One of our customers asked a question: “How do I get on Google Places with multiple business locations?”  A simple answer might be: “Yes, sure! All you need to do is to visit Google My Business Locations (formerly Google Places) within your Google+ business account where you can import and verify your business locations list. It will take an hour of your time.” Then you may just sit and wait.

The problem with multiple business location management is not new, but still has some unclear aspects. One click submission of your multiple business locations to Google might be important, but it is the last step on the way of your successful local SEO strategy. The bulk locations uploading should be preceded by more important local SEO efforts.

To maximize geo-targeted SERP listings and increase local search domination for your multiple local business areas, you should follow some recommendations from Google Local Business guidelines and experts in local SEO.

Create Subdirectories Under One Single Domain

Keeping one single domain name with separate city-specific subdirectories (http://mysite.com/city) will minimize your SEO efforts and save you a lot of time and money. Having city-specific subfolders (subdirectories) with unique content and contact details for each location is a perfect SEO solution. Remember that we are not talking about creating sub-domains like city.mysite.com.

Create Location-Specific Landing Pages

As soon, as you have built proper site domain structure to benefit your local SEO, focus on creating location-specific landing pages that will contain unique geo-specific content and contact information relevant to the audience you target. What kind of content can you use to attract location-specific residents or tourists? Upload photos, publish testimonials and local news, describe upcoming events and dress your targeted keywords with geo-descriptors by putting them into the most SEO-valuable page elements (i.e.: page titles, H1 tags, image tags etc.). Go heavy on neighborhood descriptions (landmarks, nearby parks, malls etc.) on your local landing pages with images of these neighborhoods properly tagged. Such hyperlocal targeting (neighborhood descriptions) may bring additional SEO benefits and help your online visitors get a good sense of your business locations. Be careful about duplicates in your local content.

Tip: Be sure to submit each of your local landing page URLs to your website HTML sitemap in order to let search engines index them quickly.  You can use Geo Sitemap Generator to give Google accurate coordinates of your business locations.

Implement Local Schema Markup

Next, you should pattern your unstructured local data into structured tags. This will help search engines pick the most important elements from your multiple business location pages and display them in local SERP listings as structured snippets. Be sure to markup the most important local content (address, unique-per-location phone number, prices, business hours, map etc.) with specific schema tags for local businesses.

Run a Technical Audit and SEO Analysis

Run an SEO audit and content optimization analysis of your geo-specific pages in order to fix and improve critical aspects of your content.

1. Check your website’s general and local-focused URL structure for technical issues and access errors.
2. Make a deep SEO analysis of your location-specific landing pages for targeted terms + geo modifiers.
3. Check your local-focused content for mobile optimization bottlenecks since most local searches are made on mobile devices.

Refine citations for your multiple business locations

A citation is a non-linked mention of your local business NAP (name, address, phone number) information on specific citation listing sites. The citation factor is now a part of Google local algorithm hierarchy. So, if you want to be easily found in local SERP listings, submission to local directory sites like Yelp, Bing local, Google+, Foursquare, Yahoo Local is not a recommendation, but a must! Before you refine your local citations on business directories, you will need to check the consistency of your NAP information on all your local service pages and maybe use paid but time-saving data aggregators like Acxiom, Localeze and Infogroup for effective business listing management. Only a few local citation directories provide multi-location bulk submission for free. These are Foursquare, Bing Local and Google My Business.

Create a Google+ Business page

Once you are done with all the on-site local optimization and local citation submissions, feel free to strengthen your online presence for local search by building one descriptive and interactive Google+ Business Page or location-specific business pages. Then all depends on your time and resources in terms of making sure you get a relevant following for that page.

The post 6 Steps to Help a Multi-Location Business Dominate Local Search appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Good news for local SEO providers. Google has rolled out new features for the bulk location management tool to make your experience even better.

Now the status of each location on the Maps is included. It’ll help you to tell at a glance which locations are live, unverified, have errors or data conflicts, are duplicates, or are pending review.

