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How to Add or Claim Your A Greater Town Listing

Rada Daktina — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 09:31:06 +0000

Adding your business to agreatertown.com is a great way to increase visibility, reach new customers, and establish your online presence. It usually forms part of a broader citation-building campaign, whether you’re doing that manually or with a citation-building service.

This comprehensive guide is for anyone doing it themselves, and it will walk you through the simple process of adding your business to the platform. From signing up to publishing your listing, we’ll cover every step in detail so you can get started quickly and easily.

How to Add a Listing

1. Go to agreatertown.com and click ‘Sign Up’ in the right-hand corner. Alternatively, you can head straight to https://agreatertown.com/user/register_prompt/free_pass:

2. Fill in the required information and click ‘Join’ to create your account (make sure to check all tickboxes before you proceed):

3. You will see the message below on your screen. Head to your inbox and complete the email verification. If the email does not arrive from the first attempt, you can request another one by clicking the ‘Click here to resend a link’ message:

4. Once you verify the email, you will be redirected to your account dashboard, specifically to the ‘My posts’ section. The site calls any addition to their directory a post, so don’t be alarmed. To start adding the listing, click ‘Add New Post’:

5. The first step is adding the ‘Post Title’, which in this case will be the business name:

6. The next step is adding the business category. Add your category and click ‘Search category’. If no exact matches are found, you will see the message below. In this case, you can contact the site’s support team for help:

You may need to try a variation of different categories and/or keywords to get a list of suitable suggestions. Once you see that, choose the best option that fits your business:

9. The next step is adding the town your business is located in. You must follow the instructions listed precisely. You must enter the town + state or zip code combination for US locations. If your business is outside the US, you must enter the country’s name or the country’s name followed by ‘UN.’

Example:

Australia, UN
United Kingdom, UN
Canada, UN

10. The fourth step is adding a logo. This is important and mandatory. If you skip this step, your listing will remain private, and others won’t see it until you add a logo. This can be an official logo or an image/thumbnail from your website, GBP, or social media. Simply add the file and click ‘Upload Image’:

11. The next page is where you can add rich content for your listing. Click on ‘Add link’ to add the website URL:

You will see two fields for this. The top field is for the actual URL, and the bottom field is for the anchor text:

This option lets you add your main website URL and social media links. Remember to use anchor text and save the links one by one.

The ‘Add Text’ will allow you to add the business description.
The ‘Add Images’ allows you to upload photos of your business.
The ‘Add Map’ option allows you to add the full business address.

12. Once you have added all relevant information, you can use the buttons at the top of the page to preview, delete, or publish your listing. Click ‘Publish Your Post’ at the top of the page, and you are all set:

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How to Claim an Existing Listing

1. Use the search bar at the top left corner of the page to look for a specific business:

2. If you find the existing listing, click on it and scroll to the bottom of the page until you see the ‘Is this your business? Claim this post.’ message:

3. If someone has already claimed the listing, you will have several options. To either log in (if it is your listing), reset the password, or contact the support for help with access (do remember to include the link to the listing you are trying to reclaim):

Notes:

The customer support at agreatertown.com is very responsive and helpful, so don’t hesitate to ask them for help.
When you look at the list of search results, you can see who created the listing/post:

You can click on the name and see all listings added to the site by that person/company and also the option to contact them directly:

How to Onboard Local SEO Clients Effectively + Free Checklist

Rachel Ellen — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:05:19 +0000

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter seven of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

Firstly, congratulations on a successful pitch!

It’s super exciting and rewarding to have won a new client, especially after a potentially long, competitive pitch process. But after the celebrations comes one of the final hurdles. Before getting down to the real business of starting to deliver on all the proposed implementations and optimizations that won you the pitch in the first place, the client needs to be officially onboarded.

While other teams will likely handle the contracts and compliance side of things, the individual, team, or project manager must set to work on the account. Having a robust, structured onboarding process to turn to at this stage can be crucial. Not only can it help ensure everyone is on the same page from the get-go, but it can also help deliver better results and build stronger relationships.

This is when a ready-to-go onboarding checklist can be your best friend, helping your team avoid common early missteps and hit the ground running.

Preparation and Creating Your Client Onboarding Checklist

A checklist certainly doesn’t need to be anything too technical or fancy; a simple Excel or Google sheet can work well, which is usually my preference! But what should it include?

In a nutshell, the checklist should help identify all the initial conversations and information gathering that’s needed, all the tools and platforms you will need access to, plus the typical kick-start tasks that help you identify key opportunities and the general lay of the local digital landscape for your new client.

In simpler terms, a typical local SEO onboarding checklist can be divided into three main sections:

Things we need to know
Things we need to access
Things we need to do

Individual tasks or actions generally fall under these three buckets and can be added as separate checklist lines. A suitable status indicator should also be included. This could be a formatted drop-down menu offering a choice of progress statuses or as simple as a checkbox. Who doesn’t love the satisfaction gained from a successful tick?

Try a Free Local SEO Onboarding Checklist TemplateCroud has put together a local SEO onboarding checklist template. To use it, follow the link below, click the ‘Make a copy’ button, and rename it accordingly.

Find the Template

1. Things We Need to Know

To kick off, a checklist should cover essential information gathering that’s needed to provide helpful new account context so that we can:

Tailor our strategy accordingly
Set realistic goals and expectations
Identify any challenges and opportunities
Set the bar for collaboration and communication
Start strong

Every client will be different, with their own needs and nuances, so while the following checklist recommendations are by no means exhaustive, they should cover the most common bases:

Perform a Basic Local Maturity Check-In

A key first step is to arrange an initial meeting with the client to discuss their current local SEO setup and what will be needed to create and deliver the best strategy moving forward. Having a basic set of questions ready to ask and collating detailed answers will help inform those first important strategy steps. This is often called the discovery phase.

Some of this information may already be known from the pitch process, as covered in RFPs or brief details. If not already shared with you, asking for details on past or current local search strategies, including any metrics and local business goals, is a great starting point. Knowing that driving physical footfall into stores is the priority over increasing website clicks or that key stakeholders are very focused on the brand’s reputation across certain locations, for example, will help frame your initial roadmap.

It will also be key to confirm if you will be starting from scratch with a clean slate or taking over from an existing strategy or agency where there is still work to complete. The client may already have a well-established brand with a local SEO foundation in place, but they need fresh eyes and ideas to turn declining performance around.

Alternatively, if the client is a relatively new business that has initially focused on launching its website, it may still need the basics set up for local SEO, such as creating Google Business Profiles or providing recommendations for potential location pages .

Whatever has come before, it’s important to understand how the client views their current local maturity and success. The checklist can note this context, which will help prioritize the initial focus areas and set realistic goals for the short, medium, and long term.

Tip: It can also be helpful to briefly check the client’s paid activity to get a top-line view of any planned strategy, especially if it is focused on local campaigns.

Create a Centralized Data Source

Any local SEO strategy will undoubtedly require access to and understanding of a brand’s key local business information, whether for brick-and-mortar locations such as stores or offices or the geographical areas the business serves.

For example, it will be difficult to audit Google Business Profiles without knowing accurate location names, addresses, and phone numbers to validate accuracy.

Therefore, it’s important early on to determine where the core information about each physical location or targeted service area is stored and what they consider their source of truth. This could be an internal database or digital repository, an Excel file, or a tool like BrightLocal!

Try a Free Local SEO Client Information Template

Claire Carlile has developed a local SEO client information template as part of her course, “Essential Google Business Profile Tasks for Agencies,” available through BrightLocal Academy. Her course includes three more useful templates. To use the template, follow the link below, click the ‘Make a copy’ button, and rename it accordingly.

Find the Template

Local Market Analysis & Research

You’ll likely have conducted local market research and analysis in preparation for the pitch process. However, this may have been a diluted or narrow view, such as looking at a single market. As part of onboarding, building this out for a more complete picture early on is important. This will likely include the following info-gathering tasks to add to your checklist:

Competitor analysis: Identify local competitors through helpful tools or review search results for relevant keywords. Then, review their local SEO set-up to benchmark maturity and inform the direction of the strategy.
Target audience: Use a combination of analytics tools and client feedback to understand the current customer demographic and any opportunities to appeal to a wider or different audience.
Targeted local keywords: Identify relevant local keywords that existing and potential customers may use to find your new client’s products or services. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs can be helpful here.

Tip: Who the client perceives as their local competitors may not always align with who their actual competitors are . Identifying their true rivals in the local SERP and presenting this information may influence your strategy or re-establish previous goals.

Tools like GBP Audit and Local Search Grid are fantastic for this.

Client Contacts

It likely goes without saying, but it’s essential to determine who the main day-to-day client contacts will be and any other key stakeholders you may meet or report to. It’s important to note that with local SEO, you may need to collaborate with individuals from across a range of brand teams, including website, marketing, sales, stores/retail, or social media. We’ve seen much collaborative success at Croud from identifying and connecting with these additional teams early on in the local onboarding process.

For a multi-location business or a franchise, you may also be working with specific regions or branches. So, it’s worth clarifying early on who your key contacts are.

Tip: Create a contact log for future reference, and reciprocate by sharing a contact log from your side with the client!

Define Ways of Working

You can be brimming with local SEO knowledge and skills and raring to implement an exciting strategy for your new client, but it’s crucial to take the time to understand how they prefer to work, communicate, and collaborate.

Be sure to ask about the project management tools and communication channels they may already use and feel comfortable with and be willing to adopt these methods. This can instantly help build rapport, show you value their comfort and existing ways of working, and allow you to onboard more cohesively.

Sure, your agency may exclusively use Hangouts and the Google ecosystem, but if your client is deeply embedded in Microsoft, you may need to consider how that affects you. Suggesting a collaborative Slack channel may sound like a great idea, but it could add more hurdles if your client doesn’t have Slack.

