A lot of you have been wanting to see more SEO related content, and specifically case studies, so here we go.
This is a case study on how an HVAC contractor was able to go from not even displaying in maps, to getting the coveted top 3 slot in local search.
Now, this isn’t about some rinky dink town where you can just slap an EMD and rank without doing anything else. The competition was very high, and everybody ranking, even those not displayed in the top 3 had SEO companies working on their sites. This was in one of the most populated cities in the US, and he averages over 100 calls a week coming from SEO.
In this post you will learn:
- What On Page Optimization Tactics Should Be Used
- How to best use internal linking for maximum effect
- What 3rd party properties are the most important
- Specific title and heading tag templates you can use for your own sites
- Which citations matter most
- And much more
To put it simply… if you follow the guidelines in this post, you will be able to rank 95% of the sites you work on.
A Little About The Client
This client didn’t come from an email, cold call, or even direct mail. It didn’t come from SEO, PPC or any other typical client acquisition method. It came from a referral.
A referral from one of the top orthodontists in the United States, and also only one of 15 in the world that does a specific procedure, and runs an organization consisting of orthodontists in different countries around the world.
I thought it was an odd referral, because usually lawyers, orthodontists, dentists, doctors, etc. refer people in their line of work or at least in a certain vertical. Turns out the HVAC contractor was his brother in law and my long time client spoke well of me when they were discussing business.
The HVAC guy struggled to pick up business from search. He had a pretty large business and wasn’t a one man show. He handled commercial refrigeration, and other commercial services as well as a robust residential service.
He spent $60,000 a year in phone book advertising.
$10,000/mo in radio advertising and even dropped 50 grand on TV ads.
The ROI wasn’t great, but it did bring in money. Problem was, he was hiring SEO agencies left and right to work on his site. Sometimes they demanded he start a new site on a new domain because that would solve all his problems, but in the end, it never did. He had a strong PPC budget, but considering some of the keywords would range from $50-90/click, it wasn’t a priority.
3 years of “SEO work” and nothing to show for it.
Some of the issues, were created by the client, when hiring different companies left and right, and they all had different strategies but he gave up on them before fully implemented. Maybe they eventually would have had him ranking.
I knew that I didn’t have much time, considering his history of impatience. Luckily, I’m not one that believes you need a minimum of 3-6 months to get the intended results.
Would you like your business to be the subject of a case study? Submit your interest now!
Getting Started
The first step is always preparation and research. I needed to know what damage other SEOs have done, what impact other efforts have had, and analyze the existing site, listing, citations and competitor citations and sites.
This is something that you will get better at with time but a few things you want to look for are:
- Problems with the address, how many businesses have used that address before?
- What has been done with citations? NAP consistency? How many issues?
- How is the site currently optimized with titles, and headings? How much content? How many pages?
- Internal linking structure, menus, sub menus, content links, etc.
- Links, citations and on page optimization of competitors… how many are using bogus addresses? Is there enough evidence to convince Google they are using a spammy address, even if they aren’t.
- How many listings have EMD’s or Partial Match domains?
- How many listings are using a city modifier in the business name for GMB?
These are just a few things I always look for.
3 businesses in the top 15-20 were using UPS stores / Virtual offices. I was able to get those removed with no trouble, and they remain removed today.
3 additional businesses had city modifiers in the GMB business name which was causing inflated strength in their listings. I was able to correct those in map maker and all my edits went through without a problem.
Through research, I was able to eliminate 6 competitors without touching the site.
On Page Optimization Strategy
After laying the ground work with research and a bit of reporting, it was time to get moving on the actual optimization related stuff.
There’s no need to go overboard with it. Some people have preached about stuffing images with EXIF data which is a bunch of malarkey. ALT tags can be useful but have very little impact in search.
There are 3 major areas of focus.
- Title tags
- URLs
- Headings
Understanding Title Tags for Local Search
Surely you’ve heard about the character limit for title tags. According to Moz, you should optimize your title tags with a 50-60 character limit.
Hogwash I tell you…
What Moz is referring to, is the snippet of the title tag that Google will use, or can use, when a page gets displayed in organic search.
Example: Here’s the titles displayed for the keyword Long Tail Pro vs. Market Samurai (yes, I’m ranking above the main authority site, even with practically 0 backlinks)
I think the total characters I’ve used for the title is 68 or so. Google will automatically use what it sees as the most relevant part of the title.
For local search, your primary focus is to rank in the 3 pack. What gets displayed is not the title tag, but the business name that is used in the Google My Business listing.
I typically optimize title tags to be between 65-80 characters. I don’t care about the 50-60 character rule. I care about adding as much relevance as possible without triggering any kind of spam filter.
Why limit myself between 65-80 characters, why not add more keywords and location relevance?
Because at some point, it comes across as spam. 65-80 characters is not spammy as long as you’re not repeating keywords. Remember, our focus is the 3 pack, not organic, but even if it were organic, Google would still apply the most relevant part of the title.
I have to reiterate once again… the 50-60 character limit is design related for Google, it is not the limit of what Google looks for to judge the relevance of a website or page.
Title Tag Templates
I’m going to make this very easy for you. If you’re optimizing for HVAC clients, you can simply use the same structure outlined in here.
Home Page title tag – [Business Name] HVAC Contractor in City, State Abbreviation
Example: Joe’s AC repair and HVAC Contractor in Tulsa, OK
The example would prove to be a great title tag because you have the business name that has AC repair, along with the main GMB category keyword being HVAC Contractor, you also have Tulsa, OK as the city.
