This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter two of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

You can find chapter one on defining your services here.

Believe it or not, you’re not the sole agency providing local marketing, SEO, or digital marketing services. Surprising, right?

The reality is that you aren’t just competing against a couple of other agencies; you could be competing against hundreds. According to IBISWorld, in 2023, there were 187,705 SEO and Internet Marketing Consultants in the USA. That makes for a very busy space.

It also means that setting your agency apart is imperative. You can’t just set up shop, offer the exact same services as others around you, and hope that’s enough.

We touched on this briefly in the first part of the Agency Playbook, where we helped you define your positioning. In some cases, it could be as simple as being the only agency specializing in local SEO in your town. In others, it could be the niche you choose to target. Sometimes it isn’t that simple, though.

So today, we will hear from agency experts on how they help their agencies stand out from the crowd. We asked each of these experts the same three questions, and here’s what they had to say about getting noticed, creating a unique selling point (USP), and hindsight.

Amanda Jordan

Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo

Amanda states that the key for RicketyRoo has been being a positive part of the local SEO community, offering true transparency to its clients, and looking ahead.

1. Getting Noticed

Honestly, what we do to get noticed is what we tell our clients to do to rank and grow their businesses. We just work on being a positive and impactful part of our community.

2. Developing a USP

Blake Denman is the man behind our USP. We are refreshingly transparent and upfront. This isn’t just with our clients but also applies to how we work within our team and present to the industry.

3. Hindsight

Focus on the horizon, not the rearview mirror; hindsight is not a guide. We’re focusing on seeing where this road takes us.

Joy Hawkins

Owner/President at Sterling Sky

For Joy, the key has been tapping into their in-house expertise and properly showcasing it to the world. It’s about being knowledgeable in a noisy way to help bring a strong inbound funnel for their sales.

1. Getting Noticed

I think the best sales approach is to have a strong inbound funnel so that you have people contacting you who have already researched you.

At Sterling Sky, we don’t do any outbound sales. When leads reach out to us, we usually don’t have to “brag” too much about our accomplishments because the businesses have already seen it on our website.

We have a very strong social media presence and newsletter and are well-represented at conferences, podcasts, and webinars.

2. Developing a USP

Our USP is that we are trend leaders in the local SEO space and understand the local algorithms very well. We are often the first to put out case studies about new concepts and ranking factors. We have also discovered and named almost every local algorithm update Google has done in the last decade. The most recent one was the Openness algorithm update, which we shared and got Google to confirm shortly afterward.

Our other advantage is that we have a team of well-known experts in the local SEO space. There are nine employees at Sterling Sky that contribute to the Local Search Ranking Factors Study every year.

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3. Hindsight

I’d probably change nothing. We share a ton of information about SEO tactics we have succeeded with. Some people think this idea of “giving away your secrets” is nuts, but I would argue that it helps identify us as experts and is also the main reason why businesses want to work with us.

Emily Wassell

Head of SEO at tmwi

Emily says that tmwi focuses a lot on educating its clients. In addition to sharing their knowledge with the wider community, they double down on keeping their clients up-to-date and in the know. For tmwi, it’s all about using this education to help uncover things that many other agencies simply don’t look at and make new processes around it.

1. Getting Noticed

SEO still has a reputation as a ‘dark art,’ meaning many brands and marketers have limited trust in SEO services. We do everything agencies should be doing – smart work for clients, entering awards, SEO training and workshops, and creating insights and content to share with the industry.

But our most effective strategy is focusing on referrals from happy clients – SEO is a channel where having someone to vouch for your work can be a game-changer. Our team is focused on building really strong client relationships and quantifying the results of our work to make sure our clients always think of us with friends and colleagues and if they move to new roles.

2. Developing a USP

We didn’t want to get boxed in by having a USP for specific sectors, projects, websites, etc. But we do have a unique process for content–our audience-led content strategy offering, Audience and Search Intent Modelling.

It developed from frustration that so many SEO strategies just targeted the same high-volume keywords–it’s obvious and increasingly ineffective. The ASIM strategy takes a step back from the keywords to start with the audience interests and affinities, then overlay the keywords back over the top. In short, it helps brands dominate their category with content across multiple pillars. This means the content is built around the audience first and with SEO at the heart, so it works better across all channels.

3. Hindsight

We’re definitely more focused on connecting search optimizations to paid activity now–how can we improve the website and UX, using SEO insights, to get more conversions from the traffic we’re driving? It means we can demonstrate the value of SEO outside of just organic metrics and encourage clients to consider SEO alongside paid media rather than an either/or debate on budgets.

Greg Gifford

Chief Operating Officer at SearchLab

Greg wrote about people being more important than money in a BrightLocal Spotlight in 2023. A few of the tidbits from that piece on how SearchLab sets itself apart highlight how mindset is key:

“He [Mark Bealin] talked about true work-life balance.

About how money wasn’t as important as having happy employees who truly enjoyed their jobs.

About how he wanted to be the one to change people’s lives, help them get houses, and help send their kids to school.

Managers and team leads can talk about culture and inclusion all day long, but if it’s not part of the lifeblood of your agency, it doesn’t make much difference. Everyone from the top down has to be a part of making that change.

At SearchLab, we have several core values that we live by daily:

Continuous drive for learning and self-improvement

• Have integrity in all that we do
• Relentless pursuit of exceptional results
• Demonstrate accountability and responsibility
• Contribute to a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment.”

For more on this, you can read Greg’s Spotlight: ‘People are More Important Than Money’

Be Loud and Plan for the Future

It may not feel like rocket science, but a common theme from these agency experts is transparency and expertise. You don’t have to be reinventing the wheel or doing anything completely earth-shattering.