Tip: Though the client’s preferences should be prioritized, and you may need to adapt, don’t be afraid to make suggestions for change. Provide informed choices, especially where you have experience to share.

2. Things We Need to Access

To efficiently run audits, implement optimizations, troubleshoot issues, plan local content creation, set up benchmarking, and conduct robust reporting, you will need access to various tools and platforms and visibility of key brand assets. Additionally, being well set up to quickly gain insights and demonstrate optimization or algorithm impact in a timely manner is also something to get ticked off early in the onboarding process.

Google Business Profiles (GBP) : Key for all local activity, access to the client’s GBP locations will enable you to review their status, audit and update key business information, manage reviews and pull insights.
Local listings : These may vary depending on the industry, but key platform listings and directories include Apple Business Connect, Bing Places for Business, Yelp, TrustPilot, and TripAdvisor.
Social accounts: If supporting with social is in scope, e.g., Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.
SEO tools & platforms : It’s likely your agency has access to various SEO tools and platforms designed to track keyword rankings & performance, such as STAT, so it’s important to set up new client data ASAP. Additionally, if the client uses a listings management tool to maintain their online profiles and listings, having visibility is key e.g. BrightLocal, Uberall, Moz, Yext SOCi, etc.
Analytics : This will help inform various performance reporting and analysis, such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster, etc.
Project management and communication tools: Depending on the client’s preferred ways of working, these could be task management and workflow tracking tools such as Asana and JIRA or communication and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
Brand assets and guidance: These may be provided to you by the client or may be accessed via online repositories such as asset libraries containing photos, logos, brand and tone of voice guidelines, etc. Having access to these will help create consistent and appealing content.

3. Things We Need to Do

While a comprehensive local strategy and roadmap will include many tasks, and the immediate ‘things to do’ will vary from client to client, there are a few key common activities to prioritize from the start:

Conduct Local Keyword Research

You may have identified targeted keywords as part of your initial research and analysis, but expanding this to a full local keyword research project or refreshing a current KWR will help reveal untapped keyword opportunities that could inform local content plans.

Citation/Backlink Audit

Analyzing the client’s current backlink profile will highlight current strengths and weaknesses while reviewing the backlinks earned by competitors to help identify new opportunities for your client.

Key Listings & Local On-Page Audit

How effectively your client’s business locations and service areas are surfaced and perceived online underpins any successful local SEO strategy, not only to rank well for relevant keywords but also to serve correct, consistent, and helpful information to potential local customers, that ultimately converts.

Early on, a key action with a new client will be to audit and review existing online business profiles and listings for accuracy and completeness. Conduct an audit of key listings, starting with Google Business Profiles, to ensure they are eligible to surface (are verified and live) and are fully optimized.

When reviewing Google Business Profiles, it’s important to note the page each profile is pointing to, and what that page is telling Google about the business, its location, and its offering. Conducting an audit of these pages (often location service or store pages) can be just as key as auditing Google Profiles themselves, and may highlight some great on-page opportunities that can be built into the local strategy.

Reputation Review

I like to include an initial overview of a brand’s online reputation to determine whether there are any red flags to be aware of or quick wins to be had. Though this may not be an initial focus for all new clients, it’s crucial for local visibility and customer conversion.

You could add a checklist action to assess existing reviews across publishers such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, Trustpilot, and any other relevant reputation platforms to understand how the brand and its locations are currently perceived vs their competition.

Initial Local SEO Strategy Roadmap

Lastly, make sure to include an initial strategy plan creation in your checklist so you can conclude your onboarding plan by sharing a first draft plan of action with your new client for their review, feedback, and approval. This could be approached in several ways but could cover the first 3, 6, and 12 months or be segmented into proposed quick wins, incremental gains, and big bet projects.

Presenting a ready-to-move strategy early on sets a strong tone. This should certainly seek to align with expectations set during the pitch process but should be open to evolving based on onboarding conversations, client feedback, and emerging trends.

Final Thoughts

A methodical and organized onboarding process is essential for success in a local search strategy. When aided by a clear and efficient onboarding checklist, delays and potential blockers are reduced, leaving you fully prepped and energized to sail smoothly into your first tasks!

Key Takeaways:

A structured onboarding process helps avoid common challenges and blockers.
Organize your checklist into things to know, things to access, and things to do for better clarity.
Understanding the client’s local maturity, key contacts, and data sources is crucial.
Gaining early access to SEO tools, platforms, and listings and conducting initial audits sets you on the right path.

Onboarding a local SEO client doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and by following a checklist can ensure a smooth process that sets you and your client up for success.

Start with Discovery: The Key to Building Great Partnerships

Laura Salter — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 08:47:47 +0000

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter six of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

It’s exciting when a new lead comes into a marketing agency! The excitement makes it tempting to dive in right away and brainstorm the many ways you can help. However, without understanding a lead’s specific goals, any solutions you come up with are based on assumptions. Even after your initial sales call with an exciting new prospect, most of what you’ve written down will still be assumptions—yours and theirs.

A prospect will answer your questions to the best of their ability, but they may be clouded by their own emotional investment in the project or by misleading data and reporting from a current marketing vendor. Until you get a good look behind the scenes, you have no business making recommendations or assigning budgets to projects.

This guide teaches you how to scope and execute a paid (yes, you should be paid for this work) discovery period for new clients. You’ll learn how to get buy-in, structure discovery projects, frame further phases, and build ongoing partnerships. You’ll walk away ready to communicate project needs and constraints more clearly, and you will be more confident in the plans and budgets you present to prospects and clients.

What is discovery work, and why is it key for marketing agencies?

Discovery work started in agile software development and UX so teams could understand and define a project before jumping head-first into development. The purpose of this work was to:

Address uncertainty
Support cross-functional collaboration
Explore iteratively
Validate or disprove assumptions
Define a clear roadmap

Five years ago at Kick Point, we had an inkling that we were not approaching digital marketing and website design proposals in a sustainable way. We either put together proposals based totally on best guesses of what a client would need (and then had to make big pivots down the road), or we would do unpaid exploratory work before putting the proposal together. That free exploratory work took valuable time and energy.

We first started experimenting with a paid discovery phase after one of our team members enrolled in digital project management training through the project management consultancy Louder Than Ten.

Louder Than Ten championed the idea that discovery should not be a phase within an already fully budgeted and scoped project. It should be a completely separate project with its own budget, accounting for the expertise and effort that goes into uncovering complex problems and determining the right path forward.

For us, discovery for marketing and website projects came from a desire to dedicate time to exploring and understanding before committing to executing certain tactics or agreeing to rigid budget constraints. Of course, we’ve always had time to figure out what our prospects need; we just hadn’t historically been compensated for that time.

Without discovery work, agencies jump right into prescribing and executing before researching and planning. This leads to unclear expectations and misunderstandings about the project scope, causing significant issues and ultimately compromising the potential of the relationship.

If you’ve been feeling some of this, your typical lead process might look like the following:

Take a call with a potential new lead.
Request access to all relevant accounts (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console (GSC), Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, their website backend, etc.).
Look through previous strategy documents and reports.
Make assumptions about what the client needs and put together a proposal based on that OR.
Recommend the client follow a set package based on work you’ve done for other clients.

Sound familiar?

Here are some of the problems we’ve come across with this approach:

You might create a proposal that is too open and run into issues where the client expects more than you’ve budgeted for. In this case, you’ll either have to ask for more budget (hard) or undervalue your work (hard).
You might create a proposal that is too strict, and the scope doesn’t allow you to change tactics as you get to know the client and their business better.
You might find that those improperly scoped projects are taking more time than you’re being paid for, which means you’re losing money, potential new clients are suffering, and timelines for other existing clients are suffering.
If you try to fit every potential new client into a set package, you might find that you’re not moving the needle because you’re focusing on the wrong things for their specific situation and losing their trust by the day.
You’re in a situation where you’ve become an “order-taker,” where instead of building and executing a well-researched strategy, you’re just doing what clients have decided is right at any given moment.

What a mess!

Guesswork is not honest, fulfilling, or sustainable. The flip side is that doing research and developing plans for free is spec work and devalues our industry’s expertise. Paid discovery work leads to strong, lucrative marketing partnerships, happy teams, and, importantly, happy clients. It will improve the reputation of the marketing industry as a whole.

What happens during discovery?

That depends on your expertise and area of focus as a marketing agency.

At Kick Point, we specialize in PPC, SEO, Analytics, and Web Design and Development. Our Discoveries always include an expert from each area. If we know that we won’t be looking at a specific area (e.g. a client already has an agency handling PPC), we don’t include someone from that area. However, there is still a lot of value in our team having a holistic view of a client’s entire marketing ecosystem. So, we still request that they provide access to all accounts if they are comfortable.

We also ask questions. Lots of questions. Here are a few examples of questions that will help you get to the heart of what is important to your client and what makes their business unique:

Which KPIs/metrics would you be evaluated against when it comes to a performance review? (What will demonstrate to your leadership that you’re doing a great job?)
Imagine three ideal clients/customers. Write a 100-word bio for each.
What are some things you’ve tried in the past in terms of marketing (or seen tried) that you felt failed or didn’t have the impact you expected?

Once we have access to their accounts, each team member on the project digs into their own specialized area:

Our SEO team members run website crawls to look for glaring technical or on-page SEO issues, review the site architecture, examine the client’s GSC to see how they are performing in search, review any existing keyword research, and spend time in a keyword research tool to get a sense of the keyword landscape.

Our Ads team members review the client’s existing PPC accounts, including Google Ads and any social ads accounts. They look at how the campaigns are structured, how they are performing, and whether there are any obvious issues like high click-through rates (CTR) but low conversions, etc. They review important landing pages to see if CRO best practices are being followed or if ad copy matches the messaging on the page.

Our Analytics team members dig into Google Analytics 4 accounts and Google Tag Manager accounts to see their existing setup, looking for any obvious issues and determining whether there are small tweaks that need to be made or if a major overhaul will be needed to make it possible to track the metrics that the client needs to make good business decisions.

