Older, but still relevant Video:
(approximate transcription of 2nd video below)
What You Can Do To Help With Your Dallas Local SEO
For Local businesses, understanding Google's
Local Business Listings or Google My Business pages (GMBs) is crucial to making money with Google's local search results.
Furthermore, understanding the truth behind Google Maps Ranking Checkers is very important to understanding the battlefield that your business stands on.
In one of the above videos, I give examples. One example is about Dallas plumbers. So, you’re searching for a Dallas plumber and you're looking at the local listings.
What you can do to help with your local SEO and what kind of options do you have and just give you an overview of what's possible. What I can do for you in this area? The local listings are these, when you see the little bubbles here and when these popups.
These are local listings. These are not local listings, these are called organic listings and we have more local listings down in here. Usually, there's a little link at the bottom of these local listings that show more local listings but for some reason, there isn't now. Sometimes they're testing different features turning it on and off for something to happen. Let me go ahead and click one of these and let's look at potentially, why it's ranking or just some thoughts on what their processes like.
A lot of people, just change to have to do this now. A lot of people don't have this filled out and this is very easy to go and claim it or hire someone to claim it. It's not really expensive to set it up properly. You got a picture here and you can go to a bunch of pictures. We have more pictures here, it's important to fill this out and give your categories and link to your website. Those are all important things and then putting a description here that has a short phrase that people look for, is important as well.
Online Reviews
It is really important to get reviews and what people type in the reviews is important as well, because they work as local SEO for you. By typing Dallas plumbing, that's helping them. Dallas plumbing does not help if there's a name of a company which is Dallas plumbing and Google knows plumbing and plumber, those are very close, makes a big difference. Images, you can also put a video up here, but I think for wall and transition with how they Google it, the video won't show up but it helps to add them.
It's weird, I don't exactly know why it does that, why they let you upload, and then they won't show them. There's another thing called citations, essentially it's like your business name, address, and phone number, elsewhere on the web. We're also on the web, its exact information is highlighted here. The more places, the more citations you have, a sort of like a laid back to your business but there's no link.
It's just information and Google goes and it seems that your business is a reference in a bunch of different places. That helps as well with the ranking of your local listings page. You don't have to have a ton of reviews but you just have to have some reviews. That makes a big difference not only because Google likes to see reviews and there are texts in there. If we go back to here, it always has reviews.
One of these didn't have any reviews at all, and it's much as like it'd be clipped on and Google wants to please it, searchers. So in order to be clipped on, you can need the reviews. Let's check up on this people. This is not a good rating in it. I personally use them and wasn't happy about my experience. They have a ton of reviews. They're probably ranking because they're a big company and they've probably hired some of SEO.
They don't have Dallas here. They don't have a plumber here either but all these reviews are helping and naturally, they have a bunch of citations. They don't even have photos. They're probably just ranking naturally because they're just a big company. Let's just type in, Baker Brothers Dallas Plumbing.
There's also Yelp, this is a local listing and this is important for you to go and claim, and also it gives you your business' citations. It helps with Google plus and it helps with other reasons so this is also a part of local SEO. Yahoo, that's also important. Insider's pages, Angie's list kind of counts, Dallas City Search, these are all good things to get your local listings for that helps your local SEO.
Are Customers Searching For Your Services Online?
If you know your customers are searching for your services online and if you go into the search for those services and you see for some reason it doesn't show up here, do a different, couple of diversion and you'll see these bubbles here then you'll probably need at least a little help with the local SEO at least to see if it's worth it. Sometimes, it is very difficult to get in here but sometimes it's easier. It really depends on the situation.
Feel free to give me a call if you think you need a local SEO in Dallas. Again, my name is David Hood. I'm the Dallas SEO Geek. Thanks for watching.