It can go a long way if your clients and prospective clients can see you by openly sharing your knowledge and expertise. Whether through social media, on a one-on-one basis with clients, at conferences, or simply on your own website, it can go a long way to help set you apart.

Look hard at how you can use the experts you have in-house to help tell your unique stories on SEO. Do this, and you’ll not only show you know what you’re doing, but your happy clients will tell others, too. Being true subject-area experts can even stop you from having to work so hard at outbound sales.

That being said, looking ahead is important. Put together a robust plan, look at investing in the right people, and then nurture them to be the best they can be.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter one of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

The guide takes inspiration from Claire Carlile’s Academy course ‘How to Win Your First Local SEO Client’.

Setting up a new local SEO agency is exciting. Being your own boss, working on your terms, and doing things your way is a hard gig to beat. It’s professionally and personally rewarding. One thing it isn’t, though, is easy.

Whether you already run an agency but feel it’s time for a reset, want to add local SEO to your other digital offerings, or are a consultant ready to scale up to agency owner, getting started requires considerable upfront planning.

The sheer volume of tasks you’ll need to complete before launch day can feel daunting. Many of the decisions you need to make come with a huge side order of pressure. That’s because each decision directly impacts the direction of your new business and its chances of success (or failure).

That’s where we come in. Our Agency Playbook is your blueprint to get your new local SEO agency off the ground.

Defining Your Services

Before you can successfully launch your business, you need a clear idea of what you’re going to sell. You might think that’s the easy bit. After all, it’s a local SEO agency, so the clue will be in the name, right? Not exactly.

In today’s search landscape, local SEO is a broad umbrella term for a rapidly growing range of tactics and specialisms. That means you could opt to focus on just one or two niche areas of expertise, such as:

• Google Business Profile Optimization
• Reputation Management
• Local Link Building
• Copywriting
• Citation Building
• Data and Analytics
• Social Marketing 
• Technical Optimization 

If you read that list and answer, “Check. Check. Check,” you may feel you’re sufficiently experienced and knowledgeable to offer a full-service local SEO solution. When you’re building a new business, it can be tempting to try and do it all. However, it’s essential to consider your strengths and weaknesses and whether you have the budget to fill any skills gaps with freelancers, subcontractors, or full-term hires.

That means your options are:

Whether you’re more inclined to be a niche expert or launch a full-service local search marketing agency, there’s another critical question that you’ll need to consider. Do you want to fly solo, or are you interested in building a bigger business with a team of experts working for your agency? 

Determining what scale you want to achieve is a very personal decision. There’s no right or wrong answer; it comes down to what you want from life.  

Some people are drawn to the solopreneur lifestyle because they can stay in complete control. Being a solopreneur means you’re only responsible for yourself. You don’t have the pressure of making payroll each month, nor do you have to take on a manager role. It can be the more flexible path, at least initially, and affords a greater amount of personal freedom. 

That said, if you’re serious about building an agency, bringing in other local SEO experts can help you develop your service portfolio and offer a more comprehensive solution to clients. It also gives you more man-hours and resources, which means you can take on more clients, generate more turnover, deliver better results, and not have to do everything yourself.  

What kind of local businesses will you target? 

With your business’s organizational structure decided, you can now start to think about who you will sell your services to. This is your client niche, and it can be a whole lot trickier to settle on than it may first appear. Your client niche could be determined by a specific industry, a certain size of business, or a local area. 

There are a couple of clear advantages to saying that you’re only going to work with this kind of client.

Advantage 1: You have the chance to become a big fish in a small pond

If 100% of your efforts and results come from a single sector, you can expect to become an established authority within that vertical. That depth of expertise means your services should become highly prized within that target niche.

Let’s say you decide to work only with dentists. With a few happy clients and excellent results, word should soon spread through the dental community. Any dentist looking to grow their local search visibility will know that you can get the job done. There could even be an increased desire to work with you to gain the upper hand over local rivals.

Local SEO for Dentists

by Ian de Jongh from Pain-Free Dental Marketing

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Advantage 2: You’ll have a unique insight into search trends

Choosing to work with just one type of client allows you to immerse yourself fully in that sector’s search landscape. You’ll instinctively learn what works and what doesn’t because you’ll work with the same kinds of businesses and keywords daily.

Essentially, you’re developing your own substantial back catalog of search algorithm intelligence. 

This unique insight cuts down on the guesswork associated with running new local SEO campaigns. It allows you to deploy tactics you’ve tried and tested and feel confident they will move the needle in the right direction from day one. And it means you’ll deliver consistently strong results for your clients.

Advantage 3: As a specialist, you can focus on what you do well

Having a particular niche—whether that’s an industry you have a particular affinity for or a certain size of client business you prefer to work with—can help you avoid a common trap associated with running a business: spreading yourself too thin. You can focus on what you enjoy and know you do well because you aren’t trying to be all things to all clients.  

Advantage 4: Day-to-day operations can be streamlined

There are plenty of practical advantages to having a well-defined niche. Many service providers define their client niche by geographical area. Service businesses like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians define their niche by radius.

Staying within your geographical area can also make day-to-day operations smoother. It makes it much easier to host client meetings, travel to networking events, and pitch to new businesses.

Advantage 5: Your marketing and messaging can be tightly focused

Knowing your audience is one of the golden rules of successful marketing. For your sales and marketing efforts to resonate, you need to understand who you’re talking to and what their challenges are. You should be able to clearly articulate how you can help them specifically.