Our design and development team members review the site from a UX perspective, determining if there are major issues around speed, usability, visual hierarchy, etc.

Our team notes what we’re seeing and then develops an initial plan of attack to make the biggest impact for the client. For example, instead of conducting a huge content audit that will take weeks, our SEO team may already see that service pages need serious help, and we should start there.

How long should discovery projects last?

The correct length will depend on the scope of the discovery and the areas of expertise your agency is focused on. At Kick Point, after a client has answered our discovery questions, our involved team members meet on Zoom or a Slack Huddle to do their deep dives and talk through any issues and ideas that come up. While this discussion is happening, a document is being prepared to summarize everyone’s recommendations, red flags, and time/budget needs.

Sometimes, during this team meeting, a few more questions will pop up, and we send those to our client right away. Once those additional questions are answered, we finalize the Discovery Review Document and send that off to a client to digest before meeting with them to walk through our findings. After that, we send off a Phase 2 proposal. All up, this process can take as little time as 7-10 days. Website discoveries are often much more in-depth and typically take our team 3-4 weeks to complete.

How do you sell discovery projects?

The first step to selling discovery projects successfully is to truly believe that they are necessary. You must commit to insisting on them. As soon as you say, “We usually do discovery projects, but in this case, maybe…” you are unlikely to be able to sell a discovery project. Instead, try, “All of our projects begin with a discovery project.” There is no other option!

You wouldn’t expect a home builder to build a new house without blueprints. And you wouldn’t expect to get totally custom blueprints from an architect for free.

Remembering that discovery projects are not just good for you as the agency, but they are better for the client also helps. Clients will get better outcomes working with an agency that is committed to doing the right thing and not just what they’re assuming is the right thing—or, worse, that they have time for because they didn’t quote enough. Paying their agency fairly results in the right amount of time and effort being spent on problem-solving and well-thought-through implementations, which leads to more leads, sales, and engagement. It is a proactive, long-term approach.

Not every business or every marketing lead you pitch discovery to will get it. That’s okay. They don’t need to get it. Those that do will be the clients that you do great work with for years to come.

How much should a discovery project cost?

We’ve experimented a lot with this over the years!

Our first discovery proposal was sent (and accepted!) in September 2019. It was beefy and not so much a discovery as a “let’s fix the blatant issues before getting into a monthly management situation.” We priced it at $7,000.

Our first 15 discovery projects were very in-depth and took up to a month to complete because we included some research and strategy work as part of discovery at the start. The average price was $6,700, and our close rate was about 44%.

At the end of 2020, we changed things up so that all of our marketing discovery projects were structured to be very efficient and economical. Up until 2023, our projects were priced at an average of $2,690 only, and our team could usually do one from start to finish in a single afternoon! Our close rate at that time was 60%. 50% of those projects turned into further long-term marketing work, and 11% into large custom website projects.

From 2023 until now, we have taken on fewer projects overall as we’ve invested time into our marketing training platform, KP Playbook, and we’ve focused on growing and strengthening our existing partnerships (many of which started with discovery!). We have been selective in taking on new marketing discoveries and are now at an average of $4,920 a project. Our custom website discoveries now average $19,000 a project.

It’s important to note here that our website discovery projects cover the “planning” portion of a website project (keyword research, site architecture, wireframes, etc.) with the aim of being able to accurately quote on design and development, so they are much more robust than our marketing discoveries, which we’ve mostly discussed in this article.

We are continuing to experiment with the scope and scale of discovery projects, but one thing remains the same: the discovery project itself is not a set package. Have a massive site with user logins, hundreds of pages, a complex lead to CRM integration, and three subdomains you’d like us to look at? That’s going to be more work to dive into than a small business with a homepage, contact page and three service pages, and no Google Analytics or Ads accounts.

What happens after discovery projects?

Ideally, after completing a discovery, you have a Phase 2 proposal ready to share with the client, with recommendations clearly mapped to the goals they’ve shared with you.

What that looks like depends on what you’ve found during discovery. That’s the whole point!

For some clients, that might mean a research-based project to set a good foundation and then a couple of months of training so they can manage and grow their marketing efforts from there. For others, it might mean setting up a monthly ongoing relationship with a set number of tasks that you’ll complete each month from the roadmap you’ve created.

For us, not every discovery project turns into a long-term partnership, and that’s a good thing. We are not the right long-term fit for every client we do a discovery project with, but they will always walk away with a clear direction of where they should go next if it is not with us. In many cases, the answer from discovery was to provide training to a team so they could execute recommendations in-house.

Regardless of what comes next, you can feel confident that you’ve done your due diligence before making those recommendations. You also have set up a relationship with a client where you are paid fairly for your efforts from day one, have set the expectation that good work doesn’t just happen without research, and that learning and changing course is a natural part of the process.

Local SEO for Real Estate

Wes Martin — Thu, 09 May 2024 10:35:15 +0000

Real estate is fundamentally local, which is why developing a strong grasp of local SEO is so imperative.

This guide offers tailored strategies for professionals who want to perform SEO for real estate companies. It focuses on optimizing listings, enhancing online presence, and driving targeted traffic to your client’s real estate business.

What even is local SEO anyway?

Local SEO for real estate is aimed at boosting your company’s visibility on search engines like Google, specifically for potential buyers and sellers in your area.

This strategy increases your company’s search engine rankings, enhancing your online discoverability to local traffic. In the competitive real estate market, where establishing local connections is crucial, effective local SEO tactics are essential for standing out.

While we’ll mainly focus on Google due to its widespread use, the concepts behind local SEO for real estate ensure your services are found by the right local audience, regardless of their starting point in the search process.

As you can see below, there are more than a few different ways people are using search to find something specific. Local SEO is your opportunity to rank for each and every one of these different variations and get yourself in front of the right people, whether they want a luxury condo in Miami or a two-bedroom house in Scranton.

Gone are the days of relying solely on billboard ads, newspaper ads, and cold calls.

As a marketing professional, you’re tasked with ensuring property seekers find your client’s offerings before those of your competitors. Tailoring your SEO tactics to the real estate market demands a comprehensive grasp of local consumer behavior and search trends.

You’ll first want to initiate this process by analyzing local search queries related to real estate in the area where your client is located. These can be queries like the ones shown above or maybe broader, with people just looking for realtors themselves.

The next part of the puzzle is the optimization of an online presence across various platforms, ensuring high visibility. Ultimately, the goal is to position your client’s real estate business as the top choice for local searches in their area.

Why focus on local SEO for real estate when there are so many other marketing things to do?

High visibility in local search results directly correlates with increased property inquiries, so much so that the National Association of Realtors reported that a staggering 97% of homeowners used the internet in the search for a new home.

Having a robust online presence today is simply a necessity.

It’s about making your real estate business the go-to source in your community, leveraging targeted keywords, and optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs and interests of the local market.

In doing so, you’re not just improving your search rankings; you’re building trust and establishing a strong local brand that resonates with potential clients right in your backyard.

Why do real estate companies need to look at local and not just do traditional SEO?

What’s different for local compared to traditional search is that it’s not just a focus on a website. An e-commerce company likely just wants to rank its website, but a real estate company or an individual real estate agent is likely going to be competing for spots in the local pack.

The Local Pack is the section at the top of a search that Google deems as local. It lists several businesses and places them on a map. It lists these businesses using its Google Business Profile (GBP), and technically you can rank one of these without even having a website.

This means that real estate companies need to focus on optimizing for the local pack and the local organic results.

Real Estate SEO Basics

The fundamentals of real estate SEO can be complex and overwhelming, but they don’t need to.

Here’s where I would begin:

Perform an Audit

While local searches don’t necessarily need a website to rank, there’s a good chance that a professional realtor is going to use a website as the core of their marketing.

Understanding your website’s current performance is crucial before planning any SEO enhancements. An SEO audit reveals high-performing pages and areas needing refinement, offering a clear snapshot of your digital footprint. While audits require effort, they provide a critical baseline to measure future progress and develop an effective strategy for growth.

These tasks aren’t specific to real estate. They’re about making sure your website offers the best experience possible.

Consider the following key aspects during your audit to identify improvement opportunities:

Site Structure: Evaluate your XML sitemap, robots.txt files, and any redirect issues.
Page Elements: Review titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt tags, and URL structures.
Content Quality: Assess content organization, keyword usage, link integration, and visual content, and check for duplications or canonical issues.
Link Health: Analyze both inbound and outbound links, the quality of internal linking, and identify any broken links.
User Experience: Ensure the site is accessible, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading.

Enhancements in these areas can lead to significant gains in organic traffic. Utilize tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to pinpoint pages requiring attention and identify fixable issues. These platforms also offer valuable resources like PageSpeed Insights.

The best part? These tools are free, and you can glean a tremendous amount of data to work with.

Don’t get too caught up in competing audit software and tools. There’s a time and a place for them, but the tools mentioned above will get you where you need to go.

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Conduct In-depth Keyword Research

Effective keyword research forms the backbone of any successful local SEO campaign in the real estate domain.

Focus on identifying long-tail keywords that potential buyers or renters frequently use in their searches. Analyze search volume and competition levels to prioritize the keywords most likely to bring results.

Sure, ranking for the term ‘realtor’ sounds like a great idea on paper. But there’s a good chance that’ll be incredibly difficult to achieve. You’ll be playing against big sites like realtor.com and a few others. This is where those long-tail keywords can come into play.

Tip! Understanding the local lingo and incorporating it into your keyword strategy can set your client apart.

For example, consider including nicknames for the neighborhoods or local events/activities. A lot of this information can be found through your client directly, or on platforms like Reddit.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner can be a free and a powerful place to start.

