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Home » The Famous Blog » For Local SEO, Make a Lot of Noise to Rank

For Local SEO, Make a Lot of Noise to Rank

December 13, 2011 - Last Modified: March 28, 2013 by Al

Make a Lot of Noise to Rank

As we all know, Google is giving a ton of attention to local businesses by including their local listings in Google’s main search results. This has been a great advantage for small and local businesses to get more visibility in the search engines, but it has also increased competition in local SEO among local businesses hence marketers and local business owners are trying to find ways to outrank their competition in local SEO.

They attempt all the “must dos” when it comes to local SEO, and that is to add their site to all the major and local directories and Google places, link building, and include local keywords all over their site, as well as other local SEO tactics. But that may not be enough for them to rank well in the search engines especially for Google places. And that is probably due to lack of having enough natural citations.

What is a citation?

Citation, as its name implies, is references to your business. And that means how many times you’re business name and your business address have been repeated on other websites in particular the pages that have content about your local area or local cities.

There are two ways to improve your citations; You can do this manually by literally going on many websites and including your citations or asking them to cite you; Or you can do something big in your local area that gets both the medial and local people to talk about you. And in my opinion that is a more effective way.

A good example is Bad Boys Bail Bonds

Their San Jose local which is their first location had been sponsoring San Jose Sharks for a long time but last year they lost their spot to a higher bidder leaving them no room to have their banners at Sharks games. Therefore the bail bond’s owner and a few of their employees started wearing their shirts showing up in the hockey games and after a few games they were banned from entering the stadium or anyone wearing Bad Boys’ shirts.

That started a whole lot of controversies that questioned legality of San Jose Sharks action and that it may contradict the first amendment which grabbed a lot of attention from local online media. They were mentioned in the news and many people started talking about them and what had happened discussing the issue, hence that increased their citations naturally then they started ranking #1 for the keywords “San Jose Bail Bonds” in Google places.

Now the same company is trying to follow that type of method to promote their San Diego Bail Bonds location in order to improve their local rankings. Of course this time they don’t want to piss off any professional sports owners’ team, but rather to create a noise in a creative way to get locals to talk about them and local papers to write about them. If you are a small business and looking to improve your local rankings, I highly recommend you get involved in your local community somehow to get people to talk about you so you can increase your local citations. You just have to get creative and execute your plan.

It can be anything from give stuff away for free to locals, attending and sponsoring local charity events or other types of local events, sponsoring a few local youth sports teams, and other local activities that will get the attention of both locals and local media so they can “cite” your business name.

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Filed Under: SEO

About Al

Follow @asefati

Techie, an Enterprise SEO Consultant, and Digital Marketer, Entrepreneur and MBA (specifically in that order). My Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sefati/

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{ 19 Responses }

  1. Shreya says:
    Yes, Google is taking local business seriously and implementing the same algorithm to rank as in SEO. There are many factors to look upon while optimizing your site for local business and one of the biggest factor is citation.
  2. David says:
    Directories still have their place in getting links, especially for local search. For example if you were in the locksmith business in Los Angeles, you might perform the following google search to find good directory links: "business directory" "los angeles" "submit site" This should give you all the LA business directory where you can submit your site to. Obviously you can try lots of different permutations.
  3. Asi Serija says:
    Ah, this is very interesting article, I didn't have idea how the things work! Thanks guys!
  4. TJ McDowell says:
    It makes sense to me that when your business is getting buzz in the local media that Google would bump you up in the rankings. I changed my marketing strategy in the last year to focus less on search engines and more on getting noticed for doing big things.
  5. Nyagoslav says:
    A nice piece. I completely agree with you that "noise" is a very important indirect factor in SEO (not only local one). Great examples could be the many cases of companies that got involved in accidents, scandals, or had negative coverage about them - it triggers their SEO and they usually start ranking much higher in the organic results. This, however, brings the natural question - in this case, is Google delivering the best results? And shouldn't Google rethink their opinion on not differentiating positive/negative feedback when determining the organic rankings.
  6. Vikas Arora says:
    It’s an awesome idea to shout that I am the best ;)
  7. Elin says:
    Let me see if I got this right. What happens if a company is cited in a negative way? When people talk about companies, they often bring up bad stuff and try to warn other people. How does that work, do they still get a higher rank?
    • Assaf says:
      A negative citing is not less important... and it also means that the company got attention, so IMO it will help as well (the worst thing is to be ignored).
  8. Mark McCulloch says:
    For someone who is considering going into the Local SEO marketing this coming year which I am this was a great post to read and very informative...
  9. Justin Dupre says:
    If promoting a business locally I think offline marketing provides the best results.
  10. jason walker says:
    You can't just leave everything to t'internet. A marketing strategy should include everything, even if you don't use it all!
  11. Al Sefati says:
    Thanks everyone. Sorry for the couple off errors I def. need to proof read my posts a few times. Anyway I personally have had better long time SEO success when I actually when out of my way and promoted my sites beyond traditional SEO tactics and focus on larger marketing ideas where people talk about my site and link to my site.
  12. Tushar says:
    it is a good initiative by Google. local listings should be given preference. it tends to receive better response from the searchers
  13. Doug Rice says:
    Excellent post, Ali. I think too many times, companies think they can cheat with SEO. Google always will evolve and leave them behind. The only way to really capitalize on SEO is to be worth searching for. I love the idea of becoming more active in your IRL community in order to boost your digital presence. Give the bloggers something to blog about and the rest is history.
  14. Assaf says:
    I really enjoyed this article because as much as online presence is important, the marketing strategy and tactics are the big picture that should lead the way. The online activity should be derived from the marketing plan.
  15. Pritam says:
    Yes, Google is taking local business seriously and implementing the same algorithm to rank as in SEO. There are many factors to look upon while optimizing your site for local business and one of the biggest factor is citation. Great Article Al Sefati.
  16. Dianne says:
    I agree, offline presence is super important. Too much focus on being internet famous can cause many people to miss out on great opportunities.
  17. Ricardus says:
    Great article. Never thought of the improvements of citation. Shall do a little tweaking on that matter right away.
  18. Amit says:
    Wow ,This is really great ,Thanks

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