InterSeller’s Local SEO Process

SEO Blocks

Local SEO is a twelve-step program. Like building a website or building a house, Local SEO is a series of tasks that need to be completed. We’ve put all the tasks associated with Local SEO into a series of “blocks”, or lists of tasks.

Our first 12 blocks are the building blocks for your Local SEO Foundation.
Then we move to our Ongoing Optimization Block. This is where we continue to optimize your web presence to get your rankings up even higher, get more keywords to page one and improve the traffic you get from your Google My Business account.

The number of blocks needed each month largely depends on:

How many pages you have on your website
How many competitors you have
How many locations you have

Contact us to help you determine a plan that’s best for your website.

BLOCK 1

Set Up and Audit

TASKS:

Perform initial SEO Audit for your website and your Google My Business account.
Collect login information for your website access and other resources.
Collect information for your citations and business listings.
Setup / confirm your Google Analytics, Search Console, and Tag Manager
Set-up baseline reports for: Keyword ranking, GMB, Reviews, Citations

OBJECTIVES:

Establish a general SEO strategy for your website and Google My Business account.
Ensure we have all the required information.
Establish a baseline for key metrics.

BLOCK 2

Google My Business

TASKS:

Perform initial SEO Audit for your website and your Google My Business account.
Collect login information for your website access and other resources.
Collect information for your citations and business listings.
Setup / confirm your Google Analytics, Search Console, and Tag Manager
Set-up baseline reports for: Keyword ranking, GMB, Reviews, Citations

OBJECTIVES:

Begin the process of getting more visibility on Google Maps.
Determine keywords that will drive the most relevant local traffic and begin optimization of the related pages.

BLOCK 3

Reinforce the Google Maps Strategy with Citations and Correct NAP

TASKS:

Install local optimization software on your website.
Confirm the final Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) for the citation creation process.
Look for erroneous citations and flag for repair or removal.
Create a “schema” file for local information and install.
Submit your website and business information to the top 3-4 Data Aggregators.
Re-Optimize your Home Page for the most relevant keyword phrase and local city.

OBJECTIVES:

Begin the process of getting more organic traffic to your Home Page for your top keyword phrase(s) in your local area.
Ensure your Home Page and the GMB are optimized to each other with the correct business listing information.
Begin the process of setting up citations and business listings.

* “Schema” is website mark-up metadata created by the search engines to help them accurately identify data on a web page. This tells Google and Bing what content on your website identifies the name of your business, your address, phone number, latitude and longitude, hours of operation, and other information.

BLOCK 4

Start Improving Your Organic Rankings for More Top Keywords

TASKS:

Perform a full keyword optimization of your top 8-10 pages, including image attribute optimization.
Submit your sitemaps (create a sitemap if needed).
Perform a Google My Business (GMB) Check.*
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Begin moving the next 8-10 most important keywords up in the rankings.
Your sitemap is one method Google uses to find and properly index all the pages of your website.

At this point in the process, we have started to build the foundation for the 4 main areas of Local SEO – Website Optimization, Page Optimization, Google My Business, and Citations.

The next four blocks focus on getting more of your keywords on page one.

BLOCK 5

Review Data and Start Targeting Longer Tailed Terms

TASKS:

Keyword research for the next series of top-level pages.
Update keyword ranking reporting systems, review progress to date, and adjust general strategy as needed.
Review Top 5 Business Listings for Accuracy and edit as needed.
Review PageSpeed and make suggestions or improvements if possible.

OBJECTIVES:

Expand the number of your target keywords.
“Long-tailed terms” typically have higher conversion rates, but lower search volume. We optimize your lower-level pages for these longer-tailed terms that may also have less SEO competition.
Ensure PageSpeed is not a limiting factor.

BLOCK 6

Error Reduction

TASKS:

Perform a full keyword optimization of your top 8-10 pages, including image attribute optimization.
Submit your sitemaps (create a sitemap if needed).
Perform a Google My Business (GMB) Check.*
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Google lowers page ranking for websites that have errors or are missing certain SEO elements. Fixing these issues will help improve the rankings for all your keywords.