In any form of SEO, understanding search intent is key. It typically falls into four categories:

Informational: Very common in real estate. Whether someone is looking for advice on getting a mortgage, understanding home inspection processes, or exploring neighborhood guides, they’re seeking information. These terms are more likely to display traditional organic search engine results pages (SERPs) or localized versions of those.
Navigational: This occurs when a prospective buyer or seller knows which real estate agency or property listing site they want to visit but uses Google to get there quickly. These are likely to be branded in some way. They could be people searching for a specific type of property on a real estate aggregation site or for a property with a realtor they’ve already heard of.
Transactional: The moment a buyer decides they’re ready to contact an agent, schedule a viewing, or even make an offer online. They’ve moved beyond browsing to taking concrete steps toward a purchase.
Commercial Investigation: Potential clients in this stage are almost ready to make a decision but are comparing different properties, agents, or mortgage options. They’re seeking the best fit for their needs before committing. This could be terms like ‘two-bed apartments in [location]’. With a conversion journey as long as house buying, this may not be as immediately transactional as some types of business where people are searching for a specific product.

Catering content to match these intents can significantly boost a real estate website’s effectiveness in attracting and converting potential clients.

By identifying key phrases, such as “real estate in [location]” or “homes for sale in [location],” professionals can tailor their online content to match these specific searches. The use of modifiers and variations on these keywords allows for a broader reach, capturing a wider audience with slightly different search habits.

Some other searches, without a modifier, may still be localized by Google. For instance, an informational search of ‘Do I need a survey to get a mortgage’ performed in Dallas, Texas, provides answers from a number of local real estate sites.

This strategic approach ensures that your client’s listings and content resonate directly with the search intent of buyers and sellers, significantly enhancing visibility and engagement.

When doing your keyword research, also try tools like Google Trends to get a feel for how the local real estate market is doing.

Competitive Analysis

Understanding the competition is key to standing out in the real estate market. With a thorough analysis of other real estate websites and their SEO strategies, you can uncover ways to set your client’s listings apart and carve out a unique position in the market.

Seeing a competitor’s listing at the top for a specific keyword is a signal that they’re doing something effectively. Google’s preference for that realtor’s content over others is a clear indication of what works.

It’s your task to decipher the successful elements of that top-ranking content, replicate those strategies, and then go a step further to outshine the competition. Performing a Google Business Profile Audit can give you a great view of where your competitors are beating you.

Make a Plan and Stick to It

After conducting thorough keyword research and sizing up the competition, it’s crucial to develop a targeted strategy for your client’s real estate business.

This plan should not only aim to boost your client’s online visibility but also ensure your client’s brand’s unique character and values shine through.

SEO isn’t just about climbing the rankings or increasing site traffic; it’s also about how your client’s brand is presented online.

Even if your client’s listings don’t top the search results, a compelling, visually appealing online profile can attract potential buyers or sellers to click on your client’s site first. The goal is to make the real estate business the most clickable, regardless of its position in search results.

The Local Pack: A Prime Real Estate Spot

The Local Pack’s prominence in localized search results has been game-changing since it was introduced.

The Local Pack refers to the block of business listings that appears above the traditional organic search results on Google when users perform a local search query, such as “real estate agents near me.” These listings are formed of Google Business Profiles, so you must have one to be considered.

This feature displays a map alongside a concise list of businesses, including key information like the business name, ratings, and contact details.

Securing a spot in the Local Pack means:

Enhanced Visibility: The Local Pack occupies a prominent position on the search results page, often appearing before any organic site links. This prime placement ensures your business catches the eye of potential clients first.
Increased Trust: Listings in the Local Pack come with ratings and reviews, which can help build trust with prospective buyers or sellers before they even visit your website.
Local Relevance: The Local Pack focuses on businesses within the searcher’s vicinity, making it an invaluable tool for real estate professionals looking to target clients in specific local markets.

Organic Search Results: The Long Game

Beneath the Local Pack, traditional organic search results provide results based on Google’s algorithmic determination of relevance to the user’s query. These results are purely based on websites. For real estate SEO, appearing in these organic results is essential for several reasons:

Sustained Traffic: While the Local Pack drives immediate visibility, strong organic rankings can deliver consistent traffic over time, as they’re based on the quality and relevance of your content.
Authority Building: High rankings in organic search results signal to potential clients that your site is a credible source of information, helping to establish your authority in the real estate market.
Comprehensive Coverage: Organic results allow for greater depth of information, enabling real estate professionals to attract clients at various stages of the buyer or seller journey, from initial research to ready-to-transact individuals.

The most effective local SEO strategy for real estate combines efforts to appear both in the Local Pack and in organic search results.

This dual approach ensures maximum visibility across different types of search queries and user intents.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

With your real estate SEO strategy in place, it’s time to focus on local SEO activities that promise swift and significant outcomes. Central to this effort is optimizing your client’s Google Business Profile (GBP) , a critical asset for boosting visibility online. The example below shows you what a real estate company’s GBP can look like.

A well-maintained Google Business Profile is essential for real estate professionals, often serving as the first point of contact with potential real estate customers, sometimes even before they visit your client’s website. This profile not only improves your searchability but can also enhance your visibility early on, especially if your client’s website is still gaining traction in search rankings.

If you haven’t claimed or set up a Google Business Profile for your client’s real estate business yet, prioritize this step immediately. Opt for verification methods that are quick and reliable, such as via phone call or using a business video (I’d recommend avoiding postal verification due to its lengthy process).

Google Business Profile Tips

Update the Business Information: Ensure every detail on the profile is comprehensive and accurate, including the business name, address, phone number, and website link. Consistency across the profile helps Google verify the legitimacy of the business, improving the overall search visibility. Incorporate relevant keywords into the business description to draw in potential clients, but keep the narrative clear and engaging for real people.
Select Appropriate Categories: Choose Google Business Profile categories that accurately describe the real estate services you offer, such as “real estate agency” or “property listings,” to improve how potential clients find you during their specific searches.
Incorporate High-quality Images: Visual appeal is crucial. Upload professional photographs of available properties, your client’s team, and successful transactions to make the profile stand out. These images not only attract attention but also reassure clients about the quality of your client’s services.
Post Regularly: Utilize the GBP posts feature to share the latest updates, property listings, and industry news. Keeping the profile active with fresh posts and images demonstrates to potential clients that the business is dynamic and engaged with the market.
Cultivate Reviews: Encouraging satisfied clients to leave positive reviews can significantly boost the profile’s effectiveness. Not only do these reviews provide valuable feedback, but they also improve search rankings, showcasing the business’s reputation and reliability.

Something you may need to consider in real estate is practitioner listings. Real estate is an industry that Google allows to have individual practitioner listings. This means an individual can set up their own GBP. It’s generally advised for these practitioners to use their home address if they are comfortable doing so. Otherwise, they’ll likely just get filtered out at best, or at worst, they’ll compete with your main business’s listing.

This can be a tricky tactic to get the best out of, so make sure you look into managing practitioner listings properly.

Local Links for Real Estate Local SEO

Links have long been important for Google’s algorithms. When you’re trying to rank locally, it’s worth remembering that links from relevant local sites hold a lot more weight.

These links, from respected community sites, local news outlets, or industry associations, act as strong signals to search engines, affirming your business’s relevance and authority within a specific geographical area.

An effective tip for acquiring local links is to engage with your community by participating in local events, sponsoring local teams, or collaborating with local bloggers for guest posts.

These activities not only strengthen your community presence but also increase your chances of earning valuable local backlinks.

Actionable insights include regularly monitoring local media for opportunities to contribute expert opinions on real estate matters or offering insightful market analysis, which can lead to natural backlink opportunities.

Google’s Local Service Ads

Google’s Local Service ads are a pay-per-lead advertising platform that positions your client’s real estate services at the very top of search results, directly in front of potential clients.

By placing your services at the top of search results, these ads significantly increase your visibility and the likelihood of generating high-quality leads.

Unlike traditional pay-per-click advertising, you pay for leads, not clicks, making it a cost-effective solution for targeted marketing.

If You Have Multiple Locations…

If your real estate company operates in more than just one location, there are a few things you’ll need to consider.

My first piece of advice would be to set up a Google Business Profile for each location as an absolute minimum. However, while every circumstance is different, you don’t necessarily need to create a new website for each location, especially if the additional locations are in the surrounding cities.

In this situation, you could simply create local landing pages that detail your knowledge of the area and the listings you have available there, and potentially supply information on your physical location and the team there.

As you can see in the example below, Perna has created a location page for multiple cities and communities. Each of these has a short overview of the area, some key statistics, the live real estate listings, and then more in-depth area information that a buyer may find useful.

If your client has locations in different States or Provinces, creating an additional website for those would be helpful.

There are more on location pages later in this guide.

What You Need to Know About Local Citations

Local citations play a crucial role in enhancing the online presence of a real estate business, acting as a signal of credibility to search engines. Ensure each listing of the business across directories is consistent, with accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information to boost local search rankings.

Regularly auditing and updating your citations can prevent discrepancies that might harm your SEO efforts. Encourage reviews on these citation sites to increase engagement and provide social proof of your client’s business’s reliability.

Building citations not only increases visibility but also reinforces authority in the real estate market, making it easier for potential clients to find and trust your client’s services.

Not every platform will be relevant to your client, so be discerning when necessary. The link below provides an extensive list of directories for real estate agents.

Generating and Managing Reviews

Encouraging clients to leave positive reviews is vital for bolstering your real estate client’s online reputation. Each glowing review is a testament to the quality and reliability of your client’s services.

Actively respond to all positive or negative reviews to show engagement and commitment to client satisfaction. This is a huge part of review management.

Develop a streamlined process for requesting reviews from clients post-transaction. Make sure you ask everyone, regardless of how smooth the buying process went. It will quickly become obvious to review platforms if you only ask people who have a good experience, and this kind of “review gating” is strictly against many review platform guidelines.

Leverage social media and email campaigns as platforms to remind clients about leaving feedback. Monitor review platforms regularly to address any concerns promptly.

The key to this process is consistency. Once you find a process for curating and managing reviews, stick to it.