(click on the image to see a full-size version)

The Data conflicts interface is updated. Now you can see what is live on Google, and which field is different from what’s in your dashboard. From there, you’ll be able to take action.

Social features are automatically enabled for all verified accounts. To use social features, like making a post, just hover over Live in the status column and click on the Google+ icon.

Each Google Places page will now have only one verified owner. That is great because this ensures that multiple verified users for the same location are not automatically overwriting each other’s business information. You will be able to assign manager access to other accounts to share the responsibility of updating data or posting social content.

I also want to remind that you can find a list of the best local sites and directories to submit your local business to in the WebCEO Content Submission tool. All sites there are carefully picked and investigated by our editors to help you promote your services and products to the most targeted audience.

The post Local SEO News: Google Places Bulk Location Management Has Been Updated appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Local business owners now have a new tool for managing their Google Places For Business Listing. The new Android app is available for free from the Google Play Store. This app let you update your business information, post updates and photos to your Google+ Local Page, respond to comments on Google+ and more. However, this app doesn’t let you respond to customer reviews, nor does it allow for the creation of new listings. It’s also currently available only for U.S. businesses.

Google has improved the way location targeting works in AdWords. Starting the week of November 11, 2013, advertisers using either the default or ‘location of interest’ setting will be able to show ads to potential customers by taking into account both the location that people are searching for, as well as the location they are searching from – even when they are international searches. Let’s see an example from Google:

For example, let’s say you own a hotel, and you are currently targeting Paris with the keyword “Paris hotels.” Previously, only people searching on Google.fr or Google.com from France could see your ad. Starting the week of November 11, your ads will be eligible to show to people searching for “Paris hotels” from anywhere in the world — for example, someone who lives in New York City who is booking a vacation in Paris.

Next is the topic of the most SEO-friendly practices in guest blogging. Google’s Matt Cutts offered his insight on how to write guest posts without being spammy. A true guest blogger, says Cutts in his latest video, is usually someone who is an expert on the subject matter and doesn’t drop a heavy amount of keywords in their anchor text. He emphasizes that if guest blogging is all you are doing to drive traffic to your site, you’re probably not doing any favors for your site’s reputation.

WebCEO has been called an awesome SEO tool for the serious SEO. You can try WebCEO Online SEO tools for free to make sure it is really the best SEO platform for your promotional agencies, or your own website.

And do not forget to add the “Learn with Google” webinars to your calendar.

The post SEO News of the Week: Local SEO and Guest Posts appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Bing announced that it will be launching Bing Ads in Australia and New Zealand. Bing Ads is partnering with Mi9, a digital media company in Australia that is a joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co. Bing’s search ads will be added to Mi9′s advertising capabilities which already includes advertising through Microsoft Advertising Exchange, Windows 8, Xbox and the Microsoft Media Network.

Matt Cutts posted a video, explaining what happens, when sites that sell links link to you. He said Google will not pass any value from that link seller website. It means, if a site that sells links is linking to you, it most likely won’t hurt you. However, you will not benefit from those links either.

Google has improved the look and feel of Google Places for Business, the improvement will roll out to business owners over the coming weeks. Google is promising faster data updates in most cases and better integration with Google products. If you haven’t yet verified your business listing, now is the time to do it!

Bing Ads has launched a redesign of its search advertising site. The site is designed to provide a single access point for content and resources about Bing Ads and search advertising on the Yahoo! Bing Network. It consolidates materials from the Bing Ads Community site, the Bing Ads search advertising support center and the help files found within the Bing Ads platform itself.

Easter is over but we can enjoy Google Easter Eggs every day. Thanks to Search Engine Land for making this Big List of Google Easter Eggs.

For managing your digital marketing efforts across different platforms, including optimizing your presence on Bing Ads and Google Places, explore WebCEO’s Online Marketing Tools. WebCEO provides a suite of tools designed to enhance your digital marketing strategy, improve your SEO, and streamline your advertising efforts across multiple channels.

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