If you don’t have a niche:

• Your sales messaging could be too generic to generate a connection.
• Your pitch decks could leave your prospects cold.
• Your advertising could fall flat.

A real estate agent, for example, will have different priorities than a mom-and-pop convenience store. A veterinarian won’t be looking to solve the same search problems as a locksmith. A restaurant will expect different results from a lawyer. Only by having a clear idea of your audience will your marketing and sales messaging hit their mark. 

Despite these clear advantages, there are some pitfalls to deciding on a client niche. 

Pitfall 1: Your niche is too narrow 

While there are genuine benefits to having an area of expertise, your niche must be able to sustain your new agency. There must be enough of those kinds of businesses to keep your business in business. You could quickly run out of clients if your focus is too specific. 

Opting to only work with surf shops in Nevada, for instance.

Pitfall 2: Industry downturns will impact your business too

If your agency focuses on a particular industry or a specific type of business, any downturn in that vertical will also hit your business hard. A change in that market could render your services no longer required, jeopardizing your entire agency business. While that may seem like an extreme scenario, you only have to cast your mind back to the industries entirely shut down by the pandemic or made obsolete by the surge in online services to understand how quickly things can change. 

Pitfall 3: Too many clients request non-competition clauses 

Being super successful in your niche is a beautiful thing—your clients know they can trust you to deliver results. But what happens when they don’t want you delivering those same results for their main rival across town? Having a client with a non-competition clause could put dozens of other businesses out of bounds in one fell swoop.

You can’t afford for your niche to be too narrow that you run out of new clients you’re permitted to work with.

Taking on the Pricing Conundrum 

If there’s one thing guaranteed to keep any business owner awake at night, it’s cash. Setting your agency pricing model is no small feat, and it’s also far from straightforward. 

As a new business, you may be tempted to price your services lower to attract clients. That could mean you need to charge more to cover your overheads and make a profit. You could be toying with charging more to value your skillset. But set the bar too high, and you could price yourself out of the game before you begin.

The key to creating a sustainable pricing model that reflects the value you bring to your clients, keeps the lights on, and doesn’t send prospects running for the hills is to work systematically and impartially through the process. 

Step 1: Decide on Your Pricing Model 

There are many different pricing models for SEO and digital marketing agencies. You need to decide what yours will be. Will you charge per hour or go for a fixed monthly or quarterly retainer? An hourly rate can initially seem more affordable for clients, but it’s also less transparent and makes budgeting much harder. You may also find it harder to make financial forecasts and plan as the hours you bill (and therefore how much you make) will likely fluctuate monthly. 

A fixed fee can initially be off-putting for some businesses, especially smaller enterprises. It may feel like a big commitment, but it should be a much more precise cost to manage each month. A monthly or quarterly retainer also gives you some security and certainty, so you can accurately forecast turnover or confidently take on a new staff member. 

Some service providers operate a pay-on-results model. This is perhaps the most difficult model to understand as a client and local SEO agency. It requires a lot of forward planning because you’ll need to have an ironclad agreement in place that clearly defines the result being targeted, what that success looks like in practice, and how long it will take. You’ll also need to clearly understand how long the desired outcome will likely take and ensure that the input costs don’t outweigh the reward. 

Step 2: Work Backwards From There 

Once you know how you will charge, you can start to think about what you will charge. 

• Do your research: You don’t want to under or overprice your services. As a first port of call, try to understand what other local SEO providers are charging in your area. Some agencies may have pricing guidelines on their site to give you a ballpark figure. Friends, family members, and acquaintances may have their own experiences working with other agencies. Ask them how much they paid. If you’re a member of a local Chamber of Commerce or attend networking events, feel free to ask local business representatives what they have or would expect to pay for local SEO support. 
• Be creative: If those avenues leave you drawing a blank, go online. Many smaller agencies and solo service providers use freelance and on-demand platforms to find work. Many of those platforms allow providers to post fixed-price jobs. Review standard costs to build up an idea of average pricing. Some sites will also show you past reviews and the number of clients worked with, helping you understand if that service provider has got it right and is winning new business. 
• Calculate your outgoings: One of the most important defining factors in your pricing model is the amount of cash you need to cover your outgoings. Create a list and tally it up. Include any business expenses such as rent, Wi-Fi, staff costs, equipment costs, and software subscriptions. Remember things like taxes and healthcare insurance. Next, think about your personal circumstances and how much money you need to make each month to live comfortably. 

What Should My Agency Be Charging for Local SEO?

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Carving out Your Place in the Market 

Local SEO is a competitive space. You must be clear on your market position to ensure you stand out. This goes beyond your niche. It isn’t just about what you do and who you serve. It’s more nuanced. It’s about storytelling and weaving a compelling narrative that helps your target market understand your value and what makes you different.  

Your Positioning Statement 

Writing a positioning statement is an excellent way to focus your thinking and clarify your mission. It is a very short piece of text (around three sentences or so), but don’t be fooled. Less can be surprisingly more difficult. 

To create yours: 

• State who you’re targeting and what their problems or opportunities are.
• Outline what your service is and the main benefit you bring to the table. 
• Identify your competitive differentiator. 

Once you have formulated this statement, you’ll be able to clearly convey what you bring to the table, how you can help your clients succeed, and how your solution differs from competitors. 

You can refer to this document anytime you need to center yourself and check whether you’re continuing on the right path. 

Generating Leads 

Lead generation is one of those jobs that you can never tick off your to-do list as an agency owner. But, as a local SEO practitioner, the good news is that you’ll already be well-qualified to market your agency’s offerings. 