About Us title tag – Business Name is the #1 HVAC Contractor in [City Name]
Services title tag – [Business Name] heating and cooling services in [City Name], [State Abbreviation]
Sub menu – Air Conditioning Repair – title tag – [Business Name] A/C Repair Experts in [City], [State Abbr.]
Sub menu – Furnace Repair – title tag – [Business Name] Furnace Repair and Heating Contractor in [City]
Sub menu – Air Conditioning Installation – title tag – [Business Name] AC Installation and Replacement in [City], [State Abbr.]
Sub Menu – Ductless Air Conditioning – title tag – [Business Name] Ductless AC Installation in [City], [State Abbr.]
Note: A services page is not enough, you should have an overview of each service on the service page, but also have a drop down menu or links to sub pages where you can optimize for each service.
Contact Page – Contact an HVAC Contractor Today – [Business Name]
Why do I setup tags this way?
There’s a complicated topic in SEO that I like to use, that works better than traditional PBNs in my opinion, and that is using Co-Occurrence and Co-Citations. While what you do on your own site isn’t exactly co-occurrence building, it does help you optimize a specific footprint you want created…
That footprint, is association between the business name, category keyword and related keywords, and the location.
When you have the business name in the title along with keywords, it shows strong association. When you have the location in there, it identifies the business name with the location. Setting up your title tags properly, allows your off page optimization to go much more smoothly and with less effort than the majority of your competitors.
The more association you can create between a business name, keyword(s), location and even the owner’s name, the better! Just as you would build citations to show relevance to a location that’s tied between a name, address and phone number, you would do the same with your content, titles, and other properties.
Let’s Talk URL Structure
For this particular client, I ended up rewriting all the URLs.
For those of you handling this on your own, or doing SEO for clients, there are a few things you have to consider before rewriting the URLs.
1.) Is the business ranking in GMB or organically for any of these pages or keywords?
2.) How far behind is the business if they aren’t ranking in the top 3?
3.) Were the page title tags fairly well optimized before you started any work?
4.) Do they have any local backlinks to the pages?
These are just a couple questions you should ask yourself.
If the business is ranking in GMB or getting considerable traffic from organic search, you’d probably be wise to leave the URLs alone. Instead of re-optimizing the URLs, you can pick up the slack later on when optimizing headings.
If the business is on the cusp of top 3 rankings, keep the URLs the same. Ranking 4-7, it is probably safe to keep things the way they are and pick up the slack in other areas. In extremely competitive cities and industries, you may have to change the URLs if you’ve done everything possible to cut the edge the businesses ranked above you have. 98% of the time, you would keep the URLs the same.
Working with clients, you’ll occasionally come across a few that have either hired a decent SEO company in the past, or have done their own SEO, and a pretty good job optimizing. When the title tags are already optimized, and heading tags along with content look pretty good, you’ll want to consider changing the URL structure if they aren’t ranking already.
I don’t care much about backlinks from different web 2.0 properties or other sources when considering whether to change the URLs to better optimize for search. However, what I look for, is local related backlinks. Backlinks from sites in the same city, or local news outlets that may have linked to one of the internal pages at some point. If they have these links, or even press release links to internal pages, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, keep those URLs the same, and never change them.
For everything else, always add 301 redirects from old URLs to the new URLs, or at the very least, 301 redirect to the home page.
URL Template / Examples
What you do in your URL, really depends on what you do with the page title. A couple of years ago, you could add the keyword and location in a URL with no problems, and greatly increase the visibility that site has not just in local listings but in organic search as well. Nowadays, it’s a bit more complicated.
You can’t stuff keywords in along with the location on every single page, you have to be aware of everything you do and optimize strategically.
For example lets say this is a services page:
(no idea if this is a real site or not, it’s just for the purpose of an example)
Non-optimized – joesACrepair.com/services
Outdated – joesACrepair.com/hvac-contractor-atlanta-ga
Proper format – joesACrepair.com/joes-hvac-services
Acceptable – joesACrepair.com/our-atlanta-services
If you look further above in the title section, the title for the services page was:
[Business Name] heating and cooling services in [City Name], [State Abbreviation]
Using the URL structure: joes-hvac-services, includes part of the business name, along with hvac as the keyword. Over optimizing would be to include the city and state in the URL, which you would not want to do when it is already included in the title tag. The only exception to this rule, is when creating city specific landing pages.
You could also choose to not include “hvac” in the URL, and instead go for the city. Some may sense a weak location association, which at that point, it is location that should have priority instead of the keywords.
Since the title included heating and cooling services, I would prefer to have hvac in the URL since that is the main GMB category keyword, and it is associated with both heating and cooling. Having similar, but different words in the URL, compliments the title tag and also shows strong signals of relevance to Google.
Another example for a furnace repair page:
Not really optimized – joesACrepair.com/furnace-repair
Possibly over optimized – joesACrepair.com/furnace-repair-atlanta-ga
Proper – joesACrepair.com/heating-contractor-atl
Acceptable – joesACrepair.com/furnace-repair-company
Acceptable – joesACrepair.com/heating-atlanta
title tag – [Business Name] Furnace Repair and Heating Contractor in [City]
This one is a bit different, just to show you a bit of variance and how things can change depending on the page, other pages, and title tags.
None of these URL structures, are exactly bad. Even the furnace-repair example wasn’t a bad URL, you could just do more with it.
The over optimized example, is not over optimized if you’re only doing a couple pages like that. Personally, I like to add city and state to a URL on 1 page for every 4 or 5 other pages without it in the URL.