Positive online reviews can dramatically improve your client’s SEO standings, making this a crucial part of your strategy.

Creating Compelling and Valuable Content

Creating content that resonates with both buyers and sellers requires a deep understanding of their needs, preferences, and the challenges they face in the real estate market. Focus on developing blog posts, infographics, and videos that offer practical advice, market insights, and property highlights to engage your client’s audience effectively.

But don’t worry if some of those formats are out of your reach. If all you can produce, for now, is a bunch of well-researched and authoritative blogs, that’s ok. Video, for instance, could come later. Creating content of real quantity will be much more beneficial than doing it at scale poorly.

Tailor your content strategy to address common questions from buyers and sellers, such as tips for first-time homebuyers or how to stage a home for sale, providing real value. Leverage local market data to create reports or analysis pieces that position you as the go-to expert in your client’s area.

Tip: Utilize Google’s PPA (People Also Ask) search results type for potential blog ideas about real questions that people are asking. This is a good step to take in your keyword research.

Craft your content with a human-centric approach, incorporating several hundred words with integrated targeted keywords, ensuring readability and relevance. High-quality content remains the pinnacle of what search engines value most in ranking websites.

Don’t Forget About E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trustworthiness)

For real estate professionals, showcasing a deep knowledge of the market, years of successful transactions, and authoritative insights on property trends is important.

Demonstrating expertise through detailed neighborhood guides, experience via success stories, authority through market analysis, and trustworthiness with transparent client testimonials can significantly enhance a website’s E-E-A-T.

This, in turn, not only aligns with Google’s guidelines for high-quality content but also builds confidence among potential buyers and sellers, making it a pivotal strategy in the competitive landscape of real estate SEO.

Learn from What’s Working

Analyzing the content strategies of successful competing real estate professionals can provide invaluable insights into what resonates with your target audience.

By observing which topics, formats, and SEO tactics are yielding results for them, you can identify gaps in your strategy and areas for enhancement. Learning from competitors’ successes allows you to refine your approach, adopting proven methods to improve engagement and visibility.

Ultimately, this analysis is a shortcut to discovering effective practices in real estate marketing, enabling you to adapt and innovate based on solid, real-world data.

Content Clusters and Pillar Pages

The strategy I employ is using content clusters and pillar pages.

A pillar page serves as the foundation, covering a broad topic related to real estate, such as “Home Buying Guide” or “Selling Your Property.” It provides a comprehensive overview of the subject, offering value to readers while leaving room for more in-depth exploration.

Content clusters, on the other hand, consist of specific, related articles or pages that delve into subtopics of the main theme outlined in the pillar page.

For example, within a “Home Buying Guide” pillar page, content clusters could include articles on “Financing Your Home Purchase,” “Understanding Home Inspections,” or “Navigating Closing Costs.”

These subtopics link back to the pillar page and vice versa, creating a tightly interlinked structure. This setup helps search engines understand the relationship between the pillar page and its clusters, boosting the authority of the site on the topic and improving its search rankings.

For a more thorough exploration of the method, please refer to this forum post/video about creating content clusters and pillar pages from Real Estate Webmasters’ CEO, Morgan Carey. The video might be just under an hour, but it’s worth every second of your time.

Refreshing Content

Refreshing content is an important tactic in SEO. It’s easy to fall into the trap of making new content for the sake of it. If you’ve already got plenty of content, though, it’s often worth taking some time to review it and see whether it’s as helpful as it can be.

This ensures your client’s website stays relevant to current market trends and search engine algorithms, ultimately attracting more potential buyers and sellers.

Plus, oftentimes, refreshing is a faster process than starting a blog from scratch.

Content Refresh Checklist

Audit Existing Content: Begin by reviewing your site’s existing real estate content, identifying outdated pieces lacking engagement or no longer reflecting current market conditions. You can then decide whether it’s worth updating or even removing old pieces. Perhaps you made a guide four years ago that goes deep into what living in a specific area is like. Well, in that time, multiple businesses opened or closed, the school won some awards, and maybe the crime rate changed.
Keyword Research: Perform updated keyword research to capture the latest trends in real estate searches, focusing on what potential clients are currently looking for in your client’s area.
Competitor Analysis: Examine content from competing real estate websites to identify gaps in your content strategy and opportunities for improvement. Using the example of the area guide again, you can look at what your competitors have done and spot any areas you missed. Maybe they had a run-down of the best places to get coffee, you could add that into yours, too.
Update Market Data: Ensure all statistics, listings, market trends, and property prices are up-to-date and reflect the current real estate market.
Enhance User Experience: Make your content more engaging and user-friendly by considering layout and readability and incorporating new, high-quality images or virtual tours of properties.
SEO Optimization: Update SEO elements like meta titles, descriptions, and headings with current keywords, and ensure your content structure is optimized for search engines.
Refresh Internal Links: Add links to newer content or important pages on your client’s site to keep users engaged and distribute page authority throughout it. Also, check to see whether you’re linking to the piece you’re updating from other pages on your site.
Promote Updated Content: Share your refreshed content through social media, email newsletters, and other channels to drive traffic and signal to search engines that your client’s site is active.
Monitor Performance: Use analytics tools to track how the refreshed content performs, adjusting your strategy based on user engagement, traffic, and conversion rates.

Following this process not only improves your client’s website’s SEO performance but also ensures your real estate content remains a valuable resource for clients navigating the housing market.

Crafting Unique and Helpful Location Pages for Each Property

Creating distinct location pages for each area where you have listings is a strategic move to capture local search traffic. These pages should include specific details about the neighborhood, schools, and nearby amenities to boost SEO and user engagement.

You’re essentially painting a picture for potential homeowners about the area they want to move to. Don’t embellish, but highlight all of the reasons why someone should move to the page you’re writing about. You’re also showing Google that you really understand the area and the needs of prospective buyers there.

When I’m writing these pages, I typically focus on splitting my headings into:

Describing the area in great detail.
The specific types of homes typically for sale in the area and the demographics typically found in the local community.
A collection of entertainment and amenities that the area offers. Just remember, the more local restaurants and shops you include in this list, although helpful, require more upkeep long-term to ensure you’re not linking to closed businesses.
A list of common FAQs that potential homeowners would ask. However, please note that Google has downgraded the importance of FAQs and How-Tos, along with their respective schema recently.

Tailor each page’s meta titles and descriptions to include local search terms. This targeted approach makes your client’s listings more discoverable to those searching for properties in specific locations.

Don’t Sleep on Technical SEO

Focusing on these technical aspects will help your client’s real estate website rank higher, attract more local traffic, and convert more leads. Other than local business schema, these changes are more general SEO best practices rather than something specific to local.

A few tasks for you to consider are:

Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure your client’s site looks great and functions seamlessly on mobile devices, as more searches are performed on mobile than on desktop.
Page Speed Optimization: Speed is key. Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix slow-loading elements to keep both users and search engines happy.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate: Implement HTTPS to secure your client’s site. It’s important not only for user trust but also for Google’s ranking. Google likes safe sites.
Clean URL Structure: Use readable, keyword-rich URLs. Keep them short and sweet, and avoid unnecessary parameters or numbers.
Schema Markup for Local SEO: Implement local business schema to enhance visibility in local searches. This includes adding structured data for your client’s address, phone number, business hours, and more.
Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Include relevant keywords and make them compelling to boost click-through rates from search engine results pages.
Image Optimization: Compress images to speed up load times and use descriptive file names and alt tags to improve accessibility and relevance.
Internal Linking Structure: Create a logical internal linking strategy to help search engines and users navigate your client’s site. Use relevant anchor text for these links.
Duplicate Content: Avoid duplicate content issues by using canonical tags when necessary and ensuring each page offers unique value.
XML Sitemaps and Robots.txt: Submit an up-to-date XML sitemap to search engines to help them crawl and index your client’s site efficiently. Use robots.txt to control what parts of your client’s site search engines can access.
404 Error Management: Monitor and fix any broken links or pages to improve user experience and maintain site authority.

11 SEO “Tactics” to Avoid

Some of what you will read below used to be common practice but not in today’s marketplace. Be mindful to avoid these additional malpractices, which can harm your client’s website’s ranking and credibility.

Cloaking: Showing different content to search engines than to users, a deceptive practice that can lead to severe penalties.
Using Doorway Pages: Creating low-quality pages designed solely to rank well in search results and funnel users to a different page. In real estate, these may well be your location pages. Make sure those add real value and aren’t just full of overly optimized headers with no real information.
Sneaky Redirects: This deceptive practice redirects visitors to a different URL than the one they initially clicked on.
Hidden Text: Including text on a page that’s the same color as the background, positioned off-screen, behind an image, or deliberately concealed in any manner to incorporate more keywords should be avoided.
Article Spinning: Rewriting existing content with slight variations to create “new” content, often resulting in low-quality or nonsensical text.
Overusing Anchor Text: Aggressively using exact-match anchor text for internal or inbound links can appear manipulative to search engines.
Scraping Content: Copying content from other websites without adding value can result in duplicate content issues and may lead to legal challenges.
Keyword Stuffing: This involves overusing your target keyword or keywords to the point of redundancy.
Link Buying: Rather than naturally earning backlinks, this tactic involves purchasing them, which is frowned upon.
Automatically Generated Content: Using software to generate content without human review often leads to poor quality and irrelevant, sometimes inaccurate content.
Excessive Reciprocal Links: Exchanging links with other sites purely for the sake of cross-linking, without genuine relevance or value to users.

Focusing on creating high-quality, relevant content and following ethical SEO practices is the best strategy for long-term success in search engine rankings.

Let’s Wrap This Up

Fundamentally, real estate SEO doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach. It involves experimenting with various tactics to discover what elevates your listings and enhances your online presence. Every real estate business is unique, with diverse goals and benchmarks for measuring SEO success.