It should go without saying that many of the tactics and methods you use to boost your client’s search visibility should be applied to your own business: 

• Create, optimize, and manage your Google Business Profile.
• Build a website and regularly add helpful, original, optimized content.
• Start local link building.
• Build citations.
• Be proactive about asking clients for reviews.
• Be active on social media. 
• Participate in local and industry events.
• Share valuable tips with your network.
• Seek media coverage and other forms of local exposure, such as volunteering to speak at a Chamber of Commerce event or participating in a podcast. 

Generating leads is often about sharing your expertise and offering your insight. There’s an educational aspect that not only provides useful information to your prospects but also allows you to showcase your expertise. This doesn’t just build trust in your agency; it can also build goodwill. 

Aside from the local SEO tactics you already know and are proficient in, there are many other ways to generate leads. Raising your local visibility can make a huge impact. Why not host a free seminar for local businesses within your client niche? You could also donate your time to a local non-profit in return for a testimonial or reference on their website. If you’re confident in front of the camera or happy to appear online, another great tactic is to approach local media about guest author spots.  

You could also consider creating a presence on one of the many on-demand platforms. These platforms already have a volume of traffic you can benefit from, and you can instantly connect with local businesses actively looking for local SEO solutions. This is also a great way to quickly build up a store of reviews, which you can then use as social proof to generate additional leads for your new local SEO agency business.

It’s not just a one-time tactic; it’s a long-term investment in the online future of a dental practice, and that’s how we, as marketers, need to explain it to dentists.

Dental SEO  is about laying down roots that will support growth for years to come, ensuring that when people search for dental services in their local area, they find your client’s practice first.

For me, SEO has one primary goal. It’s about ensuring your client’s practice is visible and appealing to those looking for dental services. Most importantly, it is not only about getting as much traffic as possible but also getting the right kind of traffic to bring in the right kinds of patients. 

What is dental SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, involves enhancing a website’s content and the business’s overall online footprint to ensure it gets top billing from search engines like Google when someone searches for a specific query or service.

For dental practices, this means optimizing your online presence to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) whenever someone looks up dental-related services.

For dentists, it’s not even just traditional SEO you need to focus on. Local SEO and its slightly different tactics must be a significant consideration for dental marketers.

Imagine someone in your city searching for “Dentists near me” or “dental implants near me.” The sites in the map pack or top search results have the most effective SEO and will likely attract the most patients online.

Search engines aim to deliver users the most accurate and relevant answers that match the intent of what is being searched. They shy away from showing incorrect, outdated, or unclear information. Your goal as a dental marketer is to prove to these search engines that your client is the premier source of information and deserves to be on the first page of results.

This does not happen overnight; it is earned by consistently providing value to users. Don’t try to game the system; be careful of SEO scams. Do your research, put in the effort, and create authority for your clients that Google and other search engines simply can’t ignore. This means focusing not only on traditional SEO efforts but also on how your client looks and how they will be perceived by potential patients online.

Why is local SEO important for dental practices?

Remember the last time you clicked on page 3 or 4 of Google to find an answer? Me neither… and that’s all you need to know. If you need more help convincing a dentist, here’s some data proving why local SEO for dentists is essential:

• Google Accounts for 91.54% of the global search engine market – Source
• There are 5.9 million Google searches per minute.
• 21% of the USA uses the internet to find a local business daily. – Source
• On mobile, the average click-through rate is 22.4% for position 1, 13% for position 2, and 10% for position 3. Position 10 gets you just 2.3% of clicks.
• A study in 2023 showed that just 0.63% of people click on the second page.

This data, along with how we know the internet is used daily, makes it very clear that making sure your client ranks in the top 5 results of Google will be the difference between getting organic traffic and not.

And, with local searches, the local pack defaults to showing just three sites in the local pack at the top of the search results.

Six Local SEO Tasks for Dental Marketers

Over the past four years, I have been fortunate enough to implement SEO for over 100 dental practices throughout the United States. At Pain-Free Dental Marketing, we have developed a state-of-the-art process that has been proven to show results through trial and error.

An important lesson I have learned is that you need to look at the different areas of dental SEO as building blocks. You can’t start with this, if you have not laid the foundation for that. Make sense? Why would you focus on getting more traffic if the page looks terrible? Why would you ask for reviews if your Google Business Profile looks empty or start building citations if you don’t have a website yet? First, lay the foundation, then build your home.

Here’s how to approach dental SEO strategically:

Do Your Research, Understand Your Competition, and Create a Plan

You can’t implement local SEO for dentists without a roadmap or understanding of what you want to achieve. This is crucial because it will help you as a marketer to measure success and allow you to communicate it to your clients.

If strategy and success are not defined, you not only lack the ability to express what you will be doing for the dental practice, but it will also be challenging to determine if you were successful. Here are some initial steps to help you understand what you need to do:

Do Your Keyword Research

The foundation of a successful SEO strategy is built on understanding what potential patients are searching for. This step is all about identifying the right terms and phrases that resonate with the needs and queries of your target audience. Think of it as choosing the right tools before performing a dental procedure.

How to Do Local Keyword Research

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Keyword research is also not just about finding the keywords with the most volume but finding collections of keywords that can work together. This includes using long-tail keywords that can aid in your efforts to reach more traffic and link back to your core pages to increase their authority.

You can find long-tail keywords in the FAQ and People Also Asked sections; you can also use the auto-complete feature to see what Google suggests.

Understand Your Competition

Knowing who you’re up against can provide invaluable insights. By analyzing your competitors’ online strategies, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your client’s practice and find your unique space in the dental market.

