Local SEO Tutorial - The Ultimate Guide To Ranking Locally

Summary

In this comprehensive local SEO tutorial, Ron from Osborne Digital outlines a step-by-step strategy for local businesses to improve their online presence and Google rankings. He emphasizes the importance of optimizing the Google Business Profile, enhancing website SEO, conducting competitor analysis, and building a robust backlink profile. Ron provides practical tips for keyword research, content creation, and leveraging tools like Semrush and Google's own suite for tracking and optimizing performance. The tutorial is designed to help businesses understand the critical drivers of local SEO and how to execute an effective strategy to outrank competitors.

Takeaways

• 📝 Follow a Local SEO Checklist to guide your optimization process.
• 🔍 Review and optimize your Google Business Profile, including categories, services, and reviews.
• 🌟 Focus on building up the number and quality of reviews on your Google Business Profile to improve credibility.
• 📊 Use tools like Semrush and Local Falcon for website audits and grid searches to assess your online presence.
• 🔗 Increase the number of high-quality backlinks to boost your website's authority and search engine ranking.
• 📈 Analyze竞争对手的在线策略 to identify areas for improvement in your own SEO approach.
• 🎯 Target specific local keywords that are relevant to your business and have a good search volume.
• 📝 Create unique, keyword-optimized content for your website to attract backlinks and improve rankings.
• 🏆 Aim to match or exceed the number of citations and backlinks of your top-performing competitors.
• 🚀 Implement on-page SEO strategies, including schema markup, to help search engines understand your business's offerings.
• 📅 Plan and track your SEO efforts over at least six months to see significant results.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the local SEO tutorial?

The main focus of the local SEO tutorial is to provide a step-by-step guide on how to improve a local business's online presence and ranking in Google search results, particularly for businesses trying to rank higher in their local area.

What is the importance of a Google Business Profile in local SEO?

A Google Business Profile is crucial in local SEO as it helps businesses appear in Google Maps and local search results. It should be optimized with appropriate categories, accurate business information, and engaging content to improve visibility and credibility among local customers.

How does the number of reviews on a Google Business Profile impact local SEO?

The number of reviews on a Google Business Profile can significantly impact local SEO. More reviews, especially positive ones, can enhance a business's reputation and trustworthiness, leading to higher rankings in local search results. However, a lack of recent reviews can negatively affect performance.

What are the critical drivers of local SEO mentioned in the tutorial?

The critical drivers of local SEO mentioned in the tutorial include optimizing the Google Business Profile, assessing the website for SEO friendliness, analyzing competitors, planning a content strategy, and building backlinks and citations.

How can a local business assess its competition in terms of SEO?

A local business can assess its competition by reviewing competitors' Google Business Profiles, analyzing their website content and structure, checking their backlink profiles, and comparing citation counts. Tools like SEMrush and Local Falcon can aid in this analysis.

What is the significance of having a mobile-optimized website for local SEO?

Having a mobile-optimized website is essential for local SEO because most local searches are conducted on mobile devices. A mobile-friendly site ensures a better user experience, which can lead to higher rankings as Google considers page speed and user experience as ranking factors.

What is the role of schema markup in local SEO?

Schema markup is a form of microdata that helps search engines understand and display the content of a webpage more effectively in SERPs. For local businesses, it can enhance the visibility of business information like name, address, phone number, and reviews, improving click-through rates and overall SEO performance.

Why is it important to have a content plan for local SEO?

A content plan is important for local SEO because it guides the creation of relevant, location-specific content that can attract and engage the target audience. High-quality, locally-focused content can improve a website's relevance and authority, leading to better search rankings.

How does the tutorial suggest improving a website's backlink profile for local SEO?

The tutorial suggests analyzing competitors' backlink profiles to identify high-quality, relevant sources. It emphasizes creating valuable content that can attract natural backlinks and focusing on building relationships with local businesses, industry blogs, and other relevant online entities to earn backlinks.

What is the recommended approach to building citations for local SEO?

The recommended approach to building citations for local SEO involves listing the business on relevant online directories, local search engines, and review sites. It's important to ensure that the business information is consistent and accurate across all citations to build credibility and improve local search visibility.

How long does it typically take to see positive results from local SEO efforts?

The tutorial suggests that local SEO is a long-term process, and it typically takes at least six months of consistent effort to see positive results. However, some improvements may be noticeable within the first month, depending on the initial state of the website and Google Business Profile.

Outlines

00:00

📝 Introduction to Local SEO Tutorial

Ron from Osborne Digital introduces a local SEO tutorial aimed at helping local businesses rank higher in Google. He presents a local SEO checklist and discusses reviewing Google Business profiles, identifying factors affecting business performance, assessing websites and competitors, and planning a strategy for improvement.

05:02

🔍 Reviewing Google Business Profile and Services

The video focuses on the importance of optimizing the Google Business profile, including ensuring the correct primary category, checking the number of reviews, and the services listed. It emphasizes the need for more reviews and detailed service descriptions to avoid vagueness that could negatively impact rankings.

10:03

🌐 Assessing Website Performance with Tools

Ron discusses using tools like Semrush and Local Falcon for a website audit and grid search. He explains how these tools can help identify the website's authority score, organic search traffic, backlinks, and keyword performance, which are crucial for understanding and improving local SEO.

15:05

🔑 Keyword Research and Targeting

The paragraph highlights the process of keyword research using Semrush, focusing on identifying keywords the business is currently ranking for and those it aims to target. It emphasizes the importance of targeting keywords with higher search volumes and better potential for ranking improvement.

20:06

📊 Analyzing Competitor's Google Business Profile

Ron examines the Google Business profile of a top competitor, comparing it to the client's profile. He looks at aspects like review scores, number of reviews, services offered, and photo presence to understand what the competitor is doing well and how it might be affecting their higher ranking.

25:08

🔍 Deep Dive into Competitor Analysis

This section delves deeper into competitor analysis by comparing the client's website and backlink profile with the competitor's. It highlights the importance of understanding the competitor's backlink strategy and how it contributes to their high ranking, emphasizing the need to acquire more high-quality backlinks.

