Everywhere you look in the marketing world, people are talking about search engine optimization. Prominent and successful SEO is the digital equivalent of having an inflatable gorilla in front of your store to attract foot traffic: it’s all about grabbing attention.

Getting profitable web traffic isn’t just about numbers. It’s about quality.

Not only do you want to attract new readers, but you want readers who are likely to become customers. That means you need local users, and your local SEO makes that happen.

Because local listings are among the most crucial aspects of your SEO, you don’t want to miss these local listings management tips.

Go Hunting and Claim Everything

The first step to managing your local listings is finding those listings in the first place.

Scour the web to find your listings on every directory you can find. Many of these platforms let you claim and verify your listings so you can manage them, so that’s the next step.

As you hunt, make a spreadsheet. Include URLs for all the listings you find, and note whether you’ve claimed them.

When you’re done, go through that list and make sure you have listings on the most popular sites. That includes Google My Business, Yelp, and YP. Think about any major directories in your field too.

If you don’t have listings on those major sites, create them yourself. Sometimes you need to go through one process to create the listings and a separate process to claim them.

Look for Accuracy

As you find and create all those directory listings, check all the data for accuracy. Most listings will include your website, address, business name, phone number, and business hours at a minimum.

For any listings that have incorrect or incomplete information, update them. Having consistent information gives you a more credible online image and ensures that customers can reach you no matter where they find you.

Any time your business’s details change, you’ll be glad you have that spreadsheet. It makes it easy to click into each one and update the information.

Schedule in Your Local Listings Management

Most local listings allow customers to post reviews. For many businesses, the hardest part of local listings management is keeping up with those reviews.

Some directories will send you an email when a customer posts a new review on your listing and some won’t. Never assume you’ll get a notification. As busy as you are, all you need is a few minutes every couple of weeks to check for new reviews.

Set up a recurrent note on your to-do list every two weeks. With that spreadsheet in hand, all you need to do is click into each listing to check for new reviews. If you don’t have time, it’s an easy task to delegate too.

Respond to Every Review

Speaking of reviews, starting today, respond to each one.

For positive reviews, all you need is a quick note to thank the reviewer for their kind words and to say that you look forward to serving them again.

Negative reviews are more tricky, but business owners tend to overthink them.

With negative reviews, don’t go into details or get into a keyboard fight. Be compassionate and voice that you’ve heard their concerns. Then invite them to contact you to discuss the issue further or let them know that you’ll be in touch.

When you’re responding to reviews, remember that other potential customers will read it. In fact, your response is more for them than it is for the reviewer. You want to send the message that you’re listening and you care about making customers happy.

Take Advantage of What Your Listings Offer

Every directory has its own set of features and if you don’t use them, you’re leaving opportunities on the table.

For example, Google My Business allows you to publish posts, similar to social media posts.

Take the time to get to know each of your local listings and how to best take advantage of them. Creating posts about your latest blogs and new services can provide helpful links to your site.

For some listings, you can pair them with your social media profiles. For others, you can enable a messaging option which lets customers connect with you directly on the listing.

As you do this, prioritize your time. Start with directories that get high traffic like Google and Yelp. Dedicate plenty of time to these listings and work your way down to the lesser-known ones.

Consider All Your Options

Managing your local listings is one of those situations in which you get out of it what you put into it. Making the most of every listing takes a lot of time, upkeep, and attention.

If you don’t have room in your schedule, you always have the option of hiring a professional. There are SEO professionals and tools to focus on any specific area you choose, including your local listings.

Becoming a Local Legend

We won’t lie: improving your local SEO is a big task. It takes work on your own site and on other websites like local directories. Like your general SEO, it’s an ongoing job that requires upkeep if you want to keep your results.

Consistent and thoughtful local listings management is one of the most important things you can do for your local SEO. The tips above will help you find and make the most of all your listings.

Still, local listings are one piece of the larger puzzle of SEO. To continue boosting your web presence, start buying text links and furthering your knowledge about SEO with our tools.

Did you know around 46% of all searches on Google have local intent?

This means almost half of users are looking for info about their geographic area. They may be looking for the best shawarma place to eat in after work or they may be looking at reviews of the hairdresser a couple of blocks away.

This is why local SEO is crucial, but like global SEO, it comes with many important aspects. One such factor is a local backlink. If you’re not familiar with it, read on to find out what a backlink is and why is it important to local SEO.