The first proper/acceptable example shows a keyword with a popular city abbreviation for Atlanta. Since the title tag would have the city fully spelled out, it’s unnecessary to include it in the URL, however, the city abbreviation allows for a stronger location association without being seen as spammy.
The next example, furnace-repair-company takes a partial keyword from the title, while adding company instead of contractor, and with no location association. This is perfectly fine to do, but for HVAC companies, I prefer to not have location association in URLs with the exception of the more competitive, AC repair and furnace repair terms/pages.
Heating-Atlanta is an example that would be acceptable if once again, you’re worried more about location association than keyword association. Also, it would be ideal for those competing in GMB opposed to a lead gen site competing in organic. It’s not loaded with keywords, but it keeps the URL short, while including an important word (heating) along with the location identifier.
Proper Heading Tags
There’s certainly more to on page optimization than the big 3, however, getting these 3 things down and working together gives you a huge advantage over the competition.
Heading tags are the final piece of the 3 piece puzzle for on page optimization!
Common Issues with Heading Tags
One of the biggest problems most of you will suffer from, is bad coding from the web designer you used or template you decided to buy and customize.
Using the SEO Quake tool bar, you can easily see different on page issues. One of the most common, is related to the headings people use, or the heading tags.
When I say heading tags, I mean, <h1>, <h2>, etc. Or if you’re using wordpress, they’re just called Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on in the WYSIWYG editor.
The problem with many templates, is the fact that they use heading tags for certain design elements. These are pretty easy issues to fix, and outsourcing is incredibly cheap. A freelancer on upwork for $5/hr can knock out these changes usually in an hour or less.
For example, some themes will have the title of a blog post display as an h2 when it should be an h1. Also, sidebar modules occasionally get displayed as an h2, when it shouldn’t be a heading tag at all.
Optimizing Your Heading Tags
How you optimize your heading tags, truly depends on how you’ve optimized your title tags, and URLs.
The common practice that I’ve seen being preached for the last 4 years or so, is that your h1 tag should be the exact same as your title tag. Of course, I’m not a believer.
We don’t want h1 tags to be the exact same as the title because search has evolved. We no longer target single keywords with exact phrasing. Instead, we cover a range of keywords under the same topic or within the same industry.
If you understand LSI, then it would be foolish to repeat the same exact thing when you can essentially say the same thing with different words. Words, that support the main idea / keyword(s) you’re going for.
Remember… we’re not wanting to just repeat keywords. We want to show the strongest relevance possible to the industry, location, and the range of keywords you’re going for.
For example:
An HVAC contractor that has a page about air conditioning repair, would probably have the h1 as “Business Name A/C Repair Service”, or “City Name’s Best A/C Repair Expert”.
The h1 is usually easy, but it’s the h2 tags and possibly h3 tags that make an even bigger difference with relevance.
You don’t want to have content that just outlines what you do, instead, you want to go further in depth.
For an Air Conditioning Repair page, you would want an overview of what you do under the h1 tag. Two paragraphs are perfectly fine.
Following those two paragraphs, you would ideally go further in depth about the different repair issues. Each issue, should be a heading tag. One about air handler motors, compressors, condensate drains with a paragraph about each is a great way to increase the relevance of the page and your site as a whole.
Heading Tag Examples and Templates
Like I said above, how you optimize your heading tags, depends a lot on your title and URL.
Here are a few examples.
Let’s use an Air Conditioning Repair page as one of the examples, and the same fictitious JoesACrepair domain.
The title tag is – [Business Name] A/C Repair Experts in [City], [State Abbr.]
URL – JoesACrepair.com/air-conditioning-contractor
The H1 tag I would use is “Joe’s Air Conditioning Repair Serving Atlanta”
Since the URL doesn’t have the city identifier, I feel like it is okay to include the city in the h1 tag. If you have the city in the URL, you would leave the city out of the h1 tag, and instead mention it an additional time in an h2/h3 tag.
If you follow my advice in the above section, you would have a paragraph or two, then go further in depth with different common issues or repairs that are made.
The H2 tag I would use: Common Repairs our HVAC Contractors Make
I would follow it with a sentence or two of filler, along with a link to get a free estimate or to fill out a contact form.
Next, I would use other h2 tags, or you can also use h3 tags to describe 3 common repair issues.
h2/h3 – Air Handler Motor Replacement
h2/h3 – Refrigerant leak detection and repair
h2/h3 – Condensate pump replacement
h2/h3 – Other Repairs Our Atlanta Based HVAC Experts Make (followed by a bulleted list)
Deciding Whether to Use H2 or H3 Tags
Some people have theories on what to use and when, but I don’t really have an opinion on that. My opinion is that it doesn’t make any measurable difference.
Deciding whether to use h2 or h3 for your sub headings, is entirely up to you and most likely comes down to format preference, not SEO benefit.
Internal Linking Strategy
For most clients I’ve always focused primarily on the top 3 on page things I’ve discussed. One thing I think it important enough to mention is how you should link internally on your own website.
Some people will link the keywords with exact match anchor text, and that’s fine as long as you do it sparingly.
Typically, I like to have at least 2 internal, contextual links per page.
I will only link to a specific page with exact match anchor text for your targeted keyword, once. That doesn’t mean I only link to that specific page once. For service related sub menu items, I like to link to with exact match keywords on the service page, and using heading tags as a link.
For all other times I link to a certain page, it is using the surrounding context as the anchor. Google is smart enough to know what is relevant and what isn’t.
A couple rules to remember:
- When internal linking, only load the anchor text with keywords for a certain page, once.