30:09

📈 Creating an SEO Strategy and Optimizing Content

Ron outlines a six-month SEO strategy, starting with optimizing the Google Business profile and website schema in the first month, followed by building citations and backlinks in the subsequent months. He also discusses the importance of creating optimized content around targeted keywords and the role of user experience in SEO.

35:12

🚀 Implementing SEO Changes and Tracking Progress

The final paragraph discusses the implementation of SEO changes, including uploading new optimized content, building citations and backlinks, and the importance of tracking progress with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Ron emphasizes the need for continuous optimization and adapting the strategy based on performance data.

Keywords

💡Local SEO

Local SEO refers to the process of optimizing a local business's online presence to rank higher in search engine results for location-specific queries. In the video, the speaker discusses various strategies for improving local SEO, such as optimizing the Google Business profile and website, building citations and backlinks, and focusing on relevant keywords.

💡Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is a free listing on Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. The video emphasizes the importance of having an optimized Google Business Profile with accurate and complete information, such as business category, services offered, contact details, and reviews.

💡Citations

Citations are mentions of a business's name, address, and phone number (NAP) on external websites or directories. They are important for local SEO because they help search engines verify the business's information and can improve its local search visibility. The video discusses the need to build and maintain a good number of high-quality citations.

💡Backlinks

Backlinks are incoming links to a website from another website. They act as a vote of confidence and can significantly influence a site's search engine rankings. In the context of local SEO, acquiring relevant and authoritative backlinks can enhance a business's online reputation and visibility.

💡Schema Markup

Schema Markup is a form of microdata that helps search engines understand and display relevant information about a website's content in a more structured way. It is particularly useful for local businesses as it can enhance how their business information appears in search results, often with additional features like reviews, photos, and direct contact options.

💡Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis involves evaluating the online presence and strategies of competitors to identify areas where improvements can be made. In local SEO, this includes comparing Google Business profiles, website optimizations, citations, and backlinks to understand what tactics competitors are using to rank higher.

💡Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics introduced by Google that measure the user experience on a website, focusing on loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Good core web vitals are essential for SEO as they contribute to a positive user experience, which can influence search rankings.

💡On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization refers to the process of improving various elements on a web page to make it more search engine friendly. This includes optimizing the content, meta tags, headings, and overall structure to ensure that the page is relevant and valuable to the targeted keywords.

💡SEO Strategy

An SEO strategy is a planned approach to improving a website's visibility in search engine results. It typically involves a combination of technical optimizations, content creation, link building, and other tactics aimed at achieving specific SEO goals over a period of time.

💡Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that helps website owners monitor and troubleshoot their site's presence in Google Search results. It provides insights into search rankings, keyword performance, and how Google's algorithms are affecting the site.

Highlights

Local SEO tutorial designed for local businesses aiming to rank higher in Google.

Introduction to a local SEO checklist available in the video links.

Review of Google Business Profile and its critical role in local SEO.

Assessment of factors contributing to a business's SEO performance.

Case study of a local landscaping business in Miami and its SEO performance.

Importance of having a well-optimized Google Business Profile with appropriate categories and services.

The significance of reviews and the impact of their quantity and recency on SEO.

The role of photos in enhancing a business listing's visibility and appeal.

Utilization of SEMrush and Local Falcon for website audit and grid search.

Importance of backlinks and their impact on a website's authority and trust.

The process of keyword research and targeting for local SEO.

Analysis of core web vitals and their influence on user experience and SEO ranking.

The significance of schema markup for search engines to understand the website's content.

The role of citations in boosting a local business's credibility and visibility.

Competitor analysis for insights into best practices and areas for improvement.

Strategic planning for a six-month SEO campaign focusing on key areas like Google Business Profile optimization, schema installation, content creation, and backlink building.

The importance of tracking and monitoring SEO efforts with Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Transcripts

