Raleigh SEO Services

Local SEO is different than general Internet keyword ranking.  One area of focus is ranking your website in Google maps because it’s known to generate more leads than organic listings when a map exists for a given search term.  The process for achieving rank is not the same as for normal organic SEO that most people are familiar with.  If you’re a local business that serves nearby customers, then Local SEO is what you want.  A few things to consider:

1. Geo Modifiers.  Be sure that you’ve followed good SEO practices in creating the titles, headers, categories, page content, and the overall silo structure in your website to help you focus on the specific geographical areas that matter.  This ties in directly with your keyword research.  However, be careful not to run afoul of Google’s doorway pages algorithm!
2. Citations.  These are your local directory listings, like the paper directories, but online.  Most people don’t know there are 4 primary data aggregators everyone else feeds off of, so making sure those are correct is your top priority.
3. Schema.  You should be using JSON-LD schema data for your specific type of local business.  Google prefers JSON-LD.  Microdata format is an acceptable second choice.

Keyword research and a local market opportunity analysis go hand-in-hand; neither is actionable without the other. Keyword research is the process of identifying different keywords for your industry that Google might rank websites for. There are specialized tools for performing this type of research and analysis, but there are manual ways of doing the same thing if you know how to do it.  A few things to keep in mind:

1. Competition Analysis.  Study the actual market opportunity by looking at the level of competition.  Don’t start by trying to rank for the hardest terms; pick lower hanging fruit and accomplish ranking results for that first.  This will earn you trust with Google when you then go after more difficult terms.
2. Geographic Relevancy.  Find keywords relevant to your local area, i.e. with the city names etc.  Don’t go after broad generic keywords like “plumbing” unless that’s truly your market, and you are willing to compete against the entire country to rank for them.
3. Buyer Intent.  Some keywords generally have clear buyer intent, such as a search for “emergency plumber” in a certain city.  Others might be more difficult to discern.  Sometimes there is no easy way to tell, and you have to experiment.
4. Value.  What’s the value of each inbound lead, and what’s the search volume?  That will help you begin to understand the potential cost-benefit to your business by ranking for those keywords.

On-site SEO is about things within your website itself that can influence how you get ranked. There are more on-page SEO factors than we could even begin to go into here, but a few things stick out as being top on the list of things that you need to get right.

1. Schema. As a local business, you should be using JSON-LD or microdata format schema data.
2. Page Load Speed. Your website needs to load fast; test it across PC, mobile and tablet. Caching plugins and content delivery networks (CDN) make a big difference, as well as down-sampling and down-sizing your images.
3. Titles and Headers. Getting these right is part of the magic, so we aren’t going to say a lot about it except that you need to be careful throughout your site not to over-optimize. Google is looking for people playing tricks.
4. Structure. The structure of your site, or the manner in which the pages are linked to each other, can play a significant role. The best silo approach can be a matter of debate, but it definitely varies based on the industry and services you provide.
5. Content. Provide real content. Studies have shown that across industries, top-rated pages have a correlation with longer content. For a local business this may not always be 100% true, but you should have something to say on pages you want to rank. Including relevant videos can be helpful in several ways, especially if they’re actually of you.

You need to get your on-site factors really dialed-in first, because if they aren’t right, then no amount of off-site work is going to make up for it. Once that’s done, though, then the stage is set for you look at your presence across the Internet. A few things to look at include:

1. Social Presence. Social activity such as shares, bookmarks, likes, etc. can make the difference in rank between two other otherwise equal sites.
2. Page Authority. Links from a bunch of brand new accounts with no Page Authority aren’t going to boost your ratings. You want links from authority sources in your industry on sites that Google already knows and trusts.
3. Source Types. Your backlinks should come from a variety of different types of sources, and be of different types.
4. Anchor Text Ratio. It’s a big no-no, and common mistake, to slam your website with a bunch of links all having the main keyword that you want to go after. This is a sure way to get a penalty from Google, so don’t do it. Your anchor text profile should look natural.
5. Link Quality. Google looks at what’s around the incoming link to your site. You don’t want spammy articles, junky spintax, or comment-spam. That sticks out like a sore thumb. You want to seek high quality content around the links coming back to your site.
6. Traffic. I’m sure you’ll agree that it would look odd to Google for you to start getting hundreds of backlinks if nobody is even searching for your company online. Conversely, if people are actually searching for you online, or reading a press release and then click through to your website, it’s going to see quite normal to Google that people would start linking to you.
7. Link Velocity. Google looks at the big picture of all the activity surrounding your website, from traffic to shares, as well as how quickly people are creating links to your site. For example, it’s normal after a press release or a video going viral to see a surge in both traffic and links to your site. Without such a clear impetus, though, it can seem a bit strange to see a huge spike in incoming links to your website without any clear reason why.