Today I got a chance to attend the Local Search Advantage Workshop which leads into the SMX West event in San Jose this week. Led by LSA’s own Greg Sterling, the workshop is taking a deep dive into Google My Business, Local SEO, Mobile SEO and SEM, Local Tools and Local-Social marketing.
With localization providing 2X to 3X the ROI and conversions of conventional digital marketing, the sessions are exploring some of the advanced tactics behind successful local search strategies. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Joy Hawkins, product consultant at Imprezzio Marketing and Google My Business top contributor.
Her presentation (above), aptly titled, “15 Ways to be Successful with Google My Business,” gave some tactical tips on making the most of Google My Business. While she provided much more detail than what follows, here are the 15 tips she highlighted:
- Start with a competitor analysis
- Always check for duplicate listings using MapMaker
- Use “Select a Place” on MapMaker to find other listings that use the same address as you
- Visit the Google My Business Locations dashboard for additional details on the changes Google makes to your listing
- Always visit the live listing on G+, Google Maps, Google MapMaker and the knowledge graph. It doesn’t always match the dashboard
- Check the owner account for review alerts & suspension messages
- Embed your Google reviews on your website
- Check the # of calls you got under the insights in the dashboard
- Check Reviews Around the Web in the GMB dashboard to find NAP inconsistencies
- Write B2B Reviews
- Take screenshots to diagnose ranking issues
- Learn the MapMaker rules and use MapMaker to report spam
- Use YellowBot for discovering citation duplicates and NAP issues
- Keep updated with the Google My Business quality guidelines
- Do a pure local search to see if the issue is local or organic
The other sessions at this workshop take a similarly technical review of local SEO and the content is geared towards experts in the space. However, at LSA|15 in LA, April 20-22, we will be conducting a workshop titled, “Local Search Essentials for Non-SEO Professionals.” As the title suggests, this will be a great way for attendees to get a sense of the more fundamental principles behind local SEO.
LSA|15 includes speakers from Google, Estimote, Moz, xAd, GoDaddy, ReachLocal, Vendasta, Placed, Factual, PlaceIQ, Yelp, U-Haul, Dex Media, YP and many more. Click here for more info.