g'day guys ron here from osborne digital

marketing today i'm going to show you

how to do a local seo tutorial let's

jump straight into it so as you can see

here guys i have a local seo checklist

right behind me this is going to be

available in the links down below okay

so everything that i show you today guys

you have the links up here in the actual

checklist that you're going to need to

perform the local seo that you need to

do

and i'm going to put it in the video so

do not stress about anything we talk

about it's gonna the links are gonna be

there this video specifically designed

for any local business that's trying to

rank higher up in google what we're

going to cover is the main and the

really the critical drivers that are

going to impact your seo

so we're going to have a little bit of a

review of your google business profile

we're going to look at the

factors that could be contributing to

your business not achieving the results

you would like then we're going to run

it through the website we're going to

look at competitors we're going to

assess it all and then we're going to

plan out a strategy for a particular

business so what i've done is i've

looked in my local area i've looked at

the miami area and i'm looking for

landscapers so what i've done is i've

picked out this organization divine

and as you can see

if we have to scroll down a little bit

to get to their organization so they're

right down but as you can see where they

pop up right above my head here

they are ranking almost in the center of

miami so they shouldn't be so far down

the list so that's why i've picked them

and you can follow along in this local

seo tutorial

if it was your business so even if

you're an electrician if you're a

plumber if you're in hvac

it's it's all the same guys it is

exactly the same all you'll need to do

is just follow what we look at now this

isn't going to be a crazy in-depth video

with google business profile that's the

video for another day i'm going to show

you what to do to get the needle moving

and anyone can do that that's why this

video is laid out as it is so let's jump

straight into it okay

so on this checklist i'll give you a

quick little look through it

but ultimately it's got what we need to

do here okay it has a few additional

tabs where we will

enter information about our competitors

about our content plan about what we

intend to do okay this is not overly

complex i've kept it very very simple

anyone's going to be able to walk away

if all you need to know is what a

keyword is a backlink is

guys and if you don't know i'm going to

have those links popping up now you can

watch those videos come back here and

anyone's going to be able to do local

seo after this

okay so

what we want to do is on the

main page of the sheet we want to get

our website okay so let's grab our

website it's divine landscaping services

so we come back over to the checklist

put in the domain this is just going to

make everything a lot easier in the

future so we just have the name you can

put the phone number in here guys if you

want of your own organization just makes

things a little bit easier in the future

so what we do is we start we review the

google business profile okay so we're

going to run a grid search we're going

to look at the reviews we're going to

look at the setup okay so i'm not

affiliated working with or

have anything to do with this website

these guys are just random like i said i

plucked them out because they're in the

located in the center parts of miami

however they're ranking very very low on

the map pack so they should be right up

the top for this keyword

okay so

what we want to do is we want to jump

back over to their listing now on your

listing you're going to go out be able

to go into the back end of it so your

google business profile listing if you

don't have one set it up again link

above if you want to optimize it i'll

make another video on that on how to

optimize your google business profile so

link above

all right so what we're going to do is

we're going to have a look at our

profile so we want to see

what we're doing okay

main things when you're looking at your

business profile you want to make sure

number one that your category is

appropriate so let's say we don't have

necessarily lawn care for this

organization uh

because if that's their main category

well that's yes we do lawn care but it's

not our main category so your main and

primary category that it's classified as

in your google business pro profile

should be the service that you're

offering

okay

and we just want to make sure that

everything's looking correct we want to

check the numbers we want to check the

services that we offer so we want to

make sure that all of the services that

we have listed in our profile they align

with what we actually offer and there's

nothing too vague and distant there so

for instance heavy equipment services

heavy machine

those little things can be the type of

things that knock your listing further

down because they're quite vague if we

scroll up higher it's going to be

landscape design landscaping maintenance

there's only a couple of services around

landscaping there's a and i know on

google business profile because this is

what we do day in day out there's plenty

more landscaping options that we can add

here

so as an example for this local seo

tutorial

you can see that there'd be some things

that perhaps need to be moved around

okay so just having a look at that we

can see and ascertain that these are the

type of problems here and

that's something that could be addressed

to help us

let's have a look at the reviews see how

we're performing with reviews so we have

a total of four reviews with a five star

rating so that's quite good but the

number of reviews are quite low so it's

over a year ago since a review was left

that's quite long to not have reviews so

obviously this individual these this

business's divine would be working with

other

customers they would be engaging with

people they should have more reviews and

again i have another sneaky video on how

to get more reviews from customers so

check that out guys

and we just want to have a look at

photos so photos we can have a look at

the photos we can see that man not

doesn't look and appear to be too many

photos

so it's okay so we've had a look at it

we've ascertained that we only we have a

five-star rating but we've got four

reviews so it's quite low

uh the services perhaps could be

investigated a bit more to discover and

again you can do all this on your back

end guys remember i'm looking in an

outside person i'm not looking in the

back end if i was in the back end i have

a lot more information

but this is where i would be looking and

starting with and i just make sure that

everything aligns as well with our

address with the services and the

locations and the areas that we're

working with so miami should be the main

area that we hit up number one the first

area that you serve

which they might have i can't

necessarily tell because i'm not on

their back end of their google business

profile is critical

so make sure that it's miami

and

what we will do from here is we'll jump

back over over to your listing so to the

checklist so with the checklist guys as

you're going along you have this

performance column right here this is

where you want to put a one to a hundred

and the reason for this will be later

when we're planning out what we're going

to do it's going to help us figure out

what needs to be done so it looked like

things were quite good however we need

more reviews so what we want to do is we

want to say out of a hundred we're

probably performing at maybe around

about a 60 i would give it there's some

things that need to be investigated with

the services so just let me type that

out so this is what you should do okay

so that's pretty much all we need to do

for the point in time

on your back end of your google business

profile i have a video about setting it

all up properly again linked above guys

if you don't have this tied down you

need to make sure that it's tied down

next thing that we're going to do is

we're going to run it through semrush

okay so we want to run it through

semrush and we want to do the grid

search now the grid search is going to

these are both things where we're

assessing the page like with with tools

now these tools you can utilize local

falcon

and the problem is you're going to need

to pay for it you can sign up for bright

local which is free for 14 days and you

get to run one audit so you can jump

over to that