1. What is Local SEO

Local SEO refers to the optimization of your website to attract the local audience. This is different from global SEO, in which your target is anyone searching for a keyword.

This is useful for shops and small businesses whose target audience is the locals. These may not have stores in different locations. Thus, attracting those who cannot visit their store is useless.

A store in New York that doesn’t do deliveries, for example, would benefit more from traffic coming from within New York rather than Los Angeles.

To be more specific, this targets people who do local searches on Google. Examples are those who search for things like “coffee shop near me” or “good French restaurant.” They may also search for other establishments, like salons and pet stores.

With these kinds of searches, Google knows that they are searching for a shop near their location. As such, it will show what it calls the Snack Pack, a boxed area on top of the search results.

It shows the top 3 relevant local businesses. It comes complete with its information and with a click of a button, the directions to its location.

Local SEO’s main goal is then for the website to show up within the Snack Pack. This is important as 33% of clicks go to this boxed area,

2. What is a Backlink

A backlink is a link from another website leading to yours. You may also hear it referred to as inbound links, incoming links, or inward links. The opposite is an outbound link, which is a link coming from your website leading to another website.

Like all the other links, the quality of this backlink matters to your SEO. The higher the quality the website it’s coming from, the higher the quality it is. Not only that, but Google also penalizes farming backlinks from low-quality websites.

Google and search engines also see backlinks as something like a “vote of confidence.” Each backlink you earn is a vote, thus increasing your credibility and authority. This is another reason why the authority of the website it’s coming from is important.

This is true even for nofollow links, which means the website doesn’t pass link equity to your website. For dofollow links, you get an extra boost with the link juice.

Of course, it has the added benefit of increasing traffic to your website as well. The visitors of other websites may click the link to read your content.

3. Why Does It Matter to Local SEO?

For a backlink to be what we call a local link, it also needs to serve the purposes of local SEO. That is to direct the local audience to your website.

This means the backlinks that will matter to you are also those in your area, which you may consider to be small compared to other authoritative sites like Forbes and The New York Times. However, as they have an influence on the local audience, links from them may even be more valuable than the websites stated and the likes.

On top of that, backlinks are also the second most factor for the local Snack Pack. Even if you do all the other local SEO aspects right, the lack of valuable backlinks might hinder you from getting into the top 3 listings.

4. Where to Get Local Backlinks

Link building for local links is about the same as regular link building. The only difference is that you’ll have to contact local businesses instead.

You’ll also have to create local content, which you can then pitch to Facebook groups and other websites to gain backlinks. Here are good ways to build local links.

Online Directories

Aside from local businesses, though, you’ll also get quality backlinks from online directories. Make sure to update these as it has another benefit: if your NAP (name, address, phone number) is consistent throughout all the directories, it’s a big plus to Google.

Make sure to create a Google My Business account to get your store on the radar. Then, claim your businesses in other directories like Yelp and other credible sites. Beware of sites used for farming backlinks, as they may earn you a punishment from Google.

Local Lists and Awards

Many media companies and other institutions organize awards, and the good thing is that you can look them up the internet. Sign up for the awards related to your niche; even if you don’t win, you may earn a backlink from the institution’s website. Some will only advertise your website if you win, though.

You can also promote your business to sites that publish lists, such as “Top 10 Coffee Shops in Miami” and the likes.

Local Influencers

Another way is to find local influencers with whom you can strike a deal. It could be something like an exchange of content, wherein the influencer will writing something for your website and you’ll guest post on their website, too.

You could also give out some samples or a free dinner so they can try out our products. In return, they get to feature you on their blog and/or social media pages.

Note that these influencers should be niche, which means they can be small. Still, these are the great ones as their audience is your target.

Link Building for Local SEO

There’s a lot more to local SEO, local link building, and link building itself. Don’t fret though; we’ve got more guides like this to help you out. You can start by checking out the 10 most common link building mistakes here.

To rank well on Google, you will need to build out citation listings. While this is obvious, there’s still mixed debate (and confusion) over local citation building. What works, what doesn’t work.

Some strategists believe building out citations is all that a business needs to rank well. Others swear by a less enforced approach.

One thing is for sure: ignoring local citation building, as well as not optimizing your pages and Google My Business, will get you nowhere.

