As we’ve discussed during the earlier parts of our Local Series, directories and social networks are vital to getting your business found online.

Directories feed search engines the data that justifies your business’ inclusion in the local results. Social networks get the word out to your customers and let you connect with them online.

But, before all of that, there are two things that need to be in place: an actual business and an actual website. Here’s the foundation you need to have down before you get started on your online strategy, based on some of the most frequent issues I’ve encountered with small businesses.

Preparing Your Business for Local SEO

Before you get listed in directories and before your customers like/follow/plus/pin you on their favorite social network, you need to be consistent with the information you’re putting out there.

1. Know what your business name is going to be. Are you an LLC? A PLLC? An Inc? A TLDR? If you’re a firm or a medical practice, are you going by a business name or by single professional’s name? Are you going to use an ampersand or write out the word “and”? These small decisions can mean the difference between having a consistent, trusted online presence and having a dozen duplicate map markers pointing to different social and directory sites.
2. Know what phone number you’re going to use. If you have multiple phone lines, you need to pick one. The phone number is the most consistent identifier for a local business, so having multiple ones out there can cause some of the biggest headaches in local search. Ideally, you should use a local phone number instead of a toll free number. Search engines understand area codes and use this to determine how local your business is.
3. Know your address as it’s written in Google Maps.  Start by doing a search for your actual street address in Google Maps. Google will likely spit out a variation on how you typed it – use Google’s version. Now, if you have a suite number, add it to the address and write down. This is the exact address you want to use – always. If you’re located on a highway, you’ll especially want to follow these steps since highways are frequently listed in several different ways.
   

   I typed our address one way, but Google prefers it another.

Using Your Website for Local SEO

While there are businesses that occasionally show up in local results simply from their Bing or Google listings, it’s pretty rare and generally inconsistent. Your website is your home base online, and search engines will look to it to help define your local listings. Mark sure your website shows the search engines what they need to see.

1. Have one website. Singular. Nothing will confuse the search engines more than having a dozen microsites floating around claiming to be the official website for “Your Business, Inc” located at 123 Bob Villa Blvd. Especially in local, there seem to be a lot of companies that set up these microsites claiming it will allow a small business to dominate the search results. Don’t listen to these people. These small websites have no authority, send mixed messages to the search engines about your business and can create a ton of duplicate content concerns.
2. Mind the basics of SEO. Chances are you’re already targeting a specific town, community or neighborhood. So be sure to mention that area on your website. Name your city in the title tag and homepage content. And if you’re targeting multiple cities, know your limits. Google and Bing both go out of their way to only deliver search results within a few miles of the searcher. So if you’re targeting a city that’s 30 minutes away, you may want to instead focus on an area that’s a bit more realistic. To touch up on the other basics of SEO, you can start with this recent post.
3. List your NAP. Remember that stuff I mentioned a few lines up about choosing your name, address and phone number? This is commonly referred to as your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) and you’ll want to be sure to use it exactly as you wrote it down earlier. Google and Bing pay attention to how often your business is mentioned online. And the most important mention is on your actual website. Mention your full NAP on every page, especially the contact page. If you have multiple locations, give each location their own contact page so you can have one page devoted to each address individually. To be even more thorough, you can use semantic markup to specifically call out your business contact information. Schema.org is a great, nitpicky little markup that allows you to add some code to your website and label different parts of your content for the search engines. So by adding code like:
   

   <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<span itemprop="name">Portent, Inc.</span>
<span itemprop="description">An Internet marketing company in Seattle.</span>
<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">506 2nd Ave, Suite 1700</span>,
<span itemprop="addressLocality">Seattle</span>,
<span itemprop="addressRegion">WA</span>
</div>
Phone: <span itemprop="telephone">206-575-3740</span>
</div>

   You can tell the search engines exactly where to find your contact information. You can read more about schema.org for local businesses here.

Everything I’ve mentioned here is based on issues I’ve seen multiple times with small businesses. Even though some of this might seem basic, problems at this level can take months to resolve. By simply spending the time to make sure these fundamentals are in place, you’re giving your business a distinct advantage over countless other small businesses online.

