Local SEO Digital Marketing Plan

Website Foundational –> Usability – The U.S. Department of Justice has released guidance for websites to comply with ADA guidelines. They were all part of the existing guidelines by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WACG), this guidance is coming from the government, the enforcers of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Offsite Foundational –> Google Business Profile – See all your calls originating directly from the Google listing. Turn it “On” in the admin area on the left sidebar, click on “Calls.”

Website Foundational –> Calls to Action – In addition to phone numbers, forms, and chats, companies are now facilitating texting by the visitor to the company. There are many reasons this could promote greater conversions since people are used to texting, answers come directly to their phone, and interactions don’t have to be in realtime.

Google has been rewriting 50-80% of title tags in the search results. They may do it to match the search terms better, shorten your too-long title tag, or maybe they don’t like yours. If you find they are rewriting it to something you don’t like, see if you can change it from your end to conform more to what Google is looking for. 

Create an author page for every person who writes for your blog. This can help increase the credibility of the author from Google’s perspective. Write a good biographical description and add links to other works and social sites. Also, use schema markup on your blogs and author pages.

Website Foundational –> Calls to Action – The form “notification” email needs to be set up for the website owner to see it was filled out. You can also send a form “confirmation” email to the visitor to let them know you received their submission. While most website contact forms give a confirmation message right on the site after submission, an additional contact through email can remind the visitor they contacted you, keep your business top-of-mind until you get back with them, and further sell your business. It will help increase your conversion rate. 

Ongoing Actions –> Review Management – The Transparency Company developed a great tool to find instances of fake online reviews. You can use this to check your company if in doubt or to find, submit, and potentially remove fake reviews on your competitor’s listings. They also have extensive tutorials on how to report offending companies to government and media outlets.

Google Business Profile is now the name of the backend administration of your business listing on Google. Previous names were Google Maps, Google Places, & Google My Business. With this new generation of Google listings, more changes, including claiming it, can be done directly on the search results. This one listing will control your presence on all Google properties.

Google’s John Mueller recently confirmed bolding words within content can positively affect SEO.  He also stated it could help the visitor scan the page for parts they actually want to read. It is important to use tags instead of in the HTML. 

A study showed that although it takes up more horizontal space and thus reduces the number of characters fitting in the title tag, the dash will increase the clickthrough rate compared to the “|.”

Website Foundational –> Individual Page SEO – Use a square image at the beginning of a page’s content to increase the chances it shows up in the mobile search results. If you use the Yoast plugin, set it as the featured image and it may show up without even being on the page.

Offsite Foundational –> Google Business Listing – The questions and answers section, found directly on the Google listing on the search results page, can function as your own FAQ section if you seed the questions yourself, then answer them.

Website Foundational –> Usability – Google began using its Core Web Vitals information for rankings in June. These are tracked measurements pertaining to the speed of your site and how it interacts with visitors as the page loads. In a competitive industry, websites passing all the core web vitals will get a leg up in rankings.

Website Foundational –> Calls to Action – Make it seem easy for visitors to become customers. Give them the three steps they need to take to do business with you, tell them what to do. Add images or icons to spice it up.  In a sea of information on your site, the 3-step  gives visitors a roadmap…and it’s simple. 

Website Foundational –> Individual Page SEO – Longer title tags on Local SEO websites can help rank for more keywords. The days of the 65 character limit are over. Even though it will get cut off in the search results, the additional words give you more of an opportunity to rank even without a detrimental effect on current ranknigs.