or you can literally reach out to my

agency and we do all of this for free

anyway so just click the link up here

highlighted in blue guys you can click

that link we'll do a free website audit

for you and provide all of this

information anyway

okay so what we're going to do with the

grid and the website audit

is we're going to ascertain what's going

on so what we want to do is we want to

grab this and the reason we do this in

tandem guys is because things take a

little bit of time to load so we just

hit search we enter that into semrush

this is semrush website tool and we

enter the data into here and then we'll

jump over to local falcon and we'll run

a scan okay so this is a grid search so

as you can see here a grid search is is

basically it shows us if i'm an

individual that was standing in this

location right here

what happens if i get out my phone and

i'm looking for a landscaper in miami

and this is the location that i'm in

this would show in number seven so our

listing our landscaper divine would show

in number seven on the google map pack

as you can see here so the center point

is where your business is located and

that's what we're going to see when we

have a look at all of this so we're just

going to go run a scan that's all you

need to do it's very straightforward too

guys with the bright local

if you're

concerned about it like i said just

reach out to us we do it all for you

anyway

so this is why we have everything here

guys you can copy it obviously if you

know your own business name it's not

going to be a challenge but then we look

for the listing and once we find the

listing we're able to

utilize that information and go okay

this is what we're going to be looking

at so we found it here

and we're going to type in we're going

to roll with landscaper so let's so

landscaper let's look at that keyword

that's what we're going to focus on so

let's run a scan

and what's going to happen is like this

picture here guys you're going to see

all these grids more green is better so

if you're ranking number one that means

you're in position number one okay so

we're going to wait for the results

whilst we're waiting for those results

we'll jump back over to our tool over

here

which is semrush and let's check out the

information we have here okay so the

info that this displays is it shows our

authority score so what your authority

score is is it's how strong your website

is how much trust it has you have your

organic search traffic this is estimate

it's a tool that's looking outside in

compared to the other way around and

backlinks so these numbers are quite

important

we can see how the traffic has performed

over the last two years and how many

keywords and how the keywords have

performed sorry

all right so if we have a look further

down we can see this information guys

this is the semrush tool if you don't

want to purchase it which it is i think

it's around about 129 for the cheapest

plan uh you can purchase it if you're

serious about your seo if you're not

serious just hit us up again we provide

all of this information in our free

audits

so

you want to have a look just a quick

overview as you can see things have

started to pick up that's looking pretty

good traffic stayed quite stagnant so

it's peaked and trough but it has just

stayed pretty consistent over the years

over the past two years

so what we want to do now is we want to

come back over to our local seo

checklist and we want to make sure that

we get the grid search and that we

review the website now whilst we're

doing this we want to look at the total

keywords that we are currently that

semrush has identified us for we want to

have a look at the backlinks and we want

to have a look at the total citations

okay

so we want to figure all of this out now

when it comes to local seo there's two

ways of doing it you can try and get

your website to rank higher up in the

serp which is the search engine results

page and you can try and get the

business or google business profile to

show up for the purpose of this we're

trying to tie in the two this is more so

an overview of tying everything in

compared to just focusing on one aspect

because you shouldn't just focus on the

google business profile

you should also focus on the website if

you lift the website up the google

business profile will go alongside so

you need to power up both things

okay so we're going to utilize the

website for this we're not going to do

so much of the grid search we're going

to utilize serp results try and push the

website higher because as the website

goes higher so will our google business

profile okay all right so as we can see

here we have eight backlinks we want to

input this information in total of eight

backlinks

which is not many at all current

keywords there's 19. you can see this

number right here it's 19. so that means

that google is recognizing us for 19

keywords so keyword is just like a

phrase or something like i put in uh

say landscaping you type that into

google that's a keyword and

that's pretty much it for now because

the tools are taking a little while to

load guys i'm just going to jump into

things

uh beforehand

uh as as you can see on our grid search

we're doing really really really poorly

okay

so the grid search is not great we've

we're only ranking in position one we're

ranking in 17 14 16 17 19 and these are

close proximities to us

so that's very very poor performance

and all the way around here here

excuse me all the way around here where

we're on like it's we're past 20 guys

that's really really bad to see this if

you see these results you've got to get

to work on your google business profile

and on your website okay

so

not good so we want to jump back over

now we know that the grid

report has been run rude so that shows

poor performance so i would downgrade

this from 60 i would drop it down to

probably 25 so it's very very poor we're

not getting any ranking from our google

business profile at all so that would

tell me that we need to look into that

and try and give it a little bit of a

boost so that has been completed so just

tick it off guys

the review we've looked at the keywords

and we've looked at the backlinks

for semrush now what we want to do is we

want to go across and do the keyword

research so as you can see over here

keywords we jump into this

now this page here guys this is where

we're going to put our keywords that

we're one ranking for and that we're

trying to target so if you have

something specific in mind let's say it

was landscape and miami

then that's what you could enter in here

you could find out where you're

currently ranking for that position with

a tool like semrush and enter that

information in

for the purpose of this video guys we're

going to keep it simple we're going to

utilize what this individual is ranking

for we're going to grab a couple of

keywords that we would like them to rank

for so when you see a report like this

when you can see that the business name

is up the top that is a good thing

however they're ranking in position 4

and it could be a mistake by the tool

but position four for their uh business

name that's not good

you wanna be ranking number one if

anyone was to search osborne digital

marketing i'm ranking number one and

it's important that you do that

organically if you're not doing that

organically then

chuck some money into ppc it's worth

getting that top position because as you

can see here divine landscaping there's

quite a few enquiries now if you're

ranking if you're not ranking number one

that's a competitor that's in front of

you

they can push you out

okay so it's important you grab that top

spot okay so what we're going to do is

we're going to grab the keyword

landscaping miami

we're going to grab that one

so this is we're currently ranking if

you look over here you can see the

position that we're in and this is the

volume so this is how many people are

searching each month for this particular

keyword

so as you can see here we've got some

results but we're in position 35 we need

to boost those numbers up if you notice

that this sort of correlates with how

our google business profile is

performing we're further down the list

for landscaping so

this is where our website is the two do

go together guys if you want to rank

higher especially in a competitive area

you need to make sure that your websites

speak and span okay

so landscaping miami wouldn't want to

grab that keyword and you literally just

come back over guys and you can paste

the information in and go we're in

position 35.