How to Do Local Competitor Analysis

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When you see a competitor ranking first for a keyword, it means they did something right. Google is literally telling you; “This is what I like!”. It’s your job as a dental marketer to figure out what Google likes about the page, how to recreate it, and make it better!

Create a Plan

With solid keyword research and a clear understanding of your competition and how you would like to out-compete them, it’s time to craft a plan.

This strategy should aim to improve your client’s online visibility and resonate with your practice’s unique voice, values, and how they are seen online. SEO is as much about what you look like online as it is about ranking high and getting traffic. After all, in the vast world of online marketing, a personalized touch can make all the difference.

Even if you are ranked third, if you look better, you could still get the click before those displayed above you.

Google Business Profile Optimization

Now that you have a plan, it’s time to start with local SEO efforts that will have the biggest impact as quickly as possible. That’s where a Google Business Profile (GBP) can make all the difference.

A Google Business Profile should be at the core of your dental SEO strategy because it’s one of the first things potential patients will see, often even before the website. It also has its own ranking potential and can help give some visibility to a dental practice if, at first, you struggle to rank the website.

If you have not yet claimed or created a Google Business Profile for the dental practice, immediately stop what you are doing and do that right now! Avoid doing verification via the post as it can take a long time. Do verification via the office number or the business video.

How to Verify Your Google Business Profile

Get Verified

Now you’re verified, it’s time to start optimizing.

Step 1: Optimize Your Business Information

Fill out every section of your profile with detailed and accurate information. This includes your practice’s name, address, phone number, and website.

Consistency is key, as it helps Google understand and trust your business, improving your visibility. In the business description, use the keywords you found that have enough volume and will draw in patients, but make sure your description still makes sense for a human to read.

Add services, when the business was founded, any special features, products, social media links, literally add as much helpful information as possible.

Step 2: Select the Right Categories

GBP categories help potential patients find your services when they’re searching for specific dental needs, like “cosmetic dentistry” or “pediatric dentist.” Be as specific as possible to stand out in the right searches.

Step 3: Use High-Quality Photos

Visuals make a big difference. Upload high-quality photos of the practice, the team, and before-and-after shots of patients (with their consent).

Photos can help your listing stand out and give potential patients a glimpse of the welcoming environment you offer. They can help put a worried customer at ease.

Updated, high-quality photos are so important. It does not help if your client ranks number one, but the pictures look outdated or unprofessional. Nobody will click on it, which means all your efforts will be wasted.

This ties back to what I said about making the brand visually appealing to potential patients.

Step 4: Post Regular Updates

Use the posts feature to share updates, offers, and news about your practice. Regular posts keep your profile active and engaging, showing potential patients your practice is bustling and up-to-date.

You also need to make sure that you’re posting new images regularly.

Step 5: Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Reviews are the rocket of dental marketing and a cornerstone of your GBP’s effectiveness. Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive feedback with keywords and respond professionally to all reviews.

This not only shows potential patients that you value feedback but also can improve your search rankings.

Build a 5-star Reputation

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Google Search Console and Understanding Your Dental Website

Many marketers think you need a plethora of different software to track the success of your SEO for dentists. The truth is that Google Search Console (GSC) is an excellent starting point and one of the best tools in your digital toolbox.

GSC is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.

An Introduction to Google Search Console

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For a dental marketer, understanding and utilizing Google Search Console is akin to having a high-powered dental X-ray machine that sees not just the surface but deep into the health of your website’s visibility online. Here’s what you need to do:

• Verify and Monitor Your Site’s Performance: Track your site’s performance in Google Search results. Analyze queries that bring users to your site, view your site’s click-through rates (CTRs), and check your rankings for specific keywords.
• Inspect URLs for Indexing Issues: Use the URL Inspection tool to check if Google can crawl your site’s pages, understand any indexing issues, and request re-indexing of new or updated content. If pages are not indexing, you can figure out why.
• Identify and Fix Mobile Usability Issues: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly by identifying pages with usability problems on mobile devices. This is crucial for maintaining and improving your site’s ranking in search results.
• Improve Website Content Based on Data: Utilize search analytics to refine your website content. Focus on creating content around keywords and queries that are proven to drive traffic to your site.

An Advanced Guide to Google Search Console for Local Businesses

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On-Page and Technical SEO for Dental Websites

Now that you have the essentials in place, it’s time to start looking at your website. You might be thinking I’m crazy for only getting to the website now, but remember, we needed a plan first. Then, as a dentist is a local business, we had to make sure the Google Business Profile was optimized for the local pack, and then we used Google search console to understand how Google interacts with your website.

Now, we get to work on the website itself.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. It involves both the content and the HTML source code of a page.

For dental marketing, on-page SEO is crucial because it helps search engines understand the content of your website and its relevance to search queries, especially those related to the dental services your client values.

How to Improve On-page SEO for Local

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While many SEO specialists bucket all kinds of categories into on-page SEO, I have only seen a few factors that truly impact how your website performs:

1. High-Quality Content

You have probably heard this a thousand times before, but it’s true. If we ask ourselves what the most basic function of Google and other search engines is, it’s to provide users with the information they seek.

You must ensure that your dental website provides valuable information on all your client’s services. I often see dental websites with no service pages or location pages, which makes me go crazy. To target a dental service, it needs its own page!

An essential element of Google’s E-E-A-T is showcasing your authority and expertise. Dental practices will have in-house experts; their dentists! You should be using them to help you create genuinely authoritative content, whether it’s Q&As or guides.

2. Keyword Optimization

If you followed my steps correctly, you should understand what keywords people are searching for, how people find your client’s website, and what services the dentist would like to rank better for.