BLOCK 7

Duplicate Content Reduction

TASKS:

Review your website and other external web pages for duplicate content.
Remove or re-write your duplicate content as needed.
Perform a Google My Business Check.
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Google likes to index original content, so reducing your duplicate content helps Google identify which of your pages has the original content.

BLOCK 8

Internal Linking Strategies

TASKS:

Update keyword ranking reporting systems, review progress to date, and adjust general strategy as needed.
Begin implementing outbound links to high-quality, high-authority (yet non-competitive) web pages.
Begin monitoring and correcting keyword density for your focus keywords.
Perform a Google My Business Check.
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Increase the number of keywords that appear on page one.
Move your focus keywords higher up the page rankings.

Now, we’ve gone deeper into each of the four main areas of SEO and have started implementing strategies to expand the number of keywords for your Google rankings.

Next, we need to continue to expand and eliminate anything that might be blocking Google from indexing your website properly.

BLOCK 9

Outbound Links and Keyword Density

TASKS:

Review your website and other external web pages for duplicate content.
Remove or re-write your duplicate content as needed.
Perform a Google My Business Check.
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Google likes to index original content, so reducing your duplicate content helps Google identify which of your pages has the original content.

BLOCK 10

Social Media and Blog

TASKS:

Set up Bing Webmaster Tools.
Submit your sitemaps to Bing.
Set up Menu Title Attributes.
Add and verify your social media links.
Implement the “Same As” schema for your social media pages.

OBJECTIVES:

Focus some effort on indexing your top keywords for Bing.
Ensure Google knows which social media pages belong to your website.

BLOCK 11

Navigation Optimization

TASKS:

Check for spam backlinks and disavow links with Google as needed.
Check Google Page Speed and Mobile Friendliness. Fix if possible, or recommend changes.
Find and fix any remaining internal and external broken links.
Re-check for duplicate content and resolve.
Run a Competitor Analysis to look for additional SEO factors to be addressed in the future.
Perform a Google My Business Check.
Research and set up 3 to 5 new business listings.

OBJECTIVES:

Google wants to list websites that have a great User Experience. These tasks help us identify potentially harmful signals that may negatively affect your page ranking.
Competitors have different levels of SEO factors in place. By determining their reasons for out-ranking your website, we can use this information to determine which SEO elements are needed to get top placement.

BLOCK 12

Final Touches

TASKS:

Set up Bing Webmaster Tools.
Submit your sitemaps to Bing.
Set up Menu Title Attributes.
Add and verify your social media links.
Implement the “Same As” schema for your social media pages.

OBJECTIVES:

Focus some effort on indexing your top keywords for Bing.
Ensure Google knows which social media pages belong to your website.

The Local SEO Foundation is complete at this point. We have optimized the top-tier pages of your website, set up the Data Aggregators and the top citations, optimized the website and your Google My Business account.

Next, we move to our “Ongoing SEO Process.” Depending on how many pages your website has, we either finish optimizing pages or begin re-optimizing pages for better page ranking and higher click-through-rates to drive more traffic.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Ongoing optimization continuously reacts to the dozens of changes that Google makes to the ranking algorithm each month and the changes from your competitors.

TASKS:

Site Optimization:

Check page speed.
Check for new broken links.
Check for new mobile issues.
Check for new duplicate content.
Update competitive analysis as competitors re-optimize their websites.
Look for backlinking, internal linking, and outbound linking opportunities.
Check for new spam links and add them to the disavow file.

Page Optimization:

Update keyword strategy as needed.
Optimize or re-optimize at least 2 pages, focusing on pages that are ranking on page 2, or bottom of page 1 of Google first.
Edit page meta to improve click-through rates and page position.
Edit content for readability scores and keyword density.

Citations (per location):

Set up the next three highest authority citations.
Look for citations with errors and correct them if possible.

Google My Business Check (per location):

Add an image or two.
Check for new Categories.
With permission, respond to unanswered reviews with keyword-rich responses.
Review GMB Insights reports.

OBJECTIVES:

Increase page ranking for targeted keywords.
Increase Google My Business impressions and actions.
Increase traffic to your website.
Get you more customers.