so that's a keyword that we want to look

at landscaping companies that is also

something 170 so that's something that

we could look at

lawn care services miami there's only 40

searches so it's not that many searches

lawn care miami florida the

720 searches we're ranking in position

57. this is probably a better keyword to

go for because

there's just significantly more searches

it is a little bit more difficult to

rank for however with time we would

improve our performance and actually

rank a bit higher so we would be able to

utilize this keyword and go after it so

lawn care miami florida we're in

position 57. so for the purposes of this

video guys i'm literally just going to

grab these two keywords so this video

isn't like eight hours long

so let's just roll with that

we're looking at these two keywords here

okay so we've

received that information we want to

come back over the checklist and we can

notice that we're not doing too well for

the keywords that we've selected and we

want to target we're doing quite poorly

we're we're past page three it's it's

not great so the performance of our

review of the website we have a low

number of backlinks we don't really have

anything going on

it's not great so i would sit at around

about 20 25 is where i would be there

now the core web vital so google came

out in 2020 and said straight up that

speed is a ranking factor

if your website performs poorly the ux

you know it's it's just not structured

well so it loads very slowly

guys you're gonna get penalized for that

every second over three seconds you lose

around about 22 percent of the visitors

to your site so if you're doing local

seo you need to make sure that users

when they click on your website to

investigate you and your business they

have a enjoyable experience with your

site so what we're going to do

is we're going to run this test so this

is the google web developers tool that

link can be found so here's a local

falcon let's just jump back to that link

it's right here right local link here

semrush link here

google call web vitals test the page

developer tool

it's right here guys everything's right

here for you

very easy so you can check it all out

yourselves

now sometimes unfortunately this does

crash the website so

google's performance tool the test

performance

doesn't perform interesting huh good old

google and it's double standards

uh

let's analyze it let's hope it doesn't

crash it will take a moment

but it might crush my browser just fyi

guys if you're running this test make

sure you don't have anything important

open like i do

and you have it covered and you're

running it somewhere else because it

might crash everything that you have so

it will it's looking like it's it's yeah

there we go awesome so we'll wait for it

to respond because we've got no choice

all right guys we're back uh so yeah it

did crash it took some time to get up

so 69 is not too bad ideally you want to

be up around the 90 if possible however

this is okay okay when you're a local

business it's very important that you

you are optimized well for mobile

devices and that you're not performing

poorly there i'm not going to click in

the desktop because i'm not risking

crashing it again but you can click in

the desktop and that will show you how

the desktop is performing

but i would assume that it's performing

quite well seeing how the mobile

loaded here

focus on mobile guys when you're local

don't you don't need to focus on any

anything else really to be completely

honest it's

that's how people are going to find you

so we just put the results here 69 now

the schema validator so what we want to

do is we want to jump in and see if

there's any schema on this website what

schema is if you don't know there'll be

another link above for a more detailed

video but ultimately it's search engine

language okay think about it like that

it explains to a search engine this is

what you're looking at mr google let me

explain to you about this web page

that's what it is

okay so we want to check if that's on on

the page so

all you'll need to do is copy

your domain and that's why we stick it

here guys because we check it all the

time schema validator this link right

here guys that's going to take you to

this tool

and all you need to do is paste in the

url and hit run test so what's going to

happen is if you have schema it's going

to appear over here if it doesn't it's

going to literally pop up like no items

detected

so what we want to do is we want to

scroll down and let's put an f there

guys because there's no schema okay

schema is very important you want to

have local business schema i've

literally got another video on how to

create it step by step guys that's going

to be linked above as well so you can go

create the schema and get that completed

now citation review so similar to

backlinks so a backlink is some a web

page that links to your page okay

that's what it is it's considered as a

vote of confidence a citation is

pertaining to more so around local

businesses because a citation contains

your name your address and your phone

number those three things okay

so when you have a citation that might

be something like yelp apple maps google

maps these are all considered citations

what they do is they help boost the

credibility of your business because

your business should be in all of these

categories that should be in yellow

pages if it's a legitimate business so

building citations is very very

important what we want to do is we want

to see what we currently have

and then we can determine how the

strength is of our citations so as you

can see here this thing over here guys

is a custom search operator i've made

that you're sticking to your search

engines

so just simply copy this come up the top

let's get rid of the page thing so it

stops crashing our browsers

and

post that in the top now what we do is

we go over we grab our website so let's

just grab the front end of our website

let's grab that

paste it in there like that

and then we come

back over here company name

so it's divine landscaping services

let's copy that

back over here let's have a look

so essentially what this is doing is

we're minusing out the actual website

and we're saying hey look for divine

landscaping services so we're looking

for the name we're telling google i want

to find this name but i don't want this

name to be associated with this website

so we're removing the site so this is

one way that you can search for the

results

organically

now if you want to do it the better way

which is you which is what should be

done you want to have a look at your

citations with this bright local tool so

that's going to actually tell you where

it is how long it's been up for

everything it's going to classify it a

lot easier this is the freeway guys like

i'm trying to show you the freeways

and the non-freeways the best ways of

doing this so as you can see there's

about 45 results

again here's yelp guys next door

level set

all of these types of things are

citations okay

so this is where you can come along and

start to see it all yes this is a

citation from facebook because on our

business page we have all of that

information about our number address

so you can see that there's saying 45

results there which is it's a quite

significant

so that is kind of okay you want to sit

around about the 100 mark they should

realistically every business should try

to have around about 100 so we have 45

of those in total

and let's stick that up here

so we want to try and get that number up

to 100 that's what we're going to do so

citations have been done

now the next step is competitor analysis

we're only going to review one

competitor so you can see what's going

on but this is very very important you

don't want to try and recreate the wheel

when it comes to seo just look at what

google is rewarding if your competitors

number one it's because they're

facilitating all of the needs of google

you unfortunately can't recreate the

wheel and do something different so

let's go back into the landscapers miami

let's come up to the number one listing

let's check out the number one listing

about what they've got going on

so we want to look at remember what we

had going on with our google business

profile and let's see what they've got

going on because our ranking number is

higher so as as an example guys like we

we have five stars they have 4.2

but they do have 26 reviews in total and

the individual underneath has a 5 star

rating and 11 reviews and same again for

third position you want to be in the top

three position guys because that means

you get the map pack when someone

searches for a landscape near me

okay so let's look at number one and and

see what they're doing well

okay so we have a bit of a review of

their google business profile we check

out if they're doing anything different

different services maybe so as you can

see here like i was saying before guys

they have a lot more landscaper

categories like i mentioned before i

knew there was plenty more that we could

be adding perhaps you don't offer them

and that's fine however these guys have

a lot more landscaping services so

google immediately knows oh okay you

guys offer landscaping services so

that's something that you would need to

double check that's what you want to

review so immediately we know okay

it's the services that we've got to look

at

the reviews guys

when it comes to reviews reviews are

very very important so

you know they they're consistently if we

can

this stops jumping around

so we can have a look at the newest

reviews so we can start to figure out

how often they're getting reviews so as

you can see two months three months

seven months eight months eight months

eleven months again

they're not necessarily

great reviews

but it's still activity google will

reward activities sometimes over quality

so it's quite important that you're

nailing that point so we can see there

that their reviews so their services and

their reviews they're just doing a

little bit better than us okay

photos perhaps they have a ton more

photos than us no they don't okay so

it's not photos that's in that's an

issue for us so what we want to do is we

want to jump back over here and this is

where you can see down here competitors

click on that tab guys you just want to

start

entering a bit of information i don't

know why this one's so zoomed in

but if you just scroll over here for

your google business just put the google

business what you found what you feel

like is different compared to your

profile

so

they had

fresh reviews

they had additional services that were

tied to landscaping so

what

escaping

services

so these were things but they didn't

have less pictures so you wouldn't

really need to comment about that but

they're things that we've just quickly

observed okay

now what we want to do is we want to

throw them

into the competitor analysis okay so we

want to see how they're performing

overall

so we come back over to semrush we go

back to the domain overview

and we want to grab their website so

something that's very interesting too

guys is they don't have an ssl

certificate and they're still in

position one so they must be

facilitating all of the needs and wants

of google to achieve this which is quite

interesting so this is where it becomes

this is where your intuition for seo and

it's honestly just a detective game guys

you need to figure out what they're

doing well and why google is rewarding

them don't just think because you have a

massive website and because you have

five star reviews that you're the best

because google doesn't see it that way

it's an algorithm so there's certain

things that need to be satisfied for it

to rank you so it's quite important that

we figure out what those things need to

be satisfied are

so let's grab the domain let's stick it

into

the semrush tool

and let's have a look at it let's see

how they're performing let's check out

their links let's check out everything

else so they've got an authority score

that's significantly higher than us so

they have 12 we had three organic search

traffic is apparently lower than us like

i said guys this tools

it's semrush it doesn't know

the backlinks guys look at the number of

backlinks significantly more than us so

they have

364 backlinks

and keywords they only have 23 keywords

okay so what we can do

is let's remember 364.