- Use relevant surrounding context to link to other internal pages
- When an h2 or h3 tag is linked with anchor text, it seems to carry more weight / importance
- A minimum of 2 internal links per page, but keep them natural looking.
Related Reading: 7 Local Link Building Tips to Dominate Local Search
Basic Off Page SEO Strategy
I want to outline a few things I did for this client, along with what I do for almost every client I’ve worked with. Now… I’m not going to outline everything, because this post has already turned into quite the novel, and we can go on and on about off page tactics.
Instead of going into an exhaustive list of things, I’m going to lay out highly actionable tactics you can and should use for yourself and clients, and not even mention anything about PBNs because they are rarely necessary for local search.
Creating a Social Fortress
I’m not positive but I think the phrase social fortress was coined by Matt Diggity who wrote a guest post a while back here on transitioning from client SEO to affiliate SEO.
We have different reasons for creating it, his is to act as a buffer between PBN links and your site. My reason is because for a legitimate business, it makes sense! It also gives you an opportunity to create a stronger location and industry relevance with association to your business.
Here’s a few that I believe are necessary to create:
- Google+
- Tumblr
- Youtube
- Vimeo
- LinkedIn (company page)
Top secret tips: Some will say this is bad advice, but what I like to do is keyword stuff when optimizing these properties. Joe’s AC Repair would be the typical choice by most when creating these profiles or optimizing certain aspects (like video titles and descriptions, or even urls). What I like to do, is add keywords and location to the properties so you have a chance for them to act as a parasite.
Joe’s AC repair, may be a bad example since he has a keyword in his business name already. So instead, we would just add the location. For example, Joe’s AC Repair in Atlanta would be the twitter handle I would create and optimize for. Same with LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
In some cases, like with Facebook and Twitter, I wouldn’t even bother using the business name as the URL, instead I would use the main GMB category keyword with location, and tie it together by adding some NAP data and a link to the website.
These properties can also act as a citation, or partial citation by including your website link, and phone number. Address is optional but helpful if you can find a place to add it, usually in a description box.
If you build these properties out, you would want to follow or interact with others in your industry.
I don’t care about social engagement. If it happens, great, but that’s not the purpose of these properties.
The purpose of this is to create a strong footprint that shows the business name is strongly associated with the industry it is in, as well as the location.
In Google+, while the property is next to dead it still gives a bit of value. Make sure your brand page joins communities that are relevant to your field, and try to also join location specific groups for the added boost in relevance.
Related Reading: The Ultimate Guide to Using Parasites for SEO
Let’s Talk Citations
On this blog, I’ve already discussed citations in depth. If you need a refresher here’s a few good posts to go through:
The Smart SEO’s Ultimate Guide to Building Citations for Local SEO
Local SEO Ranking Factors – Let’s Shed Some New Light
6 Best Kept Secrets to Dominate Local Search (lots on citations here)
Some of the citation sources I’m going to give you were already mentioned above, like Facebook and LinkedIn. I know everyone preaches “NAP Consistency” but for FB and LI, follow my advice instead. Google (and even the citation tracker services) pick up the citations based on certain consistencies, the most important being phone number, not business name.
Here’s some of the top citation sources to grab:
- Yelp
- Better Business Bureau
- Yellow Pages
- Manta
- Thumbtack
- TripAdvisor
- CitySearch
- Super Pages
- bing Local
- CrunchBase
- AngiesList
- Hotfrog
- Foursquare
Alternative Citation Sources
You and your competitors are always going for those main citation sources. Everyone ranking well in competitive areas, usually has those as a citation source. So how do you build on that?
Pretty much any web 2.0 property will be able to double as a citation source. Forget about just using web 2.0 links, you should be using web 2.0 properties to display your NAP data, or at the very least, the phone number.
Videos, are another citation source that are extremely strong and probably favored more by Google than even the monster directories like yelp (unless you’re in the bay area). I’ve discussed it before, but basic animoto style videos work perfectly fine.
For the particular client I’ve talked about in this post, I did videos for each service offered, optimizing the title of the video (even the file name) to include the keyword, location and phone number. In the description, giving an overview of the service, followed with a call to action and NAP information.
You can boost that strategy further, by implementing video syndication. Using the same video on all the different video upload sites like vimeo, daily motion and others.
Creating Your Own Local Backlinks
For most doing local SEO, implementing a local backlinking strategy is a pretty difficult task.
Most common ways of getting backlinks, are essentially by paying for them. In some cases, it is the local BNI dues that gets you listed in their local chapter directory, or a membership to the chamber of commerce in your city. Other ways are paying for sponsorship of 5k races, city events or other events that need sponsors.
It takes money, and a lot of time investment to do that.
Personally, I like to have as much profit as possible, the best results as possible, while investing as little time as possible. That’s why I prefer to be in control of my own local properties, without having to rely on a PBN. Actually you can think of it as a PBN but much easier to manage, and almost completely safe.
Step 1 – Set up some web 2.0 blogging properties
These are properties that you DO NOT use your business name when optimizing, or even when signing up.
3 properties I like to have, are:
WordPress.com blogs
Typepad Blogs
Blogger
You don’t optimize for your business because you’re wanting to artificially create a local relevant property.
If you’re from Cleveland, Ohio, you would optimize these properties as being a “news” property for Cleveland OH.
Step 2 – Borrow Content from Local News Sites
Go ahead and find a local newspaper, site, or local news outlet that publishes content online. Find some articles, and copy and paste them.
I like to find business related news, like business openings, that include the address of the business that is opening. Having different addresses within the city, helps add location relevance.
