 Welcome to The Journey. I'm Nealey. And I'm Morgan. And today we're going to give you eight quick tips to improve your local SEO. All right, Morgan, before we dive into the tips, it's probably a good idea to really understand what is SEO and why is it so important? Yeah, the reason we use search engines is because they have proven time and time again that they provide the best answers to the questions that we're searching for. And if your website doesn't appear on the first page of the search results, then you're nowhere. And so SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's work that you do to make sure that you prove to Google and other search engines that you're the best. So for SEO, I like to use the analogy of all the work that you need to do is like a thousand-piece puzzle. Okay. And you and all of your competitors, you all have the same puzzle, and we're trying to prove to Google who's the best. Like, which one of these puzzles is the most complete? My puzzle is definitely the best. Yours is definitely the best. We know that. Does Google know that? We shall find out. But the thing is, not everyone has all 1,000 pieces. Some people are new, some people have been doing it for a long time, and Google doesn't necessarily care that you have all the pieces in. You just have... The thing that Google cares about is that you have more than the next guy. And you could have maybe 10 pieces, and if you're in not a very competitive space, then, yeah, you're going to appear on the first page. So these eight tips that we're going to talk about are going to help you to start putting those pieces in to get started on your SEO journey for local businesses. Perfect. So let's jump into the tips. What's tip number one? Tip number one for local businesses, everybody needs this, is you need to create or claim your Google My Business profile. Google My Business is this tool that Google has created that allows users to see all of your business information in one place. We did a video all about this, so go check it out so you can deep dive. But basically, if you don't have a profile, you need to go create one. And if you haven't claimed your profile, meaning that your profile exists, but you didn't necessarily do it, or some user created that, you need to claim it so that way you can update it with all the right information. Right. You need to make sure it's in your control. Don't let it out to the world for anyone to add. It's yours. Yep. So tip number two is that you need to optimize your profiles. It's great to have it created, but if you don't have all the information that Google is looking for, then they're not going to recommend your business over someone else. So that means having your business name correct, your address, your phone number, your hours of operation. Those are the basics that most people do, but optimizing it really means going a level below that. So adding photographs, adding your logo, adding pictures of your building so that way when people are actually going to your business, they know what it looks like. If you're a restaurant, include pictures of dishes and what you're known for. So that way people have lots more information when they're looking at your Google My Business page. So those are the key things that you need to do to optimize it. If there's reviews that are outstanding, you need to respond to all of those reviews. You need to encourage your customers to go and leave reviews because that also plays a part in how you're going to rank against other local business profiles. All right, Morgan. What's tip number three? Tip number three is you need to add your business to relevant business directories. These are other sites that their main business is promoting other businesses like yourself. And so you need to make sure that your business not only is there, but the information is correct. And the great thing, it's an easy backlink. So it really helps with your SEO to make sure that your business, anywhere people are looking at these business directories, your business shows up. All right, which brings us to tip number four. Tip number four is to add your business address to your website. It sounds pretty plain and simple, but a lot of websites don't have that. So again, to increase your rankings, this is one thing that not only Google is looking for, but your users. If they're wanting to visit your business, they want to have the address very prominently placed. So put it in the footer. Have a separate page about your location. Just make sure that is there visible and very prominent. All right. So should we put like a Google Maps little thing on the site too? Yeah, that helps. That's visual. People can click it. They can see exactly where you're located, the cross streets. So that's always helpful as well. They just make sure that you actually have the address called out and written out next to that. Perfect. Which brings us to tip number five. What's tip number five? Make sure that your NAP is consistent across the web. What's NAP? Name. I like NAPs. I mean, name, address, phone number. Okay. So you need to make sure that those three things are consistently formatted everywhere. So pick one, then update it on your website. Stick with it. Update it on your Google My Business and then update it anywhere else where your website appears. If you don't own those websites, email the owner and say, hey, can you update this? And most likely they will. But just make sure it's consistent everywhere. Perfect. Tip number six. What do we got? You need to update your home page's meta title and meta description. The meta title and meta description are things on your website that you control how your website shows up on the search results. So whatever the meta title is, that's what will appear on the search engine results page and then the little description below. This is a great opportunity for you to let your clients know what you're about. So if you are a coffee shop in Seattle, maybe you should have that in your meta title and description. Put your location, put more information about your business. So that way your users know what you're about. Right. And most website builders or applications that you use have a section for you to add a meta title and meta keyword and meta descriptions. If you don't know how to go in the back end and do it, which most of us don't want it to, right? So if you need help, just contact whoever you're hosting your site with. They'll probably be able to help you get that information there because if you don't set anything, Google will just assume whatever it wants to put there. It may not always be relevant to what you want to invoke to your audience. All right, Morgan. What do we got for tip number seven? Tip number seven is just to make sure that all of your other SEO elements are in place. Make sure that you have great content on your website. Make sure that your source code is formatted in the way that Google likes to see it. Make sure that you have great number of high quality backlinks that are pointing back to your site. All of this will help with your local SEO. We actually did an entire video all about the basics for SEO. Check it out right here. So it's super relevant to make sure your site is structured in a way that Google basically wants, right? So on your site, those H1 tags, like you mentioned, it's basically code on the site that says, this is my most relevant tagline, if you will. So only one H1 tag per site. Images are super important because Google cannot read images, but it can read text. So that's that little description there. Most website builders or applications like WordPress has a place for you to add those. All right, Morgan. We're on the very last tip. It's been an incredible journey. Hashtag the journey. What is tip number eight? Tip number eight is to consider launching paid ads or Google guarantee. So if you're not getting the results fast enough of the traction that you need using steps one through seven and appearing in the organic sections, then this is where paid ads and the Google guarantee comes in. So you can consider doing these things. Paid ads, obviously it's pay to play. Boop, you appear right at the top of the search result. It's amazing. But once your ad budget is gone, you no longer appear there. But people click on the ads, they're very effective. So I love paid ads, right? It gets you right to the top. But I'm not really familiar with what Google guarantee is. Give us a low down. So the Google guarantee is basically paid ads, super charged. Okay. So you could pay anyone really can pay to have their business appear in the paid ads. But the Google guarantee takes it to the next level where if someone purchases the service through the Google guarantee and they're not happy, they can get their money back, which is really, really awesome. So it's Google vetting certain businesses and making sure that they provide a great experience. There's extra levels that you have to do to qualify for the Google guarantee, but it's really, really great and stands out in the search results. And people love it. All right, guys. Those were our eight quick tips to help improve your local SEO. I hope you liked it. I liked it. You like it. I thought you would make sure you like this video. Comment below on just something you learned today. Subscribe, ring the bells. 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