Get Found When You’re Needed Most

Spotlight Digital’s Local SEO Platform

Scenario

Strategy

Site Optimization

Google My Business

Reputation Management

Blogging

Linkbuilding

Citation Management

Social Media

The Scenario

Your toilet isn’t working. Maybe your car broke down. Maybe you’re out of town and need to find a grocery store. What do you do? Reach for your phone and search for a plumber near you that can fix your toilet. You search for a towing company and mechanic that can pick up and fix your car. You search for the nearest grocery store in town.

All of the places that you find and call to fix problems such as these are discovered as a result of Local Search Engine Optimization. Whichever company has the most optimized presence for search is the one that pops up on your screen and provides you with that highly coveted “call” button that every local business owner wants people mashing day in and day out.

Having a proper Local Search Engine Optimization service is essential to getting your business found in search results. Every time somebody searches, either you or your competitors are the one that will be displayed, and we want the business that gets displayed to be yours.

A Wholesome Local SEO Strategy

Spotlight Digital deploys a wholesome Local SEO strategy that helps get your business and its website found. That means more phone calls, direction requests, and website visits. All of those equal more customers for your local business.

A wholesome Local SEO strategy is one that doesn’t involve using spammy, scammy, or outdated methods that could kill your site and get it removed from search engines. The spammy, scammy, and outdated methods that do this are known as Black Hat SEO – it’s cheap, low-quality, and while it may get some results quickly, those results won’t last long and you’ll be left high and dry with some massive search penalties slapped against your site (you could be removed completely from search results). Nobody wants that. Click here to learn how you can recognize Black Hat SEO.

The Local Search Engine Optimization platform at Spotlight Digital is natural, human, and search friendly, helping you achieve long term results through online organic traffic acquisition. We make sure to save you the headache of learning, managing, and keeping up with the different trends and changes in Local SEO. Here’s some of what we will do for your business:

On-Site Optimization

On-Site Optimization involves making sure your website is ready for Local SEO.

This includes making sure there’s appropriate and relevant content on the site, schema markup is in place, title tags and meta descriptions are optimized for your target market, implementing proper internal link structure, and more. On-Site optimization is the foundation to an effective Local SEO strategy.

Google My Business

Google My Business is where location-based search happens at it’s best. Google My Business is what gets you on Google Maps – and when someone performs a local search query, Maps listings are shown before any of the regular organic listings in search.

Google My Business is the home base of your Local SEO efforts. Google My Business optimization (or GMB, for short), is what helps you show up on Google Maps when people search for services or shops near them. When you show up in the Maps results, potential customers see a big call button, direction button, and website button. Once they tap one of those, you get the chance to show them how great your business is and earn a new customer!

Reputation Management

When 97% of people consider reviews before making a purchase online, it is important to make sure your company’s reputation is a shining star.

Even in the digital world, word of mouth gets around. This occurs in the form of reviews on platforms such as Google Maps, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Reviews are part of a greater Local SEO strategy because search engines will pick up on your ratings from these different platforms – you want great reviews and you want to get them consistently.

Spotlight Digital makes sure to respond to all reviews, positive or negative, that you receive on Google Maps, Facebook, and many other platforms (upon request). Responding to positive reviews sends signals to search engines that you are active and engaged with your online reputation. On the other hand, responding to negative reviews not only sends these signals, but also gives you the opportunity to correct any issues a reviewing customer may have had. You can’t delete a review yourself, but you can mitigate the issue and as a result have that review changed by a formerly disgruntled, but now satisfied customer.

Blogging

We know – everybody says to start a blog. Only this time, we don’t mean a personal blog. We mean a blog with a focus on building your authority as an expert in your field AND your local area. That doesn’t really tell you much about the exact strategy we deploy, so let’s briefly dive into that.

Spotlight Digital will create and write blogs for your website. These blogs have two different types: industry and local. Industry blogs will be information related to your field that answers questions potential customers may have. These can include How-To posts, DIY posts, and explanatory posts.

Local blogs focus on your company’s locale. This type of blog answers questions and provides resources that are relevant to your area, such as what some of the top local parks in the area are or upcoming local events. By sharing these topics on your company’s blog, you are telling search engines more about the location of your business and its involvement in its local area. These blogs can also potentially earn you backlinks to your site.

Linkbuilding

Linkbuilding is the process of getting backlinks, or links to your website from other websites. These are very important and carry tremendous influence when it comes to how often search engines will display your website to potential customers.

Look at these like “votes” from other websites that tell search engines, “Yes, this is a legitimate business with a great website and great content, I endorse this website.” When it comes to Local SEO, the more locally focused the links you receive are, the better.

Local backlinks can be acquired through community involvement. Some examples could be charity work your company has assisted with, a local sports team your company sponsors, or your membership in your city’s Chamber of Commerce. A lot of times, the companies that partake in local and community involvement like this earn natural links from the local organizations they are involved with.

Citation Management

Citations are important when it comes to telling search engines that the data they have on your business and its location are accurate. Citation signals are sent whenever a NAP is formed. NAP is an acronym for Name, Address, Phone – anytime your business has these three items on another website, a citation is created.

There are two types of citations: structured and unstructured. Structured citations occur on sites like Yelp, Facebook, or YellowPages. These sites are specifically designed to have structured business data on them.

Unstructured citations occur when a NAP is created on another website that is not designed for business data. An example of an unstructured citation would be a local newspaper posting an online article about your company and including your business’s NAP info at the end of the article as part of the body text, rather than a page dedicated solely to your business data.

You want this data to be accurate across the web – if there are inconsistencies in information, your citation signals for your business are weakened and it’s more difficult for search engines to have “confidence” that your business data is correct, resulting in your business listing being shown less in search results.

Social Media

Social media has an impact on your Local SEO efforts in the form of social signals. Basically, search engines see that your company is active on social media and creating posts and engaging with your audience.

Some social media platforms will punish business accounts if they are not active enough. If you aren’t consistently posting, when you do post, many social algorithms will not give your posts much exposure – these platforms want to reward active profiles and accounts.

Any time you post on your company’s social media or someone likes or shares your posts, a social signal is created! Spotlight Digital will make sure you keep a steady stream of social signals created by your company.