What you’re doing here, is just acting as a syndication outlet.
5-10 articles from local news site, per property you have for the purpose, is usually good enough. For ultra competitive cities and industries you may want to do more or set up an IFTTT recipe to automate this on a regular basis.
Step 3 – Create 2 Original Articles on Each Property
If possible, these are the articles you want to “pin” or “sticky” so they remain on the first page, preferably at the top. Normally, I don’t even need to worry about it, because these are the final 2 articles I create for each property without having to add any additional content.
The first article:
I like to do a city specific guide / directory on different types of businesses to use. Think of it as a home service guide with different businesses getting listed. Only one business per industry… for example:
1 HVAC Contractor
1 Landscaper
1 Roofing Company
1 Lawn Care
1 Carpet Cleaning
etc.
Make sure to include these businesses with full NAP information. Of course, you, or your client should also be in that list, with a link to the website.
The 2nd article:
Blatant, self promotion.
I like to approach the 2nd and final custom article with a format similar to being a press release.
The 1st step is to search for the industry + scam. Look at the details, and write a press release style article about it, from the point of view of yourself or the client.
For example: Headline – Local HVAC Contractor Warns [City] Residents of Common Scams
In the article, talk about the scam. Give generic tips on how to choose an HVAC Contractor, and at the end, write a paragraph or two about the company with a link back to the website, along with NAP data.
This is the last article you should need to write for each property. For best results, spin it a bit for other properties if you’re feeling lazy and not wanting to write completely unique content for each property you have.
Step 4 – (Optional) Semi Gray Hat Optimization
Most properties will have a description field or widget/module you can add in the sidebar. What I like to do is create a short paragraph about the site/property. Not YOUR site… but the property you created.
This is not white hat. It is not honest. The popular Local SEO “Experts” will never recommend it… but it works.
I like to create a footprint that makes it appear that the property you created is owned by the local news site or source you took content from. Using the newpaper/new site name, along with THEIR NAP data, gives it an extra push and much stronger location relevance.
Final Thoughts
There’s a common problem that impacts business owners, AND SEO companies alike. Business owners are waiting for results, for far too long. SEO companies, many of them, outsource all the tasks to freelancers or off shore SEO companies that don’t know what they’re doing.
Many are using outdated tactics, or tactics that just aren’t as effective as they used to be.
This becomes apparent when visiting any marketing forum and you look at the SEO related questions people have, and the answers they receive.
Hopefully, this exact template that was able to get results in under a month, will help those of you doing SEO for your own business, and those of you handling SEO for clients.
As always, comments, questions, and additions are welcome in the comments below!
Haha, you’re one of very few people I follow and today was one of very few subscription emails I actually open! (I know… shame, shame! but, hey, I’m just being honest! So good one!
I get a lot of good stuff out of your articles. Thank you. And keep up the good work! 🙂
Thanks for the comment Alicia! Glad you opened it and like it.
Take my money bro put a donate button up hahaha.
The local link building part is one of the best gold nuggets ive come across. Genius stuff.
Ill be keeping this tab open gonna have to read it over another couple times. Excellebt info as always my man
Thanks for the comment… Once you try it out, you’ll see how effective it is. Glad you liked it.
Damn. Take it down… giving away too much… ugh… more competition… just so you can make a… -Wait… what? It is free??
Even worse
LOL thanks for the comment.
Nathan is the ONLY guy I follow… I’ve paid Nathan literally thousands of dollars for this info in the past in private coaching and it has repaid my investment 100X…
Way to go brother – dropping this for free is a selfless move that will help many struggling and aspiring SEO’s to finally get the rankings without the BS normally associated with ‘guru’ drivel…
IF you’re reading this and on the fence about jumping in:
The Skype Mastermind has changed my life and business – the info shared inside the private Skype group is double platinum value, better than any other SEO advice on the internet, you will have a support system of motivational friends doing the same thing as you, shared resources and questions to your most pressing questions, encouragement and ass kickings! BUT, most importantly – strategies that are actually proven and really work…
MJB
Thank you for the kind words Martin, and the plug.
How does one join the skype mastermind?
Hey John, the skype mastermind group is for anyone that has bought my Ultimate Agency Blueprint or my Ice Cold Email Gold guide.
It’s the wee hours of the morning, Pacific Time, I should be completing other work, but I just had to read your email and this post. Akkkk! This info is right on time for a local client ( DUI atty), in a major market.
I look forward to your emails and blog posts like a little kid getting a present.
In these times of complete insanity, it is refreshing to actually read well thought out ideas. Thank you for this bit of sanity.
I do have a request, can you add a search feature to the Income Bully blog? Sometimes, I need to re-read one of your previous posts and I have to search manually through all of the posts to find the one I’m looking for. Yeah, I use you as reference material/textbook on real world digital marketing.
Hey Aunt D, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, not just adding a search feature but better categorizing things to make it easier to navigate certain topics. I will see what I can do!
So good. Really appreciate the time, effort, knowledge shared. Been looking forward to this post for a while, and looking forward to what’s to come. I’ve said it before and willing to bet I’ll be saying it again… keep up the great work!
Thanks Rey, I appreciate it!
So you recommend dishonesty, manipulation and fraud for local link building.
Your nonchalent recommendation, attitude, and entire approach is dispicable.
Consider me unsubscribed.
Consider me un-apologetically indifferent. This blog, my email list… they aren’t a “safe space” snowflake.
But hey… thanks for spending time to read the entire 5K+ word post just to pick out a part that you don’t feel comfortable with.
