Did you know that 97% of people learn about a local business online and 72% of consumers who performed a localized search visited a store within 5 miles. Having a solid local SEO strategy is the first step to put you on the map.
New to this form of marketing? Visit the Local Learning Center to get brought up to speed on topics like NAP accuracy, local website optimization, reviews, and more. Or audit the health of your top local business listings for free with the Moz Check Presence tool.
The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide : Dive into our comprehensive beginner's guide to SEO marketing for small businesses.
The Local SEO Cheatsheet [Free PDF Download] : Download your free 5 page Local SEO Cheat Sheet.
Local Search Ranking Factors : Explore all the signals Google uses to rank local businesses.
Moz Academy Local SEO Certification : Develop a comprehensive local SEO strategy and get certified with this 6-part course and exam series.
Moz Local for Small Business : Help maximize the online visibility of your small business with Moz Local.
As an in-house SEO, I don't have many opportunities to share my observations publicly, this is my maiden blog post here at SEOMoz and I hope you find it interesting. Being an active photographer allows me to experiment on the side as a normal course of my hobby. Over the last year, I've been observing changes in Google Image Search that I'm finally comfortable sharing. Because o...
Late last week, in a move that was apparently spurred by threats of an FTC investigation, Google removed third-party reviews and listings from their Places pages in the Local/Maps results. Thi...
As you venture through Natural Search Optimization, your primary goal is to expand the reach of your website to a global level. What happens when you have a client with specific geographic limitations though? If you or your client has a limited service area, then you should place a particular focus on localizing ...
The search engines are hungry for vertical search content. The representation of content types in the SERPs, beyond the traditional webpage, seems to grow on a daily basis. In many cases it is actually easier to rank for a vertical channel like video for a given keyphrase than it is to rank a traditional webpage for the same keyphrase. Are you still trying to compete in the SERPs with tradition...
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As increasing number of searches have local intent behind them, Google is showing Places listings in many more SERPs. This presents an opportunity to either gain a spot on the first page for many businesses or to gain more space on the first page for companies already ranking on the first page. Here are five t...
The local listings in Google + Bing are becoming more competitive sector by sector and for some local businesses on the web, even tactics like competitive citation analysis and tools like Whitespark's awesome local citation finder aren...
As an in-house SEO for Marriott.com for the past six years, I've been an avid SEOmoz blog reader, yet this is my first post. I've chosen to cover something near and dear to my heart – Google Maps. While there have been countless blog posts and articles written about the accuracy and accountability of Google Maps,...
Much of the work we do in SEO is trying to deconstruct the algorithms through competitive analysis. We research the attributes of the top ranking websites, evaluate what they have in common and then try to emulate the factors that we believe may have the greatest positive impact. This is what we must also do in optimizing for Local Search. Resolve Technical Probl...
What is mobile SEO all about? Probably the majority of website owners, especially those with basic knowledge about SEO may think that mobile SEO is a totally separate branch of the SEO industry. And that by special techniques you can improve your rankings on mobile search results pages and get more traffic from users with mobile devices. However, the truth is th...
Local was big in 2010. Groupon and its imitators inundated us with social coupons. Foursquare and its ilk rode the wave of smart phone adopters, and Yelp, Google and Facebook fought back with check-in features added to their existing services. Incorporating local into an overall online marketing strategy is obviously crucial for retail outlets like restaurants, hotels and dentist...
With Google's recent implementation of Places Search, it is now more important than ever for local businesses to have high-quality, complete Google Places listings. One of the ranking (and conversion) factors for business listings is user generated content in the form of reviews and citations. Not very long ago, Google ...
Back in October, Google added the ability to easily change the location from where you search. We ran an experiment to see if this is a reliable tool for Local SEO.
Google’s attempted takeover of Groupon has brought to the forefront of search engine discussion the importance of local search, and if it wasn’t already on your mind, it definitely is now. This hubbub over local just so happens to coincide with my entry into the independent web designer world - I’ve started my own business and I’m working with small businesses in my area to get them online and optimized for the local search revolution that has already begun.
In early June of this year, SEOmoz released some ranking correlation data about Google's web results and how they mapped against specific metrics. This exciting work gave us valuable insight into Google's rankings system and both confirmed many assumptions as well as opened up new lines of questions. When...