Now you know the keywords you would like to rank for; you can start weaving them into your website’s content. Use variations of keywords, write multiple pages that speak about the service in different ways, and create internal links to help the user find the info they need. It’s as simple as that.

How to Craft Unique and Helpful Location Pages

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Too often, dental marketers get so focused on how many times you use a keyword and where instead of just writing a really good piece of content.

Of course, apply basic SEO best practices to ensure keywords are represented in your headings as needed, but it is more important to have good content with keywords sprinkled in vs. lots of keywords with some basic content. Concentrate on Topics, not individual keywords.

Instead, create what I like to call a “pillar page” and see that page as the one you would like to rank highest for.

You can then build supporting pages with variations of the same keyword or long-tail keywords that you link out to, making the pillar page more valuable. That’s basically why Wikipedia is so successful. Write a great page on a dental service, then link to other more in-depth pages on your website for those who want to learn more about specific aspects of the topic.

For example, I have a veneers page; I briefly mention the benefits in a paragraph. I will then add: “If you want to understand all of the benefits of veneers, you can do so here.”, with a link to a page that sits in the veneers subfolder, going into more details on that specific subject. Google will understand this and recognize that your pillar page provides value because it provides users the opportunity to explore the topic more.

3. Optimizing Meta Tags and Descriptions

Ensure that each page has a unique title tag and meta description that accurately describes the content of the page. These elements not only help search engines understand the topic of each page but also serve as a first impression for users in search result pages.

Use your title to stand out. Don’t just go for the same title as the page. This is your chance to grab your potential customer’s attention in the SERPs. Use a featured image that will grab a patient’s attention.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO means ensuring that your dental practice’s website is not only visible but also easily accessible to both search engines and potential patients.

Without the necessary technical SEO, you could add new pages to your website, and nobody will ever see them. Or you could write the perfect piece of content, but the page takes too long to load, so nobody sticks around to see it. These are just two examples, but you catch my drift.

Here are the top technical SEO tactics I recommend to dental marketers:

1. Website Health & Performance

We all hate a slow website, as does Google because it impacts the user experience. You must ensure a website has fast load times, mobile-friendliness, and secure connections via HTTPS. As marketers, we know these factors influence user experience and search engine rankings.

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can be invaluable for diagnosing and improving website performance. I did some research on what has the biggest impact on website speed, and it actually has nothing to do with the website itself.

Hosting is one of the most important factors that influence the speed of your website. If the website you are working on is hosted on unreliable or unresponsive servers, it will directly impact how Google interacts with your website and, therefore, your SEO efforts. Search Engine Journal has gone into more detail on that here.

Other things can affect your page load time, like the size of your images or even plugins. Consider doing an audit of all of this and actioning anything you can, like old plugins or lazy loading.

2. Structured Data for Enhanced Visibility

Structured data is a powerful tool for improving a dental practice’s appearance in search results.

By implementing schema markup for local businesses, we can help search engines understand and display important information about dental practices, such as services offered, hours of operation, and patient reviews. This can enhance visibility in local search results, making your clients more findable and appealing to potential patients. We make use of SchemaPro, but there are all sorts of different ways for you to implement your local schema.

Local SEO Schema: Types and Templates for Easy Structured Data Markup

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3. Submit Sitemap to Google

An XML sitemap is like a map for your website. It tells Google about your important pages and where they are. This is helpful, especially if your website has many pages or is not connected very well.

A sitemap and strategic internal linking are sure ways for Google to crawl your website effectively. Google has guidelines on how to create and submit a sitemap.

4. Optimize Your Site Architecture

A website has many pages. It’s important to arrange these pages so search engines can easily discover and go through them. This is where the organization of your site, also known as your website’s information architecture, plays a role.

This will also help with how potential patients navigate the dental website. You need to pave the way to ensure the site structure makes sense and flows in a productive way.

The three things I know most patients care about are who’s the dentist, what this will cost me, the insurance questions, and finally, how I can contact this office. This is just an example, but you should apply this framework to your service pages and how you implement internal links.

Content Silos for Local SEO

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5. Target Keywords in Your URL 

This might seem insignificant, but I believe every bit counts when it comes to dental SEO. Anything I can do to beat my competitors is a step closer to a new patient. Ensure you use keywords in your URL, and don’t make them too long. Google does not like generic URLs. You should also not include numbers unless it is absolutely necessary.

Build Citations to Increase Online Authority

When it comes to citations, I always like to use the following example:

If today I told you my name is Ian, here is my address and number, call me anytime. Then, the next time I see you, l tell you my name is Michael, with a different number.

The third time I see you, I tell you my name is John. And so on.

Eventually, you will think I am either crazy or simply untrustworthy. Why should Google trust your client if their business information is incorrect across multiple platforms and directories?

By consistently listing a dental practice’s name, address, phone number (NAP), and website across various online directories and platforms, these citations help increase the practice’s visibility on search engines like Google.

This is crucial for attracting local patients searching for dental services in their area. Furthermore, citations contribute to the credibility and legitimacy of a dental practice in the digital realm, reassuring both Google and potential patients of the practice’s established presence.

Google uses citations as a vote of confidence that you are who you say you are and that the business you are marketing exists. Building citations has always been a crucial part of my dental marketing strategy and something I recommend to all marketers focussing on local SEO for dentists.

Brightlocal has been my favorite tool for doing this, making it easy for me to manage over 100 dental practices simultaneously. 

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Multilocation Practices Vs. Single Location Dentists

Whether your client has one or multiple dental practices will make a difference in how you implement dental SEO. It is not so much a change in what you need to do but how you will implement it to be effective locally.