Communication is key—aim to set realistic expectations and then strive to exceed them. Real estate professionals may not be SEO experts, and it’s your role to demonstrate the tangible benefits of your SEO strategies. Through clear examples and results, you can illuminate the value SEO brings to their business.

How to Add or Claim Your Best of the Web Listing

Rada Daktina — Wed, 15 May 2024 09:49:27 +0000

Whether you’re a small local business or a global enterprise, having a strong online presence can significantly impact your visibility, credibility, and, ultimately, your bottom line. One effective way to boost your online presence is by leveraging directories, and one of the most reputable and influential directories out there is Best of the Web (BOTW). In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the process of adding or claiming your Best of the Web listing, helping you harness the full potential of this valuable resource for your business.

How to Add a Listing

1. Go to https://botw.org/

2. Click either ‘Get Listed Today’ in the top right corner or the ‘Add Your Listing Today’ button in the center of the screen:

3. Fill in the required details to create the account. Make sure to agree to the T&Cs and to check the captcha box:

4. Next, verify your email address (this can also be done later in the process) by clicking the verification link that will be emailed to you.

5. Now, search for your business to see whether it is listed on the site. Type the name of your business, and you will see suitable options/suggestions appear in the drop-down menu. If your business is listed there, click to select it. If none of these are correct matches – click the yellow ‘None of these are correct’ button:

6. If you select your business from the options shown, you will see a new page where some fields are auto-populated with information the site holds about your business. If you click the yellow button – you will be redirected to the same page, but it will be blank, so you will need to add basic NAP data for your business:

7. For the next step, fill in your business categories, services, and business description:

8. After that, select a suitable Botw.org listing plan. You will see three options with a detailed price description and what it covers. The chosen plan can be paid either monthly or annually.

There is also a free option; however, if you choose that – your listing will not display the link to your website. To select that, you need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click the ‘No thanks!’ message:

9. You will get another pop-up with the discount offer. You can either accept that or click the message below:

10. The final stage is phone verification. You have the choice of receiving a phone call or text message – switch the toggle to select the preferred option, then enter the code you will receive to the field on your screen:

11. If you are having issues with verifications, you can contact the site’s support for help by clicking the ‘Contact us’ message on the verification page.

12. Now, you can go back to the main dashboard, where you can manage existing listings, add more new listings, and manage reviews and payments:

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How to Claim an Existing Listing

1. Go to https://botw.org/ and search for your business.

2. The available listing will have an ‘Unclaimed’ badge:

3. Click on the listing or the ‘View Profile’ button.

4. Click ‘Claim now’:

5. If you are not signed in to your account, you must log in. If you have been logged in from the start – you will be redirected to the dashboard page, where you will be presented with several verification options: call, text message, email, postcard, or by reaching out to the support team:

6. Select the preferred method and follow the instructions on the screen.

7. If you do not see the claim option, contact the site’s support team and request assistance.

Using a Service

If all that seems a bit much, you can use a citation building service like BrightLocal. Citation Builder lets you build all the listings you need to improve your online visibility. Create a custom campaign and get listed where you want to get listed, including Best of the Web and hundreds of other sites. Save valuable time and let BrightLocal do all the hard work for you.

How to Add or Claim Your Just Landed Listing

Rada Daktina — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:58:14 +0000

Just Landed is a well-known and long-running site designed to help people move to new countries. It contains a variety of resources aimed at assisting people who are taking their first steps into a new area. These include country guides, job boards, and even a thriving expatriate community.

A key element of Just Landed is its directory, which is an extensive directory aimed at helping people find businesses that will be useful to them when they move. The global directory is an important listing for many businesses to claim and, in this guide, we’re going to talk you through how you can do just that.

Just Landed is useful whether you’re simply building local citations or just want to get found by new customers.

Before you get started

An official business email is mandatory for all submissions to this directory:
The email domain must match the domain of the official business website, so Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. emails will not be accepted.
One location only is allowed per email address.
If you have multiple branches to list under the same email, it’s best to contact the site’s support, as an additional fee/subscription may be required.
Start the process with account creation.
Just Landed’s moderators only approve listings submitted from verified accounts. In addition, account verification links expire very quickly, so it’s best to complete this step first, especially if you do not plan to complete the whole submission process immediately.

Account Creation and verification

Go to https://www.justlanded.com/ and click “Sign Up” at the top right corner of the page.
Add your email and preferred password and click “Sign Up.” Make sure you check the box to confirm you accept the terms and conditions:

Note: “Sign up with Google” will only work if your Google account is created using your business email address, not Gmail.
You will now see your main dashboard with a message saying you need to verify your account.
Head to your email inbox and find the email from Just Landed.
Click the “Verify Now” button or copy the link and paste it into your browser:
All done! Now, you can proceed with adding your listing.

Adding a New Listing

Go to https://www.justlanded.com/ and log in using your credentials.
Select your country and state using the top left menu.
Now, there are two options you can use:
1. Click on “List a Company” on the main screen:
2. Then click “Get listed Now” that you will see on the screen:
3. Select “Directory” from the top menu and click the “List a company” button on the top right.
Fill in the details required to create the business account and indicate whether this is an account for an individual, company, or other under the “Account type” drop-down:

Note: If the email address that you used for registration does not match the business website domain, you will see the following message and won’t be able to proceed further:

In this case, select “Change email” from the menu on the left to update your details:
When you set up your business account, go to the directory or click “List a company” again and add your business details, then once done. Click post:
That’s it—you’re done! You will see the message confirming that it requires the moderator’s review. Once it has been reviewed, you should receive a notification that the listing has gone live.

What to do if the listing already exists

If you see your business listed on justlanded.com but don’t have logins (or have never created one), contact the site’s support.

As we already know, all listings are linked to the business email that matches the website domain. That means someone within the business created the existing record. The site’s support team may ask you to prove your relationship to the business and then help you gain access to the listing.

Pitching Local: How to Create Better Local SEO Proposals

Patricija Šobak — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 08:14:51 +0000

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter four of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

Picture this: you’re walking home from the store, grocery bags in hand, thinking about what you’re going to put on the TV when you arrive. Then, you notice it. Across the street, there’s a huge sign screaming, “Now open.”

Another gym in your neighborhood? The gears in your head start turning as you pick up your pace. You are now on a mission to help businesses in your community thrive online. As an expert, you know local SEO is the answer, and your agency is after more clients. Now, you only have to convince them.

Pitching Checklist

Research your potential client’s business, industry, target audience, and main competitors.
Audit the current state of your potential client’s local SEO, website, and online listings.
Identify opportunities for local SEO improvement.
Set realistic expectations.
Send a personalized local SEO proposal.

How to Find Prospects

Finding opportunities while walking down the street is great, but you can’t always rely on accidents to find new prospects. What you can rely on are specialized tools that help you identify and pitch to potential clients. Tools like BrightLocal help you see which local businesses could benefit from better SEO and create a convincing pitch.

Local Search Grid

Once you’ve picked your target area, go to Local Search Grid to discover businesses that could use local SEO improvements. Since we’re looking at local gyms, put in a few common keywords a gym would use and generate a report. What you’ll see is a visual representation of rankings by keyword for the location you’ve chosen.

Besides giving you a quick overview of local business rankings, this visual can help you pitch your local SEO services. Your prospect might not understand the ins and outs of SEO like you do. But seeing what their local search rankings look like in a grid compared to similar local businesses is a great starting point for convincing them.

Local Rank Tracker

Once you’ve found a local business you want to pitch to, you’ll want to see how well their website is doing in the entire city. For this, run a report through Local Rank Tracker to take a look at your prospect’s average ranking position and keyword movement.

Additionally, you can add your potential client’s competitors to this report to get a comparison and identify gaps. This lets you tailor your approach when reaching out to prospects and helps them visualize the state of their online visibility.

Citation Tracker

Last but not least, BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker is a useful tool for citation building. You get an overview of inconsistent and missing online listings, and all you need to do is explain to your prospective client why this is a problem.

Besides seeing opportunities, BrightLocal also shows you the citation value and authority. That way, you can pinpoint high-potential listings and give your prospects a fully transparent game plan.

What is a local SEO proposal?

A local SEO proposal is a document outlining your plan to improve a business’s online visibility within a specific geographic location. It serves as a roadmap for implementing tailored SEO strategies to boost a company’s presence in local search results.

When done right, a local SEO proposal tells the client exactly how and when they can expect better results. What’s more, it needs to show the client why better search results benefit their business.

That said, like any other proposal, your local SEO proposal should be clear, concise, and to the point. Here’s what to include and how to present your services in a manner your clients understand.

Try a free SEO Proposal Template

Better Proposals has put together a local SEO pitching template. Just follow this link for a completely customizable local SEO proposal template.

Find the Template

What to Include in Your Local SEO Proposal

Before you start crafting a local SEO proposal, there’s a lot of research you’ll need to do. You want to show the client that their online presence could use improvement and that you’re the right person for the job.

Naturally, you’ll include detailed keyword research and list all the technical SEO issues. You’ll talk about their domain authority, on-page optimization, and missing meta descriptions, right? Wrong.

While all the technical information is crucial for you to create a local SEO strategy, your clients only care about the benefits. They’ll either scroll past your detailed reports or ignore your proposal altogether.

An effective proposal is always short and simple. If a potential client needs a crash course in search engine optimization to understand it, they won’t sign.

1. Start With a Convincing Executive Summary

Research shows that the executive summary and pricing are two of the most read sections in all business proposals. Since it’s the first thing your potential client will read, you need to make it short and convincing.

A great executive summary shows the client two things: you understand their problem, and you know how to solve it. This part of your local SEO proposal should be all about the client and the solution. To get potential clients hooked right off the bat and write an effective SEO proposal, you need to include:

Your understanding of the client’s pain points (e.g., not enough leads and how it impacts their business)
Your solution and how it will help your client reach their business goals
Reassurance that you are the right choice for the job

What this looks like in practice depends on the type of business your potential client is running. For the sake of giving an example, let’s say you were pitching to the local gym mentioned earlier. In this case, your executive summary could look something like this:

Become Union Square’s go-to local gym

At [gym name], you’re not just about hitting the treadmill or lifting weights. You’re about empowering your neighbors to lead healthier, happier lives.

