaker
Okay, I am excited about this topic. I know you are. And I know you're not feeling well, so I appreciate you rallying to record this. Yeah, my cold turned into a sinus infection, so I feel like I can't breathe, but I'm here for you. Well, the good news is we're going to try to make this episode pretty quick, but hopefully super impactful. Okay. All right. And that kind of brings me to why I'm recording this episode. One thing that I've been doing more of recently is consulting on websites.
00:02:31
Speaker
We used to do this a lot years ago. More recently, I've gotten back to it and I've really enjoyed it. Basically, just some examples. One company, they've been struggling to figure out how to organize the content of the website in an effective way that assists in the customer journey. Basically, if someone had never heard of their business before,
00:02:51
Speaker
being able to go on the website and understand what it is that they do, how they do it, what benefits it would provide somebody looking for that type of service. That's one call I've been on recently. Another call was with a local business and basically trying to understand from an SEO perspective what's best.
00:03:10
Speaker
I think for many of the businesses that I've chatted with recently, there's been this sense that, hey, I know there's a lot I could do, and that's part of the issue, right? There's just so much that you can do on your website or can do in business. What are the things I need to do to make an impact?
00:03:28
Speaker
So I've been thinking about this from the perspective of a local business lately and kind of just to put together, you know, like if this was me and I was running a local business and had to put together a website and hopefully do a number of things, but one of those things, you know, be optimized for SEO and local search, how would I structure it? Which we used to do. We used to have a local photography business.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And I think that website was a good example. It's still up. One day we'll kill it. I know. One day. Well, we won't completely destroy it. We will definitely forward it over to Damien Krista. It's just nice to have an example. It's nice to have a site that you can go on. It's live that we can use as an example. Right. So anyways, if you're wondering what site we're talking about, it's KristaAJones.com. It has not been updated since Jack was born though. Sure.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I still think it looks pretty good. I mean, there are some weird things on there because we've used it as an example, you know, just to demonstrate some things. I don't even think it says we have kids on there. Like, I think it's that old and the fonts are tiny, so it could use them. Yeah, it's not worth it the time. But anyways, anyways, so these are five things that I think local businesses should focus on when it comes to their website.
Local vs. National SEO Strategies
00:04:38
Speaker
And I think, again, these are things that I think would be more impactful, especially in the short to medium term.
00:04:45
Speaker
And so, do you feel like businesses that serve nationally or worldwide should not focus on these? Or do you think they're just more impactful? No, no, no. So, I'm not saying that these are only specific to local business necessarily. I think that if I was a local business, this is how I'd approach it. If you are more of a national brand, not so much a local business, I think these things are still important concepts. But for instance, my first one, it doesn't make as much sense. Right. Yeah. Should we dive into it?
00:05:13
Speaker
All right, cool.
Importance of Google Business Listings
00:05:14
Speaker
So the very first thing that I would do is I'd revisit my Google business listing. Okay. All right. So used to be called Google My Business. It's gone through a number of different iterations, but you can create a listing for your business. All right. And, you know, if you Google, let's say like,
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, pizza near me, right? You're going to see the local pack, which is like a map and then a bunch of business names that show up under that. Typically it's three. Sometimes I've seen more than that. Google, I feel like tests different, showing a different amount of results and things like that.
00:05:44
Speaker
You can click to see more because I was trying to find somebody to cut our lawn recently and I went through the whole list. Sure, but typically in the organic results, you're typically only going to see three. One of the reasons that I would pay attention to this is because a lot of people don't.
00:06:00
Speaker
And so I think people who've been in business even for a long time, they don't take time to go in and optimize those things. And I think it's a missed opportunity. And in fairness, when things are going well, it's like, well, I don't really need that. Or it doesn't seem like a big deal. But I think, especially if you're a new business, but you've served some clients, there might be an opportunity to start jumping ahead of people in the local pack just because they haven't paid much attention to it.
