Create your Google My Business account. Geotag! your keywords

We briefly went over the concept of local keywords in the first chapter. These refer to keywords containing geographical information.

Will local keywords bring me traffic?

To find out, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have a physical location?
• Is it important that your visitors or future employees be able to find your offices?
• Is your business located in a given area?
• Does the service you provide depend on where one is located?

If you answer "yes" to one of these questions, you should probably add a local component to your SEO strategy, meaning you should add your city or the area in which your activity occurs.

Set up your Google My Business account

Google uses Google My Business to locate your business on a map. It also uses it to gather reviews. That is the most important part!

It is essential that your address appear somewhere on your website, and that it be the same address as the one you used to set up your Google My Business account!

Go to the Google My Business website, click on the START NOW button, and follow the instructions. Register your address, telephone number, and the URL of your website. Enter the exact URL, including any “https” or “www.”

Upload some pictures of the office and the team as well. They will help increase the level of trust of your visitors. By default, Google generally uses a picture of the front of the building taken from street view (not very inspiring 😕).

Adapt your website

Create a page on your website that includes the following information:

• A complete street address.
• A telephone number, if applicable.
• Business hours, if applicable.
• A map to indicate your location.
• Accessibility information.
• A description of the place.

If you have several locations, you can create a separate page for each one.

When you are located in multiple towns, do not simply copy-paste the pages and change the address.

It is better to write a good quality page, without copy-pasting, based on the specifics of each location.

Get people talking about you

TripAdvisor logo

Once these pages have been created, share the information as widely as possible:

• Use local directories. Even if you are unable to place a link, it can still be useful.
• Remember to use Tripadvisor, Yelp, etc. 
• If there is a digital publication in your area, send them an email to introduce yourself.

Manage your reviews

This last aspect is also one of the most important: your reviews.

It is essential to foster favorable reviews and answer negative ones. Check on review aggregating websites to make sure an account wasn’t automatically created for you as this occurs quite often.

Here are some websites which publish reviews:

• Trustpilot and Bazaarvoice: Websites with non-specialized reviews, both solicited and unsolicited, for companies in (almost) any industry. The main advantage of these websites is that negative reviews cannot be deleted, which gives them a lot of credibility. Fake or malicious reviews are, of course, removed by moderators.
• Glassdoor: A job recruitment platform that allows employees to review their company. This platform is very helpful if you aim to grow your employer brand.
• Yelp: A website with non-specialized, crowd-sourced reviews for local businesses. It can be particularly interesting for restaurants, for example.
• Tripadvisor: Crowd-sourced reviews and advice on travel.

Recap

• Assess whether local keywords are useful for you.
• If they are:
  • Create your Google My Business account.
  • Adapt your website and create your local pages.
  • Get your name out there!
  • Foster favorable reviews and manage negative ones.