If you have any lingering questions about local search, take advantage of our Local SEO Q&A and post your question in the comments below. Remember, we’ll be compiling all of the questions and responses on October 2nd in a special blog post!

The post The Brick and Mortar of Local SEO appeared first on Portent.

Local search is like a gyro sandwich: it’s delicious when it works, but the process and criteria for the result can be mysterious. What exactly is the spinning mass that guy is shaving slices from? Is this pita gluten-free? How old is this tzatziki sauce?

Like the myriad meat products in a gyro sandwich, directories are one of the primary ingredients that influence local search results.

The Major Search Engines

At the core of local search is your company’s listing on each of the major search engines’ local platform: Google+ Local, Bing Business Portal, and Yahoo! Local. It’s essential to claim and verify these listings in order to ensure your brand and business details are complete and accurate.

Business owners, however, will be the first to say it’s not always that easy. Making changes to your listing can be a long and frustrating process—especially if your business has more than one location.

You can do this through the local dashboard but, for Google, another option is Map Maker. Google allows users to update information about places they know through Map Maker, and updates are reviewed and approved. You can also see the history of changes to the listing. This could be a faster way to correct information if your local listings are in bad shape.

 Local Directories

If the end goal is visibility in the major search engine results, it follows that you could claim your listing and be done. But that’s not the case. Believe it or not, search engines can’t do it all themselves.

Third party data providers and local directories inform the search engines. The major search engines use this external data to confirm whether your business’ information matches what’s in their own index. If there’s a discrepancy, you could be in a world of hurt. I mean like bad lamb meat hurt.

Data Providers

It’s important, therefore, to ensure the signals from every local directory and data provider are correct and consistent. With thousands of local directories and search engines, however, where do you start? There are a small group of data providers that power the most and most influential services:

• Localeze
• Acxiom
• Express Update, powered by Infogroup

Other sites that feed the major search engines include Yellow Pages, Superpages, Citysearch, and Yelp. There are, of course, hundreds of other local directories that, even if they aren’t direct data providers, are still crawled by the major search engines. Your information should be accurate there too.

The deeper you dig, the messier it gets. Here in Seattle, for example, we have KING5.com, a local news website. The site has a business directory named LinkTown, which is powered by MojoPages—a national business directory. MojoPages, in turn, gets their data from Yellowbook and Localeze. So, the listing on LinkTown could potentially be influenced by 3 separate sources.

It’s great if they’re in concert, but what if your business moves and you need to change your address? You edit your MojoPages listing to correct the LinkTown profile, but MojoPages is getting conflicting data about your business from other sources, which also sends search engines mixed signals.

Knowing the source of the data can help you keep your listings accurate across the entire web. If you need to alter your business details, start with the major data providers first, then work your way down to the smaller directories and search engines. I recommend tracking the sites and dates you submit changes in order to keep everything organized, as it will often take weeks for changes to take effect and be indexed.

Citations and Niche Directories

In addition to third party data, search engines use the citations in their index as a ranking factor. Citations are mentions of the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a business across the web.

Depending on your vertical, there are plenty of niche directories to get citations. Whether you’re a plumber or a lawyer, there’s a directory for that. If you own a Greek restaurant, for example, you’ll want to be listed in sites like Urbanspoon and Yelp.

In general, the more citations your business has across the web, the more confidence the search engines have that the information is accurate. Unlike links, however, the difference in value between one site and another isn’t necessarily quantifiable. Should you shell out for a premium listing on a dubious directory like www.bestnumberonedentistlinks.com (a fake example, by the way) just to get another citation? Probably not. Search engines won’t trust it as much as a well-established and authoritative site like the Better Business Bureau or Best of the Web. Use the same discretion you would for being associated any website.

Local SEO: It’s a Headache (and Probably Some Heartburn)

Maintaining your business listings can require a lot of time and energy. The most important thing is to keep your information consistent. The good news is that relatively few business owners have even claimed their listing.

Complete listings on search engines and relevant local directories are only one component of local SEO, but it’ll help put your business far ahead of the competition. Stay tuned for more in the Portent Local Series on other vital areas of local SEO.

Have any questions about local directories? Let us know in the comments and we’ll answer them in our Local SEO Q&A blog post on October 2^nd!

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