00:06:23
Speaker
So, in your Google business listing, there are a bunch of fields. It's not that many, though, that you can complete. That, you know, description about your business, the hours you're open, phone number, website, all those things, right? You want to make sure that all of those things are completed. If Google gives you 750 words or characters to describe your business, use all 750 characters and approach it with your SEO hat on. Like, you don't have to stuff it with keywords. Stuff it with keywords.
00:06:50
Speaker
But, you know, if it doesn't sound the most, if it's not the most beautiful thing you've ever written about your business, that's okay. Because when was the last time that you went on to the Google business profile of somebody and read about their business? Yeah, I don't know if I've ever seen descriptions. You just see like the name and the reviews and maybe their phone number, right? So, whereas on your website, you definitely want to write for people but still have SEO in mind, on your Google business listing, I think it's okay to
00:07:16
Speaker
maybe make it sound a little less natural and try to get a few more keywords in there. Krista Jones is a wedding photographer in Annapolis, Maryland serving like these areas like that. Yeah, near or about 45 minutes from Baltimore and whatever, right? And so you're trying to get some different keywords in there related to what you do.
00:07:36
Speaker
Okay. But I would take full advantage of that. The second thing that I would do is I would get reviews, all right? And so this is not the second thing in my list that's actually like 1A, I guess. Okay. Because I get reviews. Everybody you work with, if they have a good experience with you, I would get them to leave a review in Google. I prioritize that, all right, over a number of these other places, not to say that they're not important, but I would prioritize Google.
00:08:00
Speaker
If you're a restaurant or whatnot, it makes sense maybe to get people to go to Yelp. If you're a wedding photographer, maybe it's WeddingWire or if you're in the wedding industry in general. If you are in construction, then maybe it's like Angie's List or House or some of these other places. Angie's List, you need to pay to even see the listings, right?
00:08:18
Speaker
I don't know. I know it's typically English list does show up for a lot of local businesses in the first couple of pages. But it really has places where they can get reviews. I would still prioritize Google. I'd also keep in mind that if you get somebody to leave a review at WeddingWire and Google, if they're exactly the same, Google won't necessarily show both of them. So it's better to have... Slightly different. Yeah. You don't want necessarily somebody to copy and paste, but again, I would prioritize Google.
00:08:47
Speaker
Well, you could have half your clients do one and half do the other, right? Or no. Sure, but it depends on how much competition there is for your Google review. Typically, the business with the most positive reviews is going to show up first. It's not always the case. There's other factors as well. But it's one of those things where if you've been in business for 10 years, you can have hundreds of reviews really easily, right? But again, a lot of businesses don't prioritize it, don't focus on it.
00:09:15
Speaker
So anyways, that's something that I would do. I would make it my priority. Anybody who interacts with my business on any level, I would have them go to Google and leave a review. And then secondarily, I would focus on some of these other local listings like Yelp, WeddingWire, Angie's List, House, whatever it is.
00:09:32
Speaker
One last note about Google business listings. You want to make sure that your phone number, address, website, all of these things are consistent. Basically, whatever your website URL is, you want to make sure that's exactly how it is in your Google business profile. Same with your address and your phone number and your name too. All of those things build consistency in Google's eyes. Make sure it's called your NAP. Name, address, phone number. You want to make sure all those
Content Strategy and SEO Techniques
00:09:59
Speaker
are consistent.
00:09:59
Speaker
All right, so moving on. The second thing that I would think through is just your generally your website structure. All right. And really what I have in mind is content. All right, the content that people are searching for when they're looking for a business like yours.
00:10:15
Speaker
So I'm not asking you necessarily to think through the architecture of your website in a way that a website designer would. But for a second, I'm asking you to put that hat on. And so for instance, when people are looking for a wedding venue, they're probably looking for things like when it's available, how much it is, whether they provide rentals, what's included, things like that.
00:10:42
Speaker
So you start thinking about, okay, how am I going to answer those types of questions that people are searching for across my website? Beyond that, even thinking about creating what are the types of things that people are looking for maybe when they're looking for a wedding venue.
