Now Becoming a Local SEO Expert For Multiple Locations

Everyone wants to grow their business via online promotion but today locally promoting a website is more challenging.

So, In this guide, we hope to share with you some of the techniques that could help you, one of the good guys, thrive, get more customers and become Local SEO consultant.

Becoming a Local SEO Expert Starts With Google My Business Locations

Google My Business Locations is the very first step to establishing a presence in a new market. All you need is a valid gmail account in order to create up to 10 different locations that span across mobile, maps, and, Google’s desktop search results. The best part of all…it’s free. Google even provides an easy to use Excel template that lays out what information is needed to confirm the locations and get them indexed. I’ve provided an example of that below.

Top Level Domains Vs. Subdomains:

One of the biggest decisions you’ll need to make when expanding your reach to new territories and countries is whether to create a top level domain or a subdomain for each location. If you’re not quite sure what that means, HalfElf.org, a WordPress Guru site does an excellent job of explaining the differences between the two. As Matt Cutt’s describes in the video in the video below.

Optimize Your Website For Each Location:

Once you’ve set up a web presence for each region you’ll want to optimize schema for your various locations. Make sure to include a local number, local address, and business hours to increase your chance of being shown in Google’s SERPs. These should be unique for each location and need to be linked to either your top level domain or subdomain for that area. You can find more information on localized schema at schema.org.

Google Isn’t Everything

Although Google takes up 68.5% of desktop and 92.7% of mobile market share, they aren’t the only ones that can make an impact on your bottom line. In fact, using other business listings, review sites, and citation sources can actually improve your results within Google, doubling their effectiveness. Here are few resources to consider when expanding your presence.

Yahoo Local Marketing: Yahoo offers a paid service that lists your business on over 50 websites within their network. They offer “Local Enhanced Listing” priced at $9.99 a month and “Yahoo Local works” priced at $29.99 month. This can be an excellent way to create high quality backlinks, among other benefits.

Bing Place for Businesses: Bing makes it easy to set up a local listing with their free service. The only requirement is to have a valid Microsoft account which is also available for free if you don’t already have one. Utilizing Bing’s local listings seems to be ignored by many companies, and can give you an advantage over your competitors who don’t know that value of this resource.

Yelp: Yelp has become the premier review website not only for their ability to show up high within Google’s results, but also as a trusted source for consumers. Establishing your location in Yelp and actively managing the reviews there can pay huge dividends to your business.

Data Providers: There are several different data resources that are used by search engines in the United States. These include Factual, Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar, and a few others like yellowpages and superpages. These have a large impact on search results and feed directly into search engines, review sites, and more. Ensuring your business is listed on these and that the information is correct is extremely important for companies that want to be found locally. Moz has an excellent list of who these sites integrate with.

Citation Resources: Each region will have different citation resources that you can take advantage of. Luickly Moz has done all the work for us, and provided a comprehensive list of the best citation websites to use for each metropolitan area in the United States. Most of the websites are redundant, but there are a few that are unique in specific areas. Take a look at that here.

Developing Localized Content

Having a content marketing plan for each location can drastically improve search results across all major search engines. Ensuring that your meta tags, URL, alt tags, and content all have the city and state included is an excellent way to localize content.

Making this content unbiased can be difficult, but using subtle tactics to promote your business works much better than shouting to the world that you are the best. Here are a few examples of article topics that can be used to help establish you as a resource locally:

• “Who is the best [niche/service] company in [location]?”
• “The top [niche/service] reviewed in [location]”
• “Where are the best [niche/service] in [location]”

Some Extra Tips:

If you can do all of these things above, your are well on your way to becoming a local SEO expert. Here are a few more tips to help you on your journey of local search engine dominance.

• Make sure your websites are mobile optimized.
• Use companies like Foxtail Marketing, Whitespark, or Brightlocal to help you if you’re not feeling confident in your strategy.
• Embed Google Maps for each location.
• Manage Google, Yelp, and Social Media reviews.

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How to Verified Your Twitter Account - Get Blue Tick

The trend of Verified accounts are not so new in social media sites. Twitter is using this feature for many years. Google+ is using this feature from the beginning. Yeah, Facebook and YouTube has introduced this feature recently.

On Twitter, verified account will only get the small verification badge that is highlighted below because unlike Google+, every user can have Vanity URL for there Twitter profile.
image

Though it helps a lot in finding the official account of a brand that you want to follow. Also, verified accounts generally get higher position in twitter search results when you try to search any user using Twitter searchbox.

WHY ARE VERIFIED TWITTER ACCOUNTS IMPORTANT?