This post will clear the air on 5 common myths about local citation building circulating the SEO world.

Let’s begin.

Myth # 1 – Variances in your business name will negatively affect your ranking

Business owners commonly panic over minor differences in their citations, and they wonder if making minor changes to their business name will improve their ranking.

The truth is, that it won’t.

That’s because other factors play a role in the Google algorithms, factors of which have a much stronger means of getting your business to rank high.

Here’s the thing.

Google only takes changes under consideration IF your address or your phone number change. That’s about it.

To give you an example, if your citation is listed as “SEO Blog,” while somewhere else your citation is listed as “SEO Content,” Google won’t distinguish this because your address and phone number in each listing are the same.

So don’t panic. Minor differences in your NAP won’t negatively affect your score.

Myth #2 – NAP cleanup means you’ll have to edit every mismatch you see

Are you finding different versions of your business name on different directories? Is it driving you a little crazy? Don’t fret. This is a case that can be easily resolved (as well as ignored).

The thing is that many users don’t even know that having to clean up hundreds of variables of your listing name is completely unneeded, and some SEO companies know this.

As a result, they charge an arm and a leg for doing a needless service.

Searching for your business data and will naturally generate many faults, but in reality, Google doesn’t pay mind to these hundreds of small variations of your name listing.

Instead, Google identifies your business listings as being similar because the content of your NAP is the same.

So don’t panic!

Just make sure your NAP is the same, which is should be. If not, then that’s a problem!

If you’re still feeling a little worried about this, here’s what you can do.

Fix the listing on the aggregate site. That’ll take care of the many variations to your listing.

What’s important to know is your top sites (30-50) are the ones that really count, as well as your specific targeted sites.

These hundreds of variable sites with minor differences in the listings are a speck in the sand and won’t be worth the time you spend on them.

That said, you’ll save time and money if, instead, you choose to optimize other parts of your SEO strategies.

Optimizing your pages, analyzing your competitors and optimizing Google My Business should be your concern as well, not just local citation building.

Which brings me to the next myth.

Myth # 3 – Citation building is the only SEO strategy

Most small businesses and even some SEO pros have a tendency to put too much emphasis on location citation building.

The truth is that, if you’re only using citation building as your main SEO strategy, you won’t rank well, period.

Citation building is very important. We would ignore it if it didn’t play such an important role.

However, making sure every aspect of your local SEO strategy is locked in will get you higher ranks.

Being in the know of Google’s new “near me” search will certainly help as well.

That said, citations are important, but it’s only a starting point.

After you have a solid base of citations (30-50 should do it) that’s where it should end, and you will need to do a lot more than just focus on building out citations.

Myth # 4 – You should ignore citations for listings that have your number

Let’s say you share the number of a previous business. Will Google spot this and lower your score?

Yes.

If Google collects enough information on many customers who are calling you, but who are actually trying to call the number of the old business, Google will mark this as a negative user experience.

The result will be a low score on Google Maps, which Google will automatically assign.

Remember: Your telephone number is the unique identifier of your business, one which Google uses to determine where you stand on Google.

Make sure you claim your number!

Myth # 5 – Local citation building is a must every time you’re asked to fill one out

So you’re a new business owner. Your website is up and running. Great! And now every directory you come across is asking for the deets of your business.

Are you suppose to share the information every single time?

I mean, it won’t kill you. But at some point, you’ll get tired of doing it.

There’s a better way.

Step 1: Analyze your competitors

Step 2: Optimize your pages

Step 3: Optimize My Business listing optimization

Step 4: THEN go about focusing on location citation building.

If you follow this order, rest assured that you’ll rank well in numerous sites.

In Conclusion

I frequently overhear and read things about local SEO strategies that just aren’t true.

My hope with this post is to debunk some of these myths that are floating around.

I believe every marketer should certainly spend some time building out citations, as it will certainly play a factor to ranking well on Google.

But just remember that you won’t move the needle further if your only concern is location citation building.

Instead, you should be targeting the other areas of your local SEO strategy.

Also, remember to pay no mind to mismatches of the business names you see on the directories.

I see many business owners and webmasters panic over this.

Just make sure that your address and telephone number are correct. Spending countless hours editing all of that information will drive you crazy. What’s important is that you make it to the top 50 sites.

We hope this myth-busting post works out for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!