00:10:58
Speaker
it might be that they're looking for a wedding venue near a certain destination, not even necessarily a city. I think that's, again, the low-hanging fruit. If you own a wedding venue in Richmond, obviously, you're going to want to rank for Richmond wedding venue. You probably do that maybe with your homepage. But there might be colleges in Richmond, and people are looking to go back to book a venue near that college. So you would also want to rank for, I don't know, any colleges in Richmond.
00:11:25
Speaker
But so it is a better example. See you. What's that VCU enrichment? I don't know. But anyways, like so VCU wedding or if you're in Annapolis, maybe it's like Naval Academy, right? And so if you're a wedding venue in Annapolis, you might have a page on your website that's dedicated to Naval Academy wedding wedding, right? And all it does is basically feature
00:11:45
Speaker
galleries from people who got married at the Naval Academy and then had their reception at your wedding venue and so on. Do you feel like a place in Annapolis would also need to do like waterfront weddings or like a place near us? Maybe would you like barn weddings? Yeah, absolutely. Basically what you want to do is come up with like a list of keywords.
00:12:04
Speaker
Or things that people might be searching for and then you want to group them together, right? You don't necessarily like the same page could probably rank right for barn wedding and farm wedding Okay, but you would probably want different pages to rank for Naval Academy wedding and st. John's wedding, right? So you want to start grouping those things together and then creating pages that target those searches and
00:12:31
Speaker
And do these pages go in your top level navigation, or do they not need to? Yeah, that depends. So this is where a website designer does come in handy. This is where you probably want the help of a website designer to organize that content. Some of that content should go into your top level navigation. A lot of the examples we just mentioned could either live in your footer, or they could just be strategically linked to around the site, but they wouldn't go in your top level navigation.
00:12:58
Speaker
So, yeah, I know that's a lot there, but the things that you want to start thinking about are just kind of what kind of things are people searching for when they're searching for my business. And so, again, the wedding industry I think is an easy example to use because when people are searching for a wedding photographer, they're often thinking about a wedding venue and a lot of these different things.
00:13:22
Speaker
So one of the things that you can do is you can use Google to help. Whenever you do Google search, you often see related searches. As you start typing things, Google might try to complete your search. When you search also on the page, you'll see people also ask. And then it's like a list of questions, right?
00:13:39
Speaker
So you can use those just as like evidence as to what people might be searching for. If you don't have access to paid keyword tools like SEMrush or whatever it might be. Keywords everywhere, we talked about that. That's another option for people.
00:13:56
Speaker
And some of this could be blog content, right? It doesn't all need to be its own page. Yeah, and that's why I said website designer might be a good person to throw this around with. Not all of it has to be pages on your website. I'd say some of the more primary stuff that you want to show up for should maybe be pages on your website, but it could be blog posts as well. And I think that's a value in creating content. But you want to sort of think through your website, what questions that you want to answer, and what people might be searching for.
00:14:25
Speaker
Again, I'm thinking more from a content perspective in that point. That's something that I think anybody could do, not necessarily as a website designer. Got it. The next thing is page structure. If we thought about our website and our content in general, what questions we want to answer and the kind of searches that we want to show up for, then when we create pages or posts, pages or blog posts around those specific pieces of content,
00:14:52
Speaker
We want to organize our page in the most optimized way and again, low hanging fruit here. One thing that comes to mind is when people name their services page services, when you could name it wedding photography or portraits. We see that on homepages too. People just forget to give their home page a title and by default it's home. You know whether you've done this because when you share it to let's say Facebook in the thumbnail where the title is, it will say home.
00:15:20
Speaker
Or in your browser tab, it'll say home instead of like a more specific keyword. Yeah, absolutely. So there's easy ways to check whether this is maybe something that you've done, but it's such a low hanging fruit, right? To give your page a more optimized title so you can show it. There's like a box in the show platform called SEO title. If you're on WordPress, you can use one of a number of different SEO plugins. We've reviewed a number of them on our YouTube channel.