Improved brand credibility – As a pro-rugby player you recognize that you can enhance your earnings through endorsements and gaining media exposure. Verifying your Twitter account can enhance your social media presence making your personal brand more attractive for endorsements.

Distinguish yourself from parody and fake accounts – You’re likely to have been agreed to a code of conduct for social media platforms with your club and/or national team. Gaining a verified Twitter account can ensure the actions of another account aren’t mistaken as being your own.

Improved social search presence – A verified Twitter account can help fans find you on the Twitter search tool. Hands up if you’d like some additional followers!

Twitter’s Recommendation to get verified name:

• Embed Twitter’s official “Follow” button on your official website to get followers directly from your official website. It also helps users as well as twitter staff to know the original Twitter handler of a brand at the time of verification.

• Include a link to your official website within your profile’s description.

Some companies also say that if you invests more than $5000/month on Twitter advertisements then it will get (and keep) your Twitter account verified.

Twitter do not consider your number of followers as a factor to put verification badge.

Steps to apply for #Verified account @Twitter:

Step 1: Read Verified Account instructions from Twitter help center here -> http://twitter.com/help/verified

Step 2: Draft a message having following details:

• Account Number
• Full Name
• Location
• Official Website
• Bio Information (in less than 160 characters)
• Primary Contact Number (of individual who manages the account)
• Additional Contact Number

Send the message (direct message) to @Verified account.

Step 3: Wait for twitter to respond back. You can contact twitter directly using This Contact Form but keep in mind that twitter deals with high volume verification requests and it verifies very specific accounts.

Step 4: After getting response (by direct message from Twitter), follow the instructions given.

Final Step: In the final step you need to do these three things-

• Learn how to Tweet effectively – You’ll be asked to choose best tweet out of two tweets. There will be no negative impact if you don’t answer correctly.

• Connect with other Interesting Twitter Users – Connect with other verified accounts. It helps in making your account more legitimate.

• Protect your Account – You’ll be asked to add a phone number through which Twitter can contact you if they find any problem with your account.

Recommendation: Do not change your account’s information after getting Verification badge. It can cause Twitter to remove the verification badge and make you to contact them again.

===== Keep Twittering =====

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How to Verify Google Plus Profile and Business Page

The trend of Verified accounts  in social media sites are not so new. Twitter is using this feature for many years. Google+ is using this feature from the beginning. Yeah, Facebook and YouTube has introduced this feature recently.

Verification Badges Verified Names are having verification badges/check marks along with there names in these Social Networking websites that helps people to find out and identify Official channel, profile, page about a business or a popular celebrity.

It is becoming very important for celebrities or brands to get these Verification badges on there profile because along with providing authenticity, it is also a symbol of pride. 

It shows, the person/brand is very influential and having very high popularity in that social network too.

So, if you are a company, an organization, a leader or celebrity and did not manage to get the Verification Badges yet  to your profiles, channels or fan pages then we are telling you how you can get one for you.

For Google+ Profiles
Google+, along with providing Verification Badges, also provides Vanity URLs to the verified names to make the profile’s URL user-friendly and easy to remember.
See the image below:

Verified Google Plus Profile

If you are in large number of Google+ circles (for e.g., greater than 20K ) and your profile name appears the same in the other social network websites then getting Google+ Verified name is not tough for you.

Unfortunately, there is not any way to contact Google+ for this. Google+ Staff will manually contact you and guide you to get verified name for your profile. However, these few tips will help you to get noticed by Google+ team:

• You are required to become popular in your field.
• Don’t share something illegal.
• Don’t opt Spam ways to increase your ‘in Circles’.
• Remain active at Google+, do status updates, get engaged in users comments.

For Google+ Business Pages
Google+ Business Pages should have great popularity and influence in Google+ to get verified badges along with their Names. Your Page will also get Vanity URL after getting verified badge.

There are still few important things that you should do for your Google+ Business Page to get it verified, without any problem:

• Google+ Page should be connected to Official website by a proper two-way link between your website and page. This verification is also known as “Verifying Publishership”. Learn How Google+ Can Help with Ranking.

• Make Sure your Google+ Page is having the “Name” by which it (your brand) is known by people. You can have small modifications in your Google+ Page, Website name but it should be at least identifiable that you are the same brand.

• Build popularity and followers of your Google+ Page and post there regularly. You need to have at least 1000 followers for your brand’s official Google+ Page (as said by Google).

• When you get meaningful number of followers and good engagement, apply for a verified name for your Google+ Brand Page using Google+ Page Verification Request form. If you face rejection, increase your Google+ Business Page’s popularity and apply again.

=====Keep Posting On Google Plus=====

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