@Charles Hundt,
Oh well then go away then with your negative energy! If you don’t like it, go away and read Moz, Search Engine Journal and the so called “white hat” idiots who tell you to just write good content and that’s all you need and links will not work anymore within 6 months to a year. That’s what the so called “white hat” clowns have said for years…
New Flash: The so called “white hat” idiots you follow never bothered to tell you that anything, and I mean ANYTHING, you do to manipulate your site for the purpose of ranking high in Google, including so called “white hat” on-page practices and sending emails begging other bloggers for guest posts is also against Google’s TOS!! Google wants you to get links from 3rd party sources naturally, not making a list and sending emails begging for guest post, like the the so called “white hat” frauds told you to do….
Oh, BTW, Google gives two shits what “hat” SEO you THINK you are. The Google Web Spam Team does not like so called “white hats” anymore or less than so called gray and black, and white hats get penalized, too. Show me where they says other wise about SEO”hats”.. White hat Nazis forgot to tell you that……
So Unsubscribe and go away, Charles! Bye! But I bet you really will not, though. You will still lurk this blog. I’m sure of it 🙂 #troll #loser
Sorry Nate, but I had to do it man. lol.. Keep doing what you are doing. 99.9% of us appreciate it, and screw those 0.5% anonymous trolls with fake names and email addresses that pop up and leave negative comments… lol..
LOL, yesterday when I checked, he visited this page 6 different times after posting that comment. You make a very good point though, white hat, black hat, it’s all manipulation. You just have to be smart about analyzing risk vs. reward.
Nate, you have done it again, man..
I said it before and I will say it again, you could or could have put these powerful blog posts you have had on local SEO out as a product and charged money for it! That’s how good it is; people may not realize it.. You are very generous to put out what you have put out here.. Very generous. SEO guru are taking people to the cleaners for courses from $497 to $3000 for courses! One well known group charges $8k! I feel the info you have given here is just as good as all those guys.
Nate has a good heart people, and I think folks better soak this stuff in while they can before he wakes up one of these days and comes to his senses and starts charging for this info because this some deep stuff here… He just laid a out a powerful road map to rank almost any local websites and he did not charge a penny!
I almost agree with TJ above; I was like Nate should take this down in a few days because this is powerful stuff! I agree.. You have local SEO and digital marketing agencies in my area who I know do not know this stuff. I’m glad they are unlikely to find it and I have it. 🙂
Thanks Nate
Marc
Thanks for the kind words Marc. I’ve seen some of the expensive courses, and it seems like the cornerstone of some of them are gimmicky tactics that seem original, but often have no impact. Crazy they’re charging that much. I’m a friend of capitalism, so I can’t hate on it, if the market buys at whatever price they set, good for them.
Great read. Valuable, concise, actionable information. I’m a fan😀
Hey Curtis, glad you’ve liked it!
Thanks for the mention. I didn’t coin “social fortress” though. I believe Kotton Grammar did.
Hey Matt, thanks for dropping by. First time I heard it was from you, so it’s almost like coining the phrase. LOL.
one thing a lot of SEO miss out on is onpage is 100% the most impotant starting point. Without it your making your own work very difficult
Absolutely right… all other efforts are diminished without strong on page. Thanks for the comment.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s not the easiest thing to master, and it’s certainly not the sexiest activity. I’m glad a lot of people skip over this step as it makes my job easier 😀
Nate,
How do you keep coming up with these fantastic articles? Keep them coming.
Quick question:
I have a website that has the business name as well as the location (not the state though) in the url. It would read http://www.[business name]location[city].com
How would I set this up for the Title, and url templet.
Thanks,
Cary
So let me make sure I understand right… Using the example of JoesACrepair… we can say it’s JoesACrepairatlanta.com
For something like that, I would have shorter keyword URLs that don’t include the location, but include city and state in the title.
For example: url for ac repair = joesACrepairAtlanta.com/air-conditioning-repair or /ac-repair. For the title, I would have Air Conditioning Contractor in Atlanta, GA (or something similar) and if there’s enough room, include the business name at the end, if not, no biggy.
The URL would be the easiest part, since the Domain / URL has the business name and location already, there’s no need to repeat it later in the URL. I would just expand on related keywords with the page urls. If you have the city already in the domain, don’t include it. If you have a keyword in the domain, most of the time you wouldn’t include it (there’s always exceptions lol).
Does that help? The main thing is to just think strategically about it. If a URL has certain keywords, use complimenting keywords or synonymns for titles and headings. A/C Repair is also Air Conditioning, Google recognizes how these are essentially the same but the different words which mean the same, are helping your overall relevance.
I have a question, you used Tulsa as an example. What if a company covers not only Tulsa, OK but also OKC, OK, Fort Smith, AR and Joplin, MO all with the same services. How can you use one main site to rank in all areas?
Hey PJ, if you’re using a service area example, there’s other methods to use like individual, city specific landing pages. If you have a physical presence in each of those cities and have GMB verified for each city, then you should probably steer clear from location being mentioned on your main pages (in URLs and titles). Instead, have a locations or service area page that is optimized for the main GMB category keyword with locations, and having a specific page for each city.
Focus more on industry and keyword relevance on your main pages, then worry about location relevance on your location pages/landing pages.
Also, if possible, you should have locations, phone numbers, and addresses listed in the footer of each page across the site. I would link the location to the corresponding landing page. Obviously, that’s not possible for very large chains that cover a ton of cities, but if you’re just covering 5-6 cities, it’s something that will help a lot.
