The first in a series of how to articles; we’re going to hyper focus and talk about Local Search Engine Optimization. We’re going to give you a step-by-step breakdown to ranking highly on local searches. Print and check off each item as you complete it. We’re going to use ourselves, Oak City Tech, a local webdesign/seo company based out of Raleigh/Durham, NC for any examples below. Be sure to check back from time to time as we will update this post when appropriate.

• Make sure you’re using a local area code for your primary phone number. (protip: this is the most important aspect of local SEO)
• Get a physical address in the city.
• Include your product or service keyword in your business title. (if possible)
• Update your business information with the secretary of state. Make sure the name, address, and phone match your website.
• Make sure there you don’t have more than one Google Business Page and delete the extras if you do.

• Include the City and State in the title of all pages.
• Include the City and State in your H1/H2 Tags, especially on the homepage.
• Make your site load as quickly as possible. (protip: if using WordPress speed up your website and decrease load time with the caching plugin or use CloudFlare)
• Optimize your titles, meta descriptions, and URLs to make them keyword rich and clickable, giving you a high organic click through rate.

• Write as much as you can about your industry and post articles to your blog. Write for people, not search engines. Don’t keyword spam; write the article in such a way that you, a human, would enjoy reading it. (protip: Minimum: one article/blog post per week.)
• Create audio and video content to post on your website and video sharing sites like Youtube. It’s 2016, folks really like video.

• Include the name of your city in your domain name. (if possible)
• Include the name of your product or service in your domain name. (if possible)
• Register your domain name several years into the future.
• Make sure your WHOIS information is public and that the name, address, and phone match that on your website.

• Put a blog section on the homepage of your website.
• Put out a press release. (protip: pay someone to syndicate it in print.)
• Contact local blogs and newspapers and ask them to interview you.
• Add as many pictures as you can to your Google Business Page.

• Get as many native reviews on your Google Business page as you can.
• Get reviews on as many different 3rd party review sites as you can.
• Make extra effort to seek out your customers who already use sites like Yelp and Google, and ask them to leave you a review. (protip: Reviewers who have many reviews are more authoritative in the eyes of a search engine).
• Ask your customers to mention the specific product or service they purchased in addition to the city they live in within in their review.
• Ask for reviews consistently over time, not in bursts. Make it a habit.(protip: Search engines don’t like a lot of reviews to show up overnight because they look fraudulent.)

• Open a YouTube and/or Flickr account and upload geotagged photos and videos. Be sure to link the account to your business’ website.
• Open a Facebook business page, and make sure your Name, Address, and Phone number match your website.
• Setup a Twitter account and mention your name, your city, and your product or service keyword in your bio.
• Setup your blog to automatically post to Facebook and Twitter. (protip: use IFTTT.com to do this for free.)
• Add Social Media buttons to your website and/or blog posts.