let's check this out

so we want to come back over to our

spreadsheet over here let's put in the

domain name and we can see what they're

ranking for and how well they're doing

now

guys as you can see there's a couple of

things they should be ranking landscape

in miami we're actually outperforming

them so you start to

try and ascertain it's like what's going

on here this website is not doing as

well

as us now this is where it becomes very

important to identify what they're doing

on their google business profile it

could be something as simple as we need

to add more landscaping services we need

to add that to our our profile it's not

necessarily going to fix everything

perhaps they're more active perhaps

they're messaging people on their google

business profile things that we can't

see from the outside looking in you know

these are types of things that need to

be you know slowly assessed and figured

out but as you can see right now they're

not doing necessarily too well for the

keywords that we're going for however

they're ranking for number one for

landscaping miami okay

so that's very very interesting

now we've figured that out so it's 23 in

total we've had a brief look total pages

the way you guys check that out is this

is called a the quake bar from seo

semrush so what you want to do is you

just want to see that there's five pages

here you can have a look another way so

the other way you can look is let's just

say we let's grab the

domain you come over here type site guys

put that in

paste the site in there and what's going

to happen is it's going to spit back all

the results that google has so it's five

exactly the same as here but that's how

you can check it out all right so

there's five pages

and the reason for that is guys

sometimes you'll notice that your

website will be five pages but the

competitor's website's 20 pages so

immediately you know perhaps it's

content that's needed

okay so but looking at that the

backlinks already we're starting to pick

up ideas of what's going on and why

they're starting to get rewarded by

google landscaping and these guys are

ranking in number one on the google maps

okay so that's how we look at it we can

start as you can see we're starting to

build a picture of why they're ranking

number one and why

when not

so we come back over to the local seo

checklist we look at the

we look at all the information here and

you want to have a look at their content

so this is where you would go through

their website guys you would look at how

their service pages are structured

everything like that if they have unique

service pages what they're doing what

they're doing that you're not they're

saying locations we serve these are all

things that you need to look at okay so

you want to figure all of that out again

we're not going to dive massively into

it this will be

yeah we'll be here for a week we'll get

to know each other really well

so you want to check out the core web

vital so you want to see what their

performance is on the core web vital

mark that down perhaps they're doing

better than you if they're doing better

than you then you know that you need to

optimize your site if you find that your

core web vital is like we had here it's

70 for your local your local business

but then your competitor is let's say

50. don't worry about the core web vital

it's not necessarily coming into play

okay that's where you don't need to sit

there and be like i've got to get it in

the green i've got to do this no you're

better off spending your time creating

content and trying to acquire backlinks

and build citations okay so that's core

web vital something to consider now

citations you can literally do like i

showed you how to do citation for us you

can do the exact same thing for your

competitor and check that out and upload

all of that information again we're not

going to make this video take a week so

you know how to do that i've shown you

now what we want to do is we've gone

okay so we've analyzed our competitors

and we've figured out how we're doing

we've ascertained how we're performing

you want to review at least three

competitors because that's going to

build up the picture of so-called

averages okay so it's very important

that you look at three we're just

looking at one but this is how you would

go through each one guys so you look at

the google business first you write your

comments about what you perceive to be

different to yours and how that could

impact it positively impact their

rankings positively and then you

ascertain what's going on with the

domain

all right so we've already figured out

that our number one competitor is

blowing us out of the water for

backlinks like significantly they're

hundreds in front of us

all right so what we need to do now is

we need to think about okay what

keywords do we really

want to rank for we want to rank for

landscaping miami we're just going to

utilize this keyword so a bit of a

caveat that is pertaining to keywords

it's easier to get a keyword that's in

position 57 to position 35 than it is to

go from position 35 to position one

okay

so

you need to think about things like that

however

you don't want to just sit back on page

35 and 57 because honestly guys how many

times have you gone back to those places

to check out for listings and and check

out the services you don't you don't

it's a natural psychology factor

the higher you are in google the more

trusted you are so you're not going back

here so we're better off focusing on

this keyword that we're doing all right

for and trying to move it up a bit

higher plus the search volume was there

so that's what you would start to think

about it's like okay

this is the keyword that i want to rank

for okay we figure that out

all right now if you're not sure what

keyword you want to rank for utilize

your competitors like i put a little

note over here use your competitors as

guidance look at what they're ranking

for see what you could maybe pick off

from their list

now we need to plan out what we need to

do so we've looked at our website and

the reason for all of this guys that we

stick all of this here

okay is because now we know what exactly

we need to do we can look over this and

go oh scheme is not done that's

something that's critically important if

you have a scammer on your website that

can help you rank you're telling google

what you are

you can see that the citations are quite

poor but you can see over here that

we've got a couple of things going wrong

so our website's not necessarily great

with our keywords backlinks

and our google business profile so you

come over to the seo strategy tab

now month one with seo guys it's a long

process it's not something that happens

overnight it's going to take months you

want to plan out at least for six months

and you could start to see positive

results a month later but you want to

plan out what you're doing for at least

six months so because we've been able to

put the performance we can sit there and

be like our google business profile need

work and we need to work on the schema

and we need to work on the website the

keywords and backlinks so this is what

you can do depending upon your time

constraints you come over and go okay so

the first thing i would be doing is the

google business profile we need to

address all the problems that's wrong

with that we need to install the schema

okay these are imperative this is what i

would be doing the first month