However, to make these goals a reality, you first need to connect with the members of your community. Handing out flyers and relying on word of mouth only gets you so far. To expand your reach and let more people get to know your business, you need a strong online presence.

Currently, you’re the first fitness choice on your block, which is proof of the quality of service you offer. Unfortunately, people living only two blocks away won’t be able to find you through major search engines.

Together, we could strengthen your online presence, amplify your message, and inspire even more people to join you on the journey to health and wellness. Our local SEO strategy laid out in this proposal aims to showcase the offerings and warm atmosphere that make [gym name] unique. Read on to see how our services can help in making [gym name] the ultimate fitness choice in Union Square.

2. Outline the Local SEO Strategy

Now that your potential client is interested in your SEO services, it’s time to bring on the details of your offer. You want your prospect to understand how your solutions work.

For example, if you’re offering to improve their Google Business Profile, include why it’s important. If you think they would benefit from keyword optimization across their website, let them know what end results to expect.

The basic idea is to be as detailed as possible. That way, both you and your client have this section to refer to in case you come to a disagreement in the future.

Note that the most important thing here is to keep things in plain English. Stay away from industry jargon because it will only confuse your client.

3. Set a Realistic Timeline

Besides knowing what you plan on doing and why, your clients are also interested in how long it will take. Keep in mind that this is your project timeline, not the time it will take for the SEO changes to kick in.

Let’s say that your project includes content creation. Your project timeline should then display how long it will take to create the content, not how long it will take the content to perform. Similarly, you can present Google Business Profile management as an ongoing service with a set amount of hours per month.

While this section of your local SEO proposal is all about being as specific as possible, you can also use it to your advantage. Giving yourself more time to deliver means you have more time to fix unexpected problems.

And, if none of those appear, then you’re finishing earlier than promised and impressing your client. It’s a win-win situation.

Presenting Your Strategy and Timescales

The SEO strategy you came up with and the timeframe in which you will execute it don’t need to be two separate sections in your proposal. Instead, you can outline the SEO strategy in a few separate steps that each have their own timeline.

Some agencies have strict onboarding processes in place, to help make it easier and more transparent, and sharing that alongside the projected roadmap is a good idea. It’s worth highlighting that all of the auditing hasn’t been done at this stage, and that the work done for your proposal is simply scratching the surface.

For example, laying out the first few weeks or months could look something like this:

Step 1: Keyword research

Timeline: 1 week

We will have a call to help us understand the products and services you offer on a deeper level than right now. We’ll then produce an action list and break it down into months. This plan will be structured to get you results as fast as possible.

Step 2: Quick wins

Timeline: 2-4 weeks

Your website has been online for [time], which means you’re already naturally ranking for a few keywords here and there. Initially, our job is to do a set of quick fixes so you can see results coming in.

You don’t currently have a Google Business Profile, which is also something we’ll set you up with. Besides helping you look more professional, this will also make you visible on Google Maps and show your business to potential customers in your area in Google Search.

Step 3: The ultimate plan

Timeline: 2-6 months

The end game is becoming the ultimate fitness choice in Union Square. Getting on this level of lead generation is simply to be everywhere.

Whatever combination of words people type in—boom, you’re there. Whichever online listing they’re looking at, [gym name] is mentioned. Now, this isn’t easy and it takes time, but giving you that extra boost in leads will go a long way towards taking over your local space in Google.

4. Include Testimonials or a Case Study

Every time you send a business proposal, what you’re really doing is asking a potential client to spend money. Naturally, they’ll want proof you can deliver on your promises before they invest in your solution.

Your local SEO proposal should always have social proof because there’s no better way of getting a new client on board than other happy clients. This could be testimonials, a written case study, video case studies, or screenshots. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it does need to get the point across.

A strong local SEO case study can be a powerful tool to help you convert new clients, especially if you can show success doing the tasks you’re pitching or in the industry the client sits in.

5. Make Your Pricing Easy to Understand

Your pricing section is the worst place to confuse potential clients. Even if the rest of your local SEO proposal is perfect, getting the pricing wrong is a surefire way to lose the deal.

The first thing you have to do is make your pricing clear and transparent. Whether you’re charging a project fee, an ongoing rate, or by the hour, you need to make that clear to the client.

If you use a combination of different pricing strategies, make sure that it’s clear from your pricing table. Itemize your services and include descriptions in everyday language so your client knows what they’re paying for.

Another thing to look out for is how you try to upsell. While modern, like Better Proposals, comes with interactive pricing tables that let you add options, don’t go overboard. A business proposal is a matter of getting a yes or a no from a potential client. The more options you add, the harder it gets to say yes.

6. Tell Potential Clients What the Next Steps Are

Don’t forget to let potential clients know how to move forward with your local SEO proposal. What do they need to do to accept? Do they email you, call you, sign the proposal digitally?

Whatever it is, include a small section to let them know instead of having to figure it out. It makes you easier to buy from and creates a better customer experience.

This section doesn’t have to be complex or particularly well-worded. A numbered list with clear instructions will do. For example:

To proceed with our local SEO services, please sign by typing your name into the box below.
Upon signing, you’ll be taken to a payment screen for our 30% advance fee.
Once we’ve received your payment, we’ll get in touch to arrange an initial consultation call.
At this point, we will also share any onboarding documentation we need you to complete.

7. Don’t Forget the Terms and Conditions

If you’re using digital signature software, definitely include your terms and conditions. That way, once the client has signed your local SEO proposal, they’ve also signed a contract. Besides getting all your bases covered, this also eliminates the need for a separate contract signing.

Bonus tip: Give Them a Guarantee

A guarantee is a great way to get new clients on board fast. To make your local SEO proposal even more tempting, consider adding one to your pricing section.

While a money-back guarantee might be the first thing to come to mind, you can also guarantee additional services. For example, you could offer additional ads if the ones included in your initial proposal don’t result in an X number of new customers for your client.

7 Tips for Better Pitches

When putting together your next local SEO proposal, keep the following tips in mind for better pitches:

Personalize your approach by addressing the prospect’s specific challenges.
Clearly outline the scope of work and measurable goals.
Showcase past successes or case studies to demonstrate your expertise.
Provide transparent pricing and timelines.
Follow up with prospects after sending the proposal to answer any questions or concerns.
Create a proposal template or find a free template online so you don’t have to create a proposal from scratch every time.
Stay away from industry jargon. The less prospective clients understand, the less likely they are to move forward with a project.

Final Thoughts

Creating a successful local SEO proposal is not just about showcasing your skills. It’s about understanding the unique needs of each potential client.

Local SEO tools, like BrightLocal, can help you gather powerful data that helps you create proposals addressing specific pain points. Get clients hooked with a persuasive intro, present clear deliverables, and stay away from industry jargon.

And if you want to increase your chances of winning new business even more, include a guarantee. Showing that you put that level of trust in your services only makes clients want to sign on faster.

Multi-location Review Management: How to Manage Business Reviews at Scale

Leighanne Rayome — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:21:34 +0000

It’s widely recognized that overseeing reviews for a single business can pose challenges. However, if your client or business encompasses multiple locations or even hundreds of them, managing reviews becomes significantly more demanding. The sheer volume of reviews, time constraints, and consistency with responses and management practices are enough to trigger premature hair loss.

Thankfully, with the right tools and strategy, your client or business can work towards streamlining their review management across multiple locations, and hair loss can be prolonged for at least another few years. Let’s get into it!

Why are reviews critical?

The benefit of reviews lies in their ability to influence consumer decisions. Reviews build trust, enhance a business’s reputation, and play an essential role in attracting customers. Nearly 80% of people read online reviews and consider them as valuable as a referral from a close friend or family member.

Customer reviews are also a ranking factor within the Local Pack.

What is different about managing reviews at this sort of scale?

Several factors come into play with multi-location review management, which can vary depending on the locations your business may have.

Let’s say you monitor reviews for Cafe Mexicali in Colorado. They have five physical locations between Fort Collins and Boulder, five Google Business Profile listings, and profiles on sites like Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor.

The volume of reviews across different platforms will be less, making monitoring and responding to individual reviews much more manageable, but you may need to allocate staff time and budget for software services.
You may still be able to have one person oversee all review management, and this approach can help them maintain consistency in tone of voice.
The impact on the overall brand related to negative reviews is less likely to be affected at the same level as a business with many locations.
Coordinating review management for five locations will be less complex, but each platform may still have its own management interface and requirements.

Now, let’s say you manage reviews for F45 Training. As of 2023, F45 had almost 650 locations around the US, meaning 650 Google Business Profile listings, Facebook profiles, Yelp, and Tripadvisor listings.

Ensuring consistency across all locations can be particularly challenging, especially if each location has a different customer base or operational practice. Not all locations will have the same local regulations, market conditions, or customer preferences.
Managing reviews for 100s of locations requires extensive resources, including staff time and budget, and will require a dedicated staff member or even a team.
Each location may have unique challenges or issues that require a much more tailored response. This can directly feed into maintaining a prompt response time, and there can be missed opportunities for engagement or resolutions.

Who manages your reviews?

If your client or business has a multi-location SEO strategy, this likely means they are a business with multiple locations spread across a large area or a corporate office with many franchise locations underneath them.

It’s essential to understand the two main models for review management.

Model 1: A Corporate Team Manages Reviews

This model refers to a marketing or customer service team managing reviews across multiple platforms or channels for all locations. Your client or business retains control over communications and branding while benefiting from streamlined data tracking through central management.

However, a potential drawback is that the business may lack visibility into the unique happenings at individual locations. Delays in response time may occur if location managers take time to communicate with the marketing or service team, especially when handling issues such as negative reviews.