Fantastic post mate, and especially timely as I’ve recently brought on a new HVAC client. You obviously put a lot of time and effort into this post. Thanks for your contributions to the community.
Appreciate the comment Simon!
Absolutely excellent post. Some great information in here and one of the best articles I’ve seen on Local SEO in a long long time.
One Quick question in regard to:
“3 businesses in the top 15-20 were using UPS stores / Virtual offices. I was able to get those removed with no trouble, and they remain removed today.”
“3 additional businesses had city modifiers in the GMB business name which was causing inflated strength in their listings. I was able to correct those in map maker and all my edits went through without a problem.”
How do you go about getting these removed?
a couple of ways:
If they have gone out of business
– in mapmaker, report them as closed
– in G maps, report them as closed
If they are spamming the geo in their listing, suggest an edit in either mapmaker and/or G maps.
What about these large home service chains dominating 3 packs. How does one combat that?
Follow the stuff in this post, and read a few other SEO related posts here and you won’t have a problem beating them.
Although I’m not sure I would report a competitor just because they have a UPS box. Many trades do not want to user their home address, and only need a PO box to collect invoices, checks, bank stuff etc.
Depends on how bad you want to beat them. Using the UPS store or virtual office is against the terms of use, so it’s an easy way to get some of the competition removed. You CAN hide the address, using a PO box, but manually verifying with GMB support over the phone. They’ll usually work with you, but very few people know that, even those doing SEO.
Glad you’ve found it helpful! You can use mapmaker for all your edits, or like Simon said, report them as closed. For the keyword loaded business names or geo location in business name, I’ve always found mapmaker to be the most helpful.
Great post and thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Question on title tags. Some suggest to “try” and squeeze in your main keyword at the beginning of the title…. which doesn’t always look natural. You suggest inserting your business name at the beginning. Thoughts on that ?
Also are your techniques more for 3 pack ranking or organic ranking ?
The focus of this post, is mostly with 3 pack rankings. With local rankings (3 pack) it is about overall relevance, not just the single page. The business name doesn’t have to be at the beginning, it’s just an example for a template, you can mix and match them. I don’t believe having the keyword in the beginning of the title is as beneficial as it used to be. When rankings were more keyword related instead of LSI and based on overall content relevance, there was some evidence of it being better. Nowadays, I haven’t seen compelling evidence for it.
Good idea for a post… I’ll put that on my to-do list.
Hi,
thanks for the post.
A couple of thinks:
1) Map Maker will shut down on next march; what after that?
2) I prefer keep the kw on the left of the title; there are avidences it works better
Just my 2 cents
MapMaker is just combining with Local Guides for the most part, with the exception of being able to add roads. I’m not 100% sure about the ability to edit where a location gets displayed. Instead of using mapmaker, you will be using the Google Local Guides program found here: https://www.google.com/local/guides/
To your 2nd point, there’s no current evidence that I’ve found to suggest that works anymore. I think the last case study on that was back in 2014-2015.
I don’t think you can modify directly in Local Guide, but only suggest as for the maps
I’ve tested recently switching the kw on the right after the Business Name for well ranked pages and they fall down in second page.
Got again the kw on the left and the pages return on the inital position.
Just my experience
1.) You can… It’s the same process as mapmaker. Supposedly the approval process is a little bit longer, but I haven’t personally noticed a difference for when I’ve made edits.
2.) Not sure why you would test an already ranking page, but there’s a lot of factors to consider and it doesn’t sound like a controlled test. With local SEO, I can tell you the keyword on the left, makes absolutely no difference. It’s not the page itself that matters, but the entire site. Now as far as organic search goes, maybe you’re right. I haven’t seen any proof of that though.
Id be interested in seeing a case study on that. My own experience suggests youre right that there is no advantage. I keep seeing it said though. Might be nice to take a close look and see
One more thing
The local guides seems pretty much the same just a different look. Seems harder to get around though. Ill miss map maker
Interesting… I thought it was much cleaner. I guess it gets easier with time, like all things lol.
Happy New Year! Glad to see you are back in action after the holidays!
As always, another great read. This encouraged me to re-align our focus for some local client sites in competitive markets!
Cheers
Happy new year to you too Dan. Good to hear, hope it helps!
Would you link back to the news website at bottom at each borrowed article or at all?
That’s up to you. If the original news article has a link to another news article on their own site within the content, I would also include that link. If not, it doesn’t really make much of a difference. Maybe 1 or 2 of the articles it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Not necessary for all of them though.
Great post as always. As a newbie to the SEO arena, I find this post very straight forward and simple to implement. I am sure these things will work as I have implemented your strategies from past posts and I have ranked sites on page 1 of Google. Page 1 of Google for a competitive industry in a local search. Brilliant and Pure Gold. Keep up the good work. Always appreciate. Thanks again J
Thanks for the comment Jayman. Hope you get great results with it!
Great process. How do you pull this off with multiple cities? I’ve read your multiple city post however I’m wondering if these 2 strategies will work in conjunction. Ie will the relevancy for the main city that you’ve optimized per this post be reduced when you add the other areas?
Thanks for the comment and question Hannah. It actually will work with multiple cities. This specific strategy is when you’re targeting one main city, you want the majority of the site to be optimized for your keywords and main location. Now if you’re targeting suburbs and other cities within a certain radius and you DO NOT have a physical presence in those cities, you would follow the multiple city strategy for those landing pages.
CREATING YOUR OWN LOCAL BACKLINKS
how many of these do you recommend making? Is three enough?
Hey Jon, my recommendation is simple… Try it out, and see what the results are! 3 certainly could be enough in some locations and industries, but I can’t give you a universal answer to that except test it out yourself.
