Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week’s feature is from Bradley Simonis, founder of E-Marketing Solutions Network (e-marketingsolutionsnetwork.com or on Twitter @emktgsolutions), specializing in local search, social media and mobile apps for restaurants and the service industry.
Lately, local search has been at the top of everyone’s radar, from search engines to social media sites to local advertising such as Groupon or, more locally, TipCity. As a small-business owner, you are missing a huge opportunity if it’s not on your radar.
So as a small-business owner, what can you do to increase your website’s local ranking without being a website programmer or search engine optimization guru? Put on your Google goggles and look at your website the way Google does.
Factors that determine your local rankings
There are two big factors you can control that help determine your local ranking results. One is your main identifier, known as NAP (Name, Address & Phone), and the other is your social media presence.
Imagine for a moment that somehow you have ended up with a listing under Juan’s Mexican Restaurant on one site, and a listing under Juan’s Mexican Café on another. When a search engine is looking at your Internet profile to determine how “important” your restaurant is, it cannot make a connection between the two locations so it assumes they are two different businesses. Sure, the address and phone are the same, but that is not enough to give the search engine the confidence that you are in fact one location. Such discrepancies are very detrimental to local search results.
Here are four steps to take control of your local business listing
1.
Do a search under your business name, under your business category, under anything that might pull you up. Look at local business directories like Merchant Circle, look under review sites like Yelp, and determine if your NAP is consistent.
2.
While you are on each of these sites, claim your listing if that option is available.
3.
Most sites have a place for additional information: products offered, coupons, hours of operation, credit cards taken, etc. It is critical that you complete all of the fields on every site.
4.
Now go to the two main sources of all business listings. That will be Localeze.com (sdut.us/localezelisting) and InfoUSA.com (expressupdateusa.com). Register your site, again with the exact NAP and all additional information they are seeking. The results will take time to permeate the Web, and you may have to go back and remake corrections you have already made, especially on the individual sites.
The role of social media in local search
By looking closely at a search query results page, in Google’s Places section for example, you will see that after a brief description, Google shows an address and phone (culled from your NAP). A recent review and its source are shown below that. Then the total number of reviews are shown to the right, as well a breakdown of review counts by source at the bottom of the listing.
So we can see that reviews are extremely important. And it makes sense. The more people are talking about you, the more Google assumes your location is a popular choice. (Assuming your reviews are all or mostly positive.) As such, you need to be proactive in gathering and monitoring reviews. Encourage your good customers to write about you and have them do it on a variety of review sites.
Finally, your social media presence plays another big role, and for the same reason. If two websites are created equal, doesn’t it make sense that the one with a higher social media profile must be a more popular place? Maybe that will help motivate you the next time you dread posting on your Facebook site.
Don’t just look at social media as something you know you should do because everyone is doing it (even though you don’t see results from it). It’s critical for getting your business found.
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