For particularly large businesses with hundreds of locations, there’s also a chance this could be done region-by-region.

Model 2: Individual Locations Manage Their Own Reviews

The next model is to have individual locations manage their reviews. Within the franchise model, individual locations often have greater autonomy in shaping their marketing strategies and customer service approaches.

While they may need to adhere to strategy guidelines provided by the corporate office, they can promptly view and respond to reviews. Reviews can also be considered feedback, and a manager can make quick changes to address issues at their specific location.

The downside to having individual locations manage their reviews is the risk of brand dilution. Instances where certain locations underperform could detract from the overall brand image, especially if they stand out negatively amidst others performing well.

Do you have a multi-location review management process?

You need a standardized process for managing reviews. It ensures consistency across all locations and channels, fostering brand identity and trust with their customers. It establishes clear roles and responsibilities within your team and ensures that reviews are managed effectively and important issues are addressed quickly.

A standard process also helps save time and resources, allowing teams to focus on other marketing and customer service areas. It helps a business grow and expand when a framework that won’t sacrifice quality or consistency is in place.

An example of a standardized process could look like this:

Utilizing a review monitoring tool and platform to see reviews from various channels like Google Business Profile and Yelp in one place.
Categorizing reviews and prioritizing those based on urgency.
Collecting and analyzing data to identify trends or recurring issues.
Developing a clear protocol for responding to reviews, including timelines, tone of voice, and escalation procedures.
Create templates to maintain brand consistency.
Providing training and support to location managers on how to best respond to reviews and address customer concerns.
Establishing KPIs to track the performance of review management efforts and regularly reviewing these numbers to identify areas of effectiveness.

Where do you get reviews?

The most common review sites are Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Trustpilot. If your client or business has listings on all these, you will want to ensure it manages and monitors reviews on each platform.

Each of these platforms has a number of notification settings you can take advantage of. However, doing this at scale can get overwhelming, so consider the best way to centralize and speed up your approach.

Google Reviews

Gathering all location listings under one account or location group is helpful for handling reviews for multiple locations on Google Business Profile. This makes management smoother and ensures consistency, which is especially valuable for businesses with locations across different states or countries.

It is best practice to respond to all the reviews for each location as quickly as possible, and having all locations under one location group helps to streamline the process. However, continually managing and responding to reviews can be a heavy lift, which is where a tool like BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager can be extremely helpful.

Build a 5-star Reputation

Collect, monitor, and respond to reviews with ease

Get Started with Reputation Manager _{14-day Free Trial}

Responding promptly to complaints is crucial, and with just a couple of clicks, you can address Google reviews directly from your dashboard without any hassle.

Facebook Reviews

Facebook has 2.9 billion active users, with 2 out of 3 visiting local business pages at least once a week, making it an important platform for managing reviews and building a strong online presence.

When someone leaves a review on Facebook, you’ll get a notification you can click on to go to the review. To have a business account, you’ll need to have a personal Facebook account attached to it. For a small business, this may be the business owner. For a bigger business, it could be your community manager, customer support, or a whole team.

Yelp Reviews

Yelp is a great review platform for local businesses, with nearly 50% of customers likely to look at Yelp before reaching out to a business. When managing reviews, ensuring your client or business checks its Yelp inbox is a good habit so they promptly respond to any messages or requests. They can also turn on email notifications to ensure they’ll be alerted when someone sends them a message or leaves a review.

Tripadvisor Reviews

Tripadvisor is one of the biggest review platforms, with over 1 billion reviews left by travelers to date. Your client or business can easily see reviews left by past customers within the “Respond to Reviews” section of the Yelp Management Center page.

Similar to Yelp, your review manager(s) can turn on notifications within their profile to get notified of when someone leaves a review, making it simple to respond to feedback quickly.

Trustpilot Reviews

Trustpilot has several tools to help you reply to and filter customer reviews. Navigating the services reviews page can be done by going to Trustpilot Business > Manage reviews > Service reviews > Inbox.

From here, you can see any of the reviews left by customers over the last 28 days. They are conveniently filtered by star rating, which makes it easy to prioritize which should be responded to first.

How to Get More Reviews for Multiple Locations

Getting reviews for your business is straightforward; you provide a top-tier product, service, or support, and customers will be racing to share their experience in the form of a shiny and new online review… right?

If only it were all that simple. Unfortunately, many people won’t leave a review unless they are prompted to or they have had a negative experience.

Obtaining reviews across multiple locations can be difficult, but they are significant, especially for local SEO! With automation tools and software, your client or business can send follow-up emails after purchases or service completion, nudging customers to share their thoughts and experiences.

They can send text messages to customers’ phones and include prompts in marketing materials or receipts. Additionally, you can include a banner on your website or pin a post on social media to encourage customers to leave a review. This can help ensure that customers know how much their feedback is appreciated.

Use customer feedback to turn potential setbacks into future opportunities. Your client or business can enhance customer experience by addressing training issues with their employees, utilizing technology to adapt internal processes, and creating new products or services to better meet their needs. This will create happier customers and better reviews for the business.

How to Monitor Reviews at More Than One Location

Monitoring online reviews can be done manually and with software, so it is good to know which your client or business may prefer based on their specific goals and budget.

If the business is concerned with budget, a more manual approach may be what they need, and that’s perfectly okay. This can require more time and effort, but it’s not impossible. A manual approach would require periodically checking review platforms and reading through reviews to identify new customer feedback or comments.

You can also use a spreadsheet or other document to track reviews at specific locations and actions taken in response to those reviews. While this is a less convenient option, it is still possible to establish a multi-location review management strategy that benefits the business and supports its goals.

These manual approaches are where many businesses will start, but as things scale up, they can become incredibly unwieldy to manage.

Using Tools to Monitor Reviews

Specific software can help businesses collect reviews across locations all in one place, making review management more streamlined. Tools like BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager can collate all of your reviews on all your review platforms and for all your locations into a single dashboard.

These tools also offer you the ability to add templated replies, helping you maintain brand consistency when you have many people managing review responses.

Remember, many other kinds of software and tools have different capabilities and functionalities, and some even use AI, so be sure to research and determine the best fit for your needs before you commit to anything.

Harnessing the Power of Efficient Review Management

Handling reviews on a large scale may seem overwhelming, but with the right tools and a carefully crafted strategy, you can create a review management system custom to your specific business needs. Implementing a new process requires time, so it’s crucial to approach review management with a patient mindset, knowing that success will unfold with the support of the right team and an occasional snack break.

Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs with Georgia Rei, Mr Duct Cleaner

Jamie Pitman — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 08:00:28 +0000

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes at franchises and enterprise businesses?

Want to learn how to navigate corporate and become a preferred vendor?

Or are you just itching to understand what drives the hard-working (often surprisingly small) teams at the heart of franchise management?

In Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs, a series of video interviews in partnership with Steady Demand, Ben Fisher takes to the mic to ask a guest about managing local search (and everything else besides) at scale within the USA’s biggest franchises.

These are the unsung heroes, the boots on the ground keeping everything moving. You won’t find flash-in-the-pan strategies or the latest fads in marketing—just inspiring stories about the people who really make things happen in the franchise and enterprise world.

In this episode, Ben speaks with Georgia Rei, ‘Queen’ of the Mr Duct Cleaner leadership team. Mr Duct Cleaner is a growing US franchise specializing in air duct cleaning, HVAC, and mold removal.

Watch to learn:

The sorts of spammy tactics that will get you nowhere when approaching a franchisor
The importance of understanding emotions and crafting effective messages in marketing
The best ways to contact a franchisor (and what to avoid)
The importance of referrals when it comes to winning new business
and much more!

About Georgia Rei

Queen at Mr Duct Cleaner

Georgia is the ‘Queen’ of Mr Duct Cleaner (watch the episode to find out why!). Georgia’s background is in economics, family business, finance, and leadership development. She is experienced in strategic planning and team development. She successfully ran the first SBA loan diaper service and grew it into a commercial laundry operation. She taught economics, investment, finance, money and banking, sales, and marketing at several colleges and Universities.

Watch the Video

Liked this video? Join us over on BrightLocal’s YouTube channel and subscribe today to be first in line when the next episode drops!

Want more Ben Fisher? Check out his original series of articles on enterprise local SEO, Local Search at Scale, which covers everything from dealing with decision-makers to understanding where budgets are most impactful.

Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs with David Raymond, Premium Service Brands

Jamie Pitman — Thu, 30 May 2024 08:00:28 +0000

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes at franchises and enterprise businesses?

Want to learn how to navigate corporate and become a preferred vendor?

Or are you just itching to understand what drives the hard-working (often surprisingly small) teams at the heart of franchise management?

In this episode, Ben speaks with Premium Service Brands‘ David Raymond, an experienced Chief Operations Officer more than familiar with the highs and lows of franchise management and marketing.

Watch to learn:

The mindset of a franchisee, and how understanding this can help you work with them
How to learn your franchisees’ unique challenges and needs
The power of active listening in vendor relationships
Top tips that potential vendors need to know when speaking to potential franchisor clients
How to use data to back up the value of local search marketing
How to leverage technology to ensure scalability and exponential growth
and much more!

About David Raymond

Chief Operations Officer at Premium Service Brands

David Raymond currently owns a ProLift Garage Doors franchise and just finished up a 5-year term as the Chief Operations Officer at Premium Service Brands. Prior to his time at Premium Service Brands, David served as a Franchise Business Consultant with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving where he cut his teeth in franchising.

David’s experience running a large, multi-state garage door company headquartered in Florida was incredibly valuable to the home service-based franchisors and the franchisees he worked with and supported. However, David attributes most of his leadership lessons to the United States Marine Corps, where he served two separate enlistments as an M1A1 Tank Crewman and Commander.

Watch the Video

Liked this video? Join us over on BrightLocal’s YouTube channel and subscribe today to be first in line when the next episode drops!