Ok, finally getting around to putting this into action and I have a question about this part: “5-10 articles from local news site, per property you have for the purpose”
You mentioned WP.com, Blogger and Typepad – would you use the same 5-10 articles on each, or find different ones for each 2.0?
Or, do you tend to make (for example) WP.com sourced from “Local News4”, Blogger sourced from “CityWeekly.com”, Typepad from “City Times Newspaper” so that you can make use of your last bit of dark grey tactics (which *I* appreciate you sharing! LOL) as far as the sidebar association to the original news source.
I *think* I just answered my own question by writing it out and “thinking out loud” here, but wouldn’t mind your feedback on it if/when you have a chance. 🙂
Again, thanks!
Hey Rey, thanks for the comment.
If you have multiple news sources you can use, then yeah I would brand each 3rd party syndication site as different news sources.
For the content, you will have a greater impact by not reusing the same articles on each site. If you really want to overachieve, you would have other 3rd party sites you would use for each wp.com or blogger property that syndicates everything you put there.
Does that make sense? Basically… you don’t want your main properties to be duplicates of your other main properties. However, you can have other 3rd party properties that syndicate from your mains. Think of it as tier 1 and tier 2.
Nathan, when it comes to title tags, will it hurt rankings that I am currently getting if I change them to what you say here? For example, my About us and Service pages currently just have “About us” and “Services” as the title tags. I would like to change those to what you say in the article if it will help. But I don’t want to lose any ranking I currently have.
Also, there are a lot of times when you say to use the “city, state abbreviation”. What do us contractors who have a 40-50 town service area do in those situations, just use the state?
Hey Andrew, hope all has been going well! No, for about us and services, it wouldn’t hurt at all. But, if you’re ranking in your main target city (#1) there’s no benefit you will see from adding the location, so it’s probably better to focus on industry relevance than location. The exception would be if there are other keywords you’re still working to improve, then you would go ahead and add the city.
You basically want to keep your main pages separate from your city pages. So, if you target 30 cities, your main pages would in theory be optimized for the city you are located in without worrying about the city specific landing pages. City and state on the individual landing pages are ideal though.
Everything is going well! I hope the same for you too.
The website is still bringing in some calls.Every once in awhile I will get a bit of ambition and look for things to tweak in order to get better results.
Hi,
how many citations and map embeds did you buy?
Uhhh.. what? Did you read the post?
When you report businesses on Google for various things to get rid of them, is it ok to do it from your normal Google account? Or should you try and hide who you are by using a different account and IP address?
Hey Andrew, it really isn’t a big deal to change IPs, but it should be done on an account where you don’t have an associated listing, especially in the same industry.
Ok, thanks.
I only reported 1 other electrician from my normal account which is linked to my business. But they really did close so I assume it shouldn’t be an issue. I will use a separate account to report the rest.
Nice explanation.. So what would you do (not Jesus) if the state name is part of the domain name ;
example: NewYorkWinterstuff.com/ would u still optimize a inner heater page for Buffalo but you also service Long Island?
Hey Kenny, is the business serving every city in the state? How many physical locations does it have / GMB accounts? Typically, I’d optimize the majority of the site for your main target city and then focus more on the city specific landing pages for all the other locations or areas to target.
Hi Nathan, thanks for your detailed report. My question is: do I use the main city I serve with my business for my title tags, URLs and heading tags and use city names for the title tags, URLs and heading tags for my city specific landing pages and services for both local seo and organic results? Many thanks for your help.
Hey Thomas, yep that is correct. If you only have one GMB location, focus on that for your main pages, and then optimize the city specific for the other cities.
bro..you go it.
what about parasites for local seo? isnt it a better idea?
Parasites for Local SEO is just one part of an off page strategy. You kind of use citations as parasites but the parasites themselves aren’t as big of an impact in local overall. The biggest difference maker is the on page optimization.
Are you doing anything to juice up these news properties? Like sending a bunch of cheap pbn links to them? Planning on making three of these and firing heavy amounts of links at them.
I just tripped over an incomebully post yesterday, and since then I’ve read I think four articles. In my humble and non-expert opinion, all of them are probably the best thing I’ve ever read on SEO.
Thanks for the kind words!
I came across Income Bully in the last few days.
Baller as fuck man! Some seriously thought-provoking SEO reading vs what a lot of goodie-goodies preach. It’s good to see some raw content about what gets the job done vs ‘looking good’ to Google’.
I’m going to test the sloth method on a site or two. I can’t wait to see how the site reacts!
Ok so my question is about the local backlinks made with the web2.s
1. Do you see it having an impact for organics?
2. When linking back to the site are you linking the brand name? Naked URL? Or just mixing it up with both?
3. Do you ever go back and add content to the web2s or once and done?
4. Do you power the web2s up with something like GSA or another tool or just let them be?
5. How do I get on your email list? I tried to get on with one of those mid post optins and got a message saying the mailing list is no longer in use.
I have a client sites that is bouncing between #3 and #5 on page one for a decent local keyword. Competition hides PBNs as do I. Site is very powerful and it’s not the first rodeo for me. A lot of PBNs used, good clean ones that are quite strong, all citations done, a lot of niche links built, mixed in lots of other stuff. So the works has been done and the right way. It’s just one of those stubborn ones in the top 5 as you are up against people who know their shit and have budgets from clients.
So I’d be curious to know your thoughts on how this would impact organics. I’m planning to do 6x web2s just based on the fact that the competition has strong sites.
Cheers mate,
Dom