00:15:46
Speaker
to update the meta title is what it's called, right? Yeah, exactly. To give the page a title and to give the page a meta description. I would say the page title matters a little bit more than the meta description. And then again, just because I can't help myself, but get into a little bit here, Google ultimately can rename your title and your meta description. They can rewrite your title and your meta description. So if you show up differently in Google, Google's rewritten it. That is the clue as to maybe that you should rename it, but just something to keep in mind.
00:16:16
Speaker
So thinking through the page structure, so you have a page title, that should be basically the same as whatever your H1 is going to be on the page, which is your first heading or heading one on the page. This is like, again, big idea. It should be pretty close to the title of your page, and it should really focus on that search, whatever that core search is that you're trying to rank that page for. Right. All right, does it make sense? It does make sense. Then headings, you should only use one H1 per page,
00:16:47
Speaker
But there's H2s, H3s, H4s, H5s, right? So there's other heading tags you can use. It goes to H6, but... Typically, you might use H1 through 3. Yeah, that's the most... I mean, show it doesn't even let you go past that. Yeah.
00:17:01
Speaker
An example of an H1 for somebody who wants a rank for a farm wedding in Richmond, right? You might have that as your H1. It might be farm wedding in Richmond or the best farm wedding venue in Richmond or whatever it is based on your research. But then you have H2s and 3s that support that keyword, but you don't have to necessarily repeat that exact phrase.
00:17:20
Speaker
I mean, Google doesn't like it when you repeat the same phrase over and over again. Sure, sure. And just the way, you know, keywords work now, it's a lot different than it did five years ago, 10 years ago. But in general, you want to capture sort of other ideas that might be descriptive of a form wedding, but not that exact same phrase. So talking about the barn, talking about, you know, whatever it might be, right? And anytime a good, I guess, suggestion for figuring out what some of these other things that you should hit, again, the things people ask in Google,
00:17:50
Speaker
that are related to that idea. Or if you're doing keyword research using a keyword tool, typically you'll see related keywords. So they're keywords that are part of sort of the same group, but not that primary keyword that you're trying to hit. So anyways, that's a little bit maybe in the weeds about page structure, copy in general. So the words on the page, I would include more than less. I think I'm looking at you wet industry. Typically we're going to be more photo-centric, right? Visual artists, same things. You need words.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, Google could read words. They could read images too, but not the same way they can read words. Yeah, and I would say the way Google has understood images has come a long, long way. But again, I still think copy makes a difference.
Contact Forms vs. Contact Pages
00:18:32
Speaker
And I was just doing a little bit of research before this episode and just seeing what ranked for a lot of local searches. And it's typically sites that have a little bit more copy. And then you're not going to be a fan of this, but I'd probably put a contact form at the bottom of key pages, including the homepage.
00:18:50
Speaker
I don't love it. I know. I know you don't love it. Especially if it's like an embedded contact form that does not look pretty. You know, I'm not saying necessarily that this is like make it or break it. This is part of my page structure. Can we link off to the homepage? I do that or to the contact page.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yes, he can, for sure. And he keeps people clicking around and things like that. I want to capture the lead right then and there, whenever they're ready. What if the form is just hideous? Because a lot of embedded ones are not. Yeah, but you have to scroll down to get it. So hopefully you see a lot of beautiful before you... Anyways, I knew that was going to be a point of contention, so I'm going to move on here.
00:19:24
Speaker
All right, so that was the first three. So just to recap here, Google reviews and Google business profile, like really taking advantage of that, thinking through your website structure.
Competitor Analysis for SEO
00:19:33
Speaker
And by website structure, I mean like the kinds of content, the kinds of searches that you want to rank for, right? And then organizing your website accordingly. And then as you're creating that content, really focusing on creating pages that capture that content well, right? And not just a paragraph of text with a picture.