Multiple Locations, One Website

Before we start, I want to share this: One of the most challenging questions I have gotten over the years was, “I would like to draw in patients from a town 30 minutes away. How can we do that with SEO?”.

My response always starts the same. We can begin to target another town with new pages, but Google search results will always show the user a business located in that town/city over a different practice that is 30 minutes away.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Why would Google make me drive 30 minutes to a business when I have multiple other businesses that can provide me with the same services within 10 minutes of my location?

How to Rank Outside Your Area

The Truth

I say this because you need to understand this principle to implement SEO for a practice with multiple locations. Local SEO is all about, you guessed it, local. You need to prove to Google that your business is an option for that community and the best option available.

To do this, each location will need its own website or, at the very least, a dedicated page on your site to target the branch and the town/city it is in. You can’t have a website that simply mentions the different locations in these areas. This will not be enough to compete with another practice with an entire website targeting that local area. 

So, if you have a single website for multiple locations, make sure you have separate pages that provide a detailed look at each practice with additional service pages that link to the services you provide in that town.

You also need to target local dental service keywords on those pages and share reviews from that location, etc. I know Google ranks location-specific pages better because the only URL that I would get to rank successfully was the page dedicated to that town. No other page on the website would appear in that town because Google did not associate the rest of the website with the town/city we were targeting.

Here’s an example of how to do this.

You’ll also want to make sure that each individual location has its own Google Business Profile and that you’re managing them all as their own entity. Putting all your time into one branch’s GBP won’t help all your other GBPs, for instance. Similarly, you’ll need to build citations for each location, not just your first one, and actively manage your listings.

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Best Case Scenario

In a perfect world, you will need to build a website for each location the dentist has and implement the strategies I have discussed in this article. In my opinion, this gives you the best chance of competing locally and ranking better in Google search results for multiple locations. 

Differences in SEO for Dentists vs. Other Industries

Now, you will notice that backlinking was not part of my core strategy for dental SEO. In local SEO for dentists, getting links from other websites (backlinks) isn’t as crucial as we used to think, especially in areas where there aren’t many dental practices competing with each other.

In these scenarios, focusing on backlinks might not be the best use of your time. Even Google said back in 2022 that backlinks are less important than they were before.

How to Do Effective Local Link Building

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I have found this especially true in areas where there is less competition or other dental practices are not implementing a dental SEO strategy. If the practice you’re doing marketing for is in a smaller city or town where there’s not much competition, you can rank well in search results without worrying too much about getting backlinks.

Instead, ensure the Google Business Profile is spot-on and regularly updated, use the right local keywords, update your website regularly with relevant content, build out citations, and encourage happy patients to leave as many reviews as possible.

Final Thoughts & Advice

It’s important to know that this article is not the ultimate solution to dental SEO but rather a look into the most important factors that have made a real difference for the dentists I have worked with over the past few years. When it comes to local SEO for dentists, there is no set formula. It’s about trying different strategies and seeing what works best for you. Different dental offices have different needs and will measure the success of your SEO efforts in different ways.

Make sure you over-communicate, under-promise, and over-deliver. Dentists are dentists, not marketers, so do not expect them to understand the value you bring as a dental marketer. You need to show them!

The Power of Google Business Profile

First, it’s important to emphasize why GBP matters. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers, providing essential information about a local business, including location, hours, reviews, and photos. A well-optimized GBP can significantly impact local search visibility and customer trust.

The Importance of Google Business Profile

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A study found it’s the top factor for ranking in the local pack on Google. Our research in 2020 also showed that 82% of local marketing experts agree that tweaking a GBP is a super effective way to improve your local search rankings. 

So, how can BrightLocal help you supercharge your or your client’s GBP? Let’s dive into the strategies and tools available:

1. Auditing for Optimization

As well as being aware of what a critical tool Google Business Profile is, you’re probably also aware that Google doesn’t give away any competitor insights. 

For example, let’s imagine that you’ve just started work on local SEO for a dental practice in New York. You want to know why a specific competitor ranks above them in local search and what they need to do to outrank them. You head over to Google and search, but this is all you see:

Without an intelligent tool, figuring out how to beat the competition and get into the top local results is challenging. That’s why we made our Google Business Profile Audit tool and Local Search Grid. They do all the checking and analysis you need.

Once you’ve set up a Google Business Profile Audit report, you can ensure the accuracy of your listing and understand your performance. 

Ensuring Accuracy and Health of Your Listing

Once set up, the ‘Summary’ page of a Google Business Profile Audit serves as your primary dashboard for evaluating the overall health and accuracy of your GBP listing.

Here, you can identify and eliminate any duplicate GBP listings associated with your business, scrutinize the consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) information, and identify and address essential local ranking factors. 

Embarking on these steps within the GBP Audit report not only ensures the accuracy of your listing but also lays the foundation for a robust and trustworthy online representation of your business.

Understand Your GBP Performance

You can thoroughly understand your GBP performance by incorporating Insights into the GBP Audit’s report. 

Unlike Google Business Profile Insights, which only offers six months of data, GBP Audit extends its horizon to 18 months, providing a comprehensive and extended view of your listing’s performance.

You can:

• Analyze the discovery points on Google through search or Google Maps to strategically optimize your online presence.

• Extract valuable data on customer actions, unraveling users’ common behaviors on your GBP, from visiting your website to requesting directions or making calls.

• Delve into phone call trends, pinpointing peak days and times and aiding in meticulous staff availability planning.

By utilizing the Google Business Profile Audit tool, you ensure the accuracy of your listing and gain in-depth insights into your GBP’s performance, enabling informed decisions for optimization and growth.