the second month what i would be looking

at doing is building the citations

so let's have citations

backlinks

and content

okay the more content we have on our

website the more likely we are going to

be able to receive more backlinks

okay so that's what i would do the

second month now you don't necessarily

want to go out and do a massive spam but

you want to try and get to around about

100 citations at least 100 100 sort of a

good fit you can't have thousands but

they sort of it's a diminishing law of

diminishing returns essentially so

backlinks is more so the focus once you

have 100 citations move into backlinks

and that's just a generic number guys

it's not necessarily anything particular

now continue with content

and backlinks

all right so as the months go on this is

where i would be focusing

okay

so content and backlinks special

emphasis on the backlinks why backlinks

because we've been able to figure out

that we have 45 citations eight

backlinks

our competitor ranking number one has

386 backlinks

drastically miles in front of us okay so

that is something that we need to

address and we need to address that

quickly

now when it comes to your seo strategy

planning it out you can status you'd be

like started

by whom

ronald

date eta put in the date guys it's very

straightforward bouncing ball this is

going to help you track what you're

doing so you're not sitting there being

uh doing maybe need more citations in

here i've gotten to 100 i can't really

remember no

plan it all out it's going to help you

go forward

when you need to structure everything

it's it's just a lot better

all right so we come back over here

now what we need to do is we need to

make sure if you don't have it installed

already you've got google analytics on

your website and you've got google

search console running those two tools

are awesome it's going to give you free

data so who's visiting your site you can

track conversions specifically in the

google search console tool you're going

to be able to

track the keywords and their positions

how you're performing it's really really

insightful information

if you don't know about them you're very

confused you don't know how to install

them guys

this video here this is my youtube

channel this link sorry this will take

you over look for how to install google

analytics and how to install google

search console you can have these things

up and running within around about 15

minutes it's not hard to do if you want

to do all of the tracking and the crazy

stuff reach out to us we'll help out if

you have any comments just let me know

okay

but definitely do that before you start

your seo campaign so you can track

everything that happens so you'll be

able to see okay well i built these

backlinks what impact is that having on

my website is it making it go up are my

keywords getting ranked higher that's

why it's important that's why it's very

very important you install these two two

tools

improve the ux and speed now ux is user

experience it's very very important so

if you jump back over to divine

on the website here

you can see that there's book an

appointment and just a small number down

here i would completely remove this and

set the number there as a button a call

to action button don't give them don't

give people the option guys to do too

many things remember a local service

someone's looking for you because they

want you to do the service they don't

want to chat about lawn care they don't

want to do any of that they don't want

to seek information more so they want

your service so let them get in contact

with your business and take care of it

that way

it doesn't look like that this this

might be a clickable button it does

appear to be

but

people might not know that they can

click that so remove that option that

could be one client that you're missing

out on a month because i don't know that

they can click this because it's very

important just to give people one option

one option only so when it comes to the

user experience

this stuff should be pushed down way

lower guys we don't need to know about

their socials and follow us and no one's

going to follow

your business unless it's a very big

thing and it's it's just not worth it to

you this is prime real estate here guys

prime real estate don't have something

like this right here push that down to

the very footer where it's across all

other pages it should not be up that

high you should be talking about your

services you should have images there

you should talk about your team

something that's interesting engaging so

people want to connect with you compared

to this no one is necessarily going to a

website or a business they've never

heard of and connect with the

organization just i haven't done it i

don't think you would have either so

think about that when you are working on

your website

so that would also come into what you're

doing in the first month so you'd want

to add that into your strategy

now when it comes to your content so i

have another video on on page

optimization on-page optimization is

very very important if you have great

on-page optimization then you're able to

rank without so many backlinks so as an

example there's 386 backlinks required

for us to catch up to our competitors

all

378 backlinks are required for us to

catch up to our competitors

now

if we have great on-page seo what we can

do is maybe we only need 300 so that

saves us a lot of time so what you want

to do is you want to grab the keyword

that we're going after

and you want to create a new page

specifically around that keyword so

we're grabbing our keyword right here

landscaping miami guys it's very

important google ranks web pages not

websites so you want to grab when you're

doing anything local seo grab the town

and the service that you're offering

these can be considered as service pages

and you want to come into a tool like

pop so pop is just a awesome tool it's

called page optimizer pro

it does basically it helps you and i'll

show you all of the information you'll

see all of the information but long

story short it helps you see what's

going on what you need to do because it

goes ahead and analyzes your uh analyzes

your competitors so it starts to look so

we're creating a new project you've got

the pro and the custom setup just to

just do the uh

setup with

pop once you get better with it you'll

be able to go in and tinker around with

it but i wouldn't play around with it

unless you know exactly what you're

doing guys

okay

so i'm just doing this as an example so

you can see what's going on and now

they're going to go across and scrape

all of the competitors that are ranking

for this particular keyword so when you

create your content which you need to do

to be able to try and get more backlinks

what will happen is you have this

awesome on-page optimized seo for

particularly for that keyword when you

have different keywords so let's say

that you're looking to rank for

landscaping for lauderdale so you're

coming to my area there and you want to

rank there you would create something

with landscaping fort lauderdale do the

keyword research find out how good the

volume is find out how competitive it is

see how difficult it is to rank and

everything else that the serp is

displaying to you and you could do

exactly the same process it's following

the same process guys

so that's the keyword that we're

targeting so we'll let pop run and do

its thing in the uh back end there guys

upload new optimized content so