00:19:50
Speaker
Got it. One thing that you can do around page structure here, like actually creating that content, is if there's a search term that you want to rank for, type it into Google, see what the first five results reveal. Okay.
00:20:05
Speaker
If you're including less content than those competitors, you're probably not going to rank for that term. You want to take notes on what kind of content they include on those pages, what kind of questions they answer, and then you want to tackle it. That does not mean, just to be clear, that you copy anybody else.
Local PR and Backlink Building
00:20:26
Speaker
The fourth thing that I would do is I'd hit local PR heavy. I know everybody wants to be featured in like the Martha Stewart weddings or the brides magazine or you know whatever a lot of these national publications right just to use the wedding example as a wedding industry as an example I would
00:20:43
Speaker
That's great to do that. I mean, even from an SEO perspective, if you can get featured in those places, but I would almost value the local stuff more. If there's a local publication, if there are local outlets, I would want to be featured there as much as possible as well. The nice thing about them is a lot of times you can get featured nationally and then also get featured locally too.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I'm not, again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try for some of these national things. And the value of the backlink is going to be, you know, obviously greater from a, you know, bigger, more recognizable
00:21:20
Speaker
domain, but I still think local PR efforts often lead to more leads than some of these more national publications, but like chambers of commerce and everywhere. I would do the local PR thing really well and
00:21:39
Speaker
Again, a lot of times local news outlets, local publications, they're looking for content. They need content. It's an easy way to start getting your name out there and build backlinks and build recognition without sitting around waiting on getting published in whatever. That's what I would do and I would make it a monthly task.
Leveraging Google Ads for Visibility
00:22:08
Speaker
To just get featured. Or to get featured. Yeah, local PR. And you could write posts for other people too, right? Yeah. And that would, I mean, it looks different depending on what industry you're in. Right. But in general, I would really focus on local PR. Okay. And then the last thing, if I had the budget for it.
00:22:25
Speaker
I think if you did all these other things, so I'll kind of talk about two options. One if I had the budget for it and then one if you don't have the budget maybe where you could use that time instead. Google ads if I had the budget for it. It's a great way to show up at the top of the search results before you are showing up there organically.
00:22:42
Speaker
Okay. All right. So maybe get a little traffic that way. You know, I would say it's not the most expensive thing in the world. It ultimately depends on the industry you're in, though. So there are industries, of course, where it's going to be a lot more competitive. It costs a lot more money. But if I had the budget for it, I would run some Google ads, see if I could get some traffic to my website that I pay for. Okay. If you don't have the budget.
Consistent Content Creation for Success
00:23:03
Speaker
I would create content every single week, right? This might not be blog content, but I would create content every single week. And again, I would prioritize blog content or blog like content. So if it's not blog content, what kind of content is it? Does it go just on a page on your website? I'm talking about like YouTube podcast, things like that. Okay.
00:23:25
Speaker
And really, I guess I take that comment back about the blog. I think especially in today's world, I'm thinking about our podcast, for instance. A lot of people find us through the podcast. So whatever content it is, I would focus on creating it on a weekly basis. Well, we've talked about this before too on a different episode. If you have a podcast episode, you can do show notes and a link to your podcast episode in your blog. Yeah. So you can spread things out. Yes. Agreed.
00:23:54
Speaker
All right, so one of the hesitations I had about recording this episode was that there's different places where I felt like I had to get in the weeds here to explain what I was talking about. If you're not familiar with things like heading tags and heading hierarchy, some of the things that we talked about today
00:24:10
Speaker
That's okay. We have a lot of content on our blog that explains those things. We do. YouTube is a great resource. And if you're looking for maybe a little bit more direction from that, we have a show at SEO course that walks you through a lot of these things as well. But the gist of it, I think content is king here, all right? So outside of the Google Business Profile, go set that up, get that optimized, and then focus on creating great content. And typically things fall into place. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks for joining us, guys.
00:24:43
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.