uploading the new optimized content is

very important it's going to get on your

website once you've uploaded it make

sure that you send it across to the

google search console another video on

that's how to submit your site map very

important to google and how to get new

pages indexed by google so that's

basically you submit it to google and

instead of google coming to you you go

to google so that's why it's important

to get them indexed

videos will be up above guys

make sure that that gets done

build citations so that's where we want

to match the top competitors to so let's

say our competitor had 50 citations as

an example

well we can ascertain quite quickly that

we don't need to build

a ton more or a hundred citations we

just need to build ones that are the

same as our competitor then we can move

into building backlinks okay that's how

you would focus on on the building

citations creating backlinks matching

the top competitors so if your

competitor that 400 uh back uh 386

backlinks that our competitor has

what we would look at

is what they've got ranking to them

so we're looking to see okay they've got

this ranking to their website this is

what we need ranking to our website we

need it pointed to our website you don't

want to necessarily go out there and try

and find backlinks that are from weird

sources and all of this and just think i

need to build 300 plus backlinks because

he's got 300 plus backlinks

no that is not the case you need to find

out what they've got and you need to try

and mimic what they have

okay and then finally upload the local

business schema that is something that

we do in the first month but it's pretty

straightforward guys so you would go

through and and check everything off so

what we're going to do is hopefully pops

finish doing its thing and guys if

you've enjoyed this video like if i've

really really helped you and you're

understanding a lot more about local seo

please smash that like button it helps

me out a ton and i enjoy making this

content so thank you

all right so pop's still running we'll

just wait a moment until it comes until

it's finished right guys so pop's

finished what we're going to do is we're

going to jump into the report so as you

can see

it's scanned our website it sees what we

have going on and it's looked at our

competitors now right here we've got a

score of four but we don't have a

particular page that's being created for

miami landscaping when it comes to

creating your new pages remember you

want to create a page around a

particular keyword so like i was saying

we'd want a page for my landscaping

miami a page for landscaping fort

lauderdale okay

because everything's going to be

completely different for a local serp

so you want to scroll through you'll see

what search engine titles you need to

utilize what the title of the page

should be and as you go through guys

this was this stuff will start to turn

green unfortunately there's nothing

green there but the subheadings of the

page as you can see it says landscape

landscaping we want to have that in

there one time one to two times for

landscaping

if we come up we can see that we need to

have three thousand words on our page

that's where ideally it needs to be

so as you scroll down further this is

your heading so as you go through a web

page you see all of the headings and the

main content so the body of content all

right so in the body of content we want

to talk about landscaping 26 times as a

minimum we want to talk about miami

that's 11 times minimum so as you can

see the competition is really juiced up

now you want to look for on pop the nlp

so that's a natural language processor

created by google so essentially what

that means is

you should have this on their website

because google's associating this

content these words around what your

sort of field of expertise is talking

about in landscaping you know this is

services offered lawn services offered

landscaping that's sort of what it's

looking at and being like well if you're

a landscaper you should probably have

this information in your content

don't put in that don't put this in your

content guys if it makes if it's just

nonsense and there's always a lot of

nonsense so there could be you know

average review score you can sneak that

into your content

there's some of them in here that are

okay

but some of them sometimes you get weird

things like talking about linkedin or

some random random stuff okay so it's

very important that you figure out what

you need and what makes sense on your

page now once this is done if you can

get this score the higher the better you

don't want to over optimize but you do

want to improve that and once that's

higher you want to go ahead and upload

all of that content onto your page and

that's what you want to go back and

revisit pages as well so if we'll divine

let's say our services so let's let's

have a look at the uh services so they

offer services with digital design tree

services let's have a look at the trade

trimming let's just try and get straight

into something okay so tree services so

you can see that they do a bit of stuff

around tree surfaces however there's no

content here so what you would do is you

would grab this page you would talk

about tree trimming and you would stick

that into pop so you would throw that

information into pop and you'd be like

hey we need to create the page around

this so that's going to help them rank

for tree trimming in miami these are all

the types of steps that you would

utilize remember guys anything that i've

talked about today it is going to be

linked across here it's going to be

there's literally the same links on

every single page so don't be concerned

about that guys

when it comes to local seo there's tons

of things that you need to consider but

if you follow this if you just stick

with this this local seo tutorial has

been about making sure that you cover

the basic principles okay if we do this

if we look at what our competitors are

doing and try to match them i assure you

that you should see positive results you

should see the needle moving in the

right direction which will increase your

local traffic

is it going to get you ranking number

one 100

no because this is honestly just a

quarter of the stuff that goes into it

this is just a quick review and just a

way you can get the needle moving quite

quickly what you do want to do is make

sure that your google business profile

is optimized you really really need to

make sure that that is optimized and

that your website is the best that it

can be but as you can see for

what i with this review and not going

into the back end and looking at

everything else immediately i would say

that okay we need more backlinks we need

a lot more backlinks to help this client

rank further compared to our competitor

that's absolutely dominating us that's

how i would look at it guys and

hopefully i've answered the question

i've given you a bit of guidance on this

local seo tutorial if you have any

questions just hit me up down below this

can this principle can be applied to any

website any industry anything anywhere

across the world in australia back home

for me new zealand anywhere guys

anywhere it can be done okay so just

apply these principles if you have any

questions hit me up in the comments down

below i hope you've enjoyed it make sure

you hit the like button if you really

have

shows me the love that'd be awesome

thanks guys have a lovely day cheers