4 Ways GBP Audit Can Help You Optimize Your Listing and Outrank the Competition

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Competitor Insights 

Local Search Grid provides essential data from Google Local Finder, offering insights into your competitors’ performance. 

For example, once you’ve set up a Local Search Grid report , you can see what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using. This allows you to ensure that you select categories that align with high-performing keywords and match those used by successful competitors.

2. Taking Action

Customer reviews and GBP posts are crucial elements that significantly contribute to the credibility and utility of your GBP. Two BrightLocal tools can help you with these. 

Manage Your Reviews

Reputation Manager enables you to monitor reviews, gather feedback, and address negative comments promptly. Helping you to cultivate a positive online reputation and attract more customers.

Once you’ve created a Reputation Manager report, you’ll be able to keep tabs on all reviews from essential review sites, allowing you to observe the growth of reviews over time.

If you also link your business’s Google Business Profile and Facebook accounts to the report, BrightLocal will automatically check for new reviews daily and notify you of any arrivals. With your report connected to your GBP and Facebook, you can conveniently respond to reviews directly from this report, streamlining the process and helping you stay on top of your reputation more efficiently.

Managing your reviews is just the start. If you need help getting them in the first place, a tool like BrightLocal’s Get Reviews is key. It will help you grow your reviews and increase your star ratings.

Schedule Google Posts

GBP Post Scheduler makes managing your GBP much easier and simpler. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation. 

Effortless Scheduling

You can set the perfect time for each post and decide when it should expire, ensuring a steady flow of content for potential customers. You can also monitor everything from one dashboard to keep an eye on what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired.

Multi-location Distribution

When dealing with a multi-location brand, there might be times when you want to share the latest national promotions with all locations at once. Instead of doing it individually, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you hours of effort. It’s a quick and easy way to ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations.

Craft Posts with AI-Powered Content Generation

Input a brief description of the message you want to convey, and within seconds, our AI writing assistant will provide you with creative content ideas to work with and enhance.

Our Help Center has more information on how our GBP AI works.

3. Active Sync

Active Sync helps you care for your GBP and other vital listings like Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing, ensuring they’re accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you’ve connected your GBP to your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data, such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

Once you’ve set Active Sync up, it will send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if Google publishes a suggested edit, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, which allows you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Your Google Business Profile is a powerful tool for local business success, and when combined with the comprehensive suite of BrightLocal tools, it becomes an unstoppable force. By conducting regular audits, managing your reputation, and optimizing your online presence, you can stand out in local searches, attract more customers, and drive business growth.

This post will provide some foundational understanding of the ad type and how to think of it in your marketing plan. We will be doing a more advanced companion piece that will dive into more specific questions folks face when running these campaigns, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled!

What are LSAs?

First and foremost, LSAs are ads. This means they require a budget to serve. While they benefit quite a bit from local SEO, they are still, first and foremost, an ad. They are charged based on recorded phone calls that last at least two minutes or messages that get sent through (if you opt-in to that feature) that come via the ad.

Think of LSAs as business cards, allowing your customers to identify and communicate with you directly. They allow white and blue-collar professionals to appear at the top of the Google search engine result page (SERP) for queries relating to the specific type of business they offer. 

An LSA placement can appear on a mobile or desktop device and can include: 

• A photo of the professional
• How long the business has been in business 
• Ratings 
• Link to the website (if provided)

LSAs require you to choose whether you are open to more “general” inquiries or if you require the leads to be more specific. If you opt not to go for the volume of general leads, you retain the right to dispute calls/messages that do not align with the categories you select.

Where do LSAs appear?

LSAs can appear on all types of SERPS (and have been spotted in Google’s AI Search Generative Experience). That said, they are predisposed to have a higher mobile focus. This is because the main call-to-action is “call”.

The user is presented with three ads on both desktop and mobile. At the bottom of the ad unit, the user can click or tap to view additional ads for businesses.

The number of ads in a market and within specific categories can vary considerably. You might see only a few, or you might see dozens. It just depends on how many businesses are in that market category. The most ads I’ve seen after clicking through to view the entire list for a specific search is 100, so that may be the maximum.

This is what you’ll be presented with if you choose to expand the ad unit on desktop:

Which countries are LSAs available in?

Currently, LSAs are only available in a small number of countries. These are:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Benefits of LSAs for Local Businesses

There are many benefits to LSAs, though depending on your business model, you may be predisposed to value some more than others.

They’re cheaper than traditional paid search

First and foremost, LSAs are typically cheaper than traditional paid search. This is due to their ad format. It’s not bound by the same auction as paid search is. As such, you might pay anywhere from 10-40% less per call/message lead than you would otherwise. 

However, before you fully commit budget to LSAs, it’s important to remember they don’t always show and can be subject to far more volume volatility than traditional search. This is why it’s typically a good idea to include them as part of a holistic marketing strategy.

Your local SEO efforts benefit them

The second big benefit is that they draw directly from solid local SEO practices. You’re golden if you’ve set the foundations well for your Google Business Profile, structured your site well (i.e., easily crawlable), and are active in your review responses/acquisitions. If those things aren’t true, you will likely take longer to ramp up your LSA profile.

You only pay per lead

Finally, LSAs charge based on recorded phone calls or messages. This is a huge benefit over most other marketing channels because you can pay per lead. However, if your intake/sales team isn’t able to respond to the leads promptly or you’re not able to service the volume, you won’t just lose money; you’ll begin to lose rankings for your profile. 

What types of businesses are eligible for Local Service Ads?

When LSAs first hit the market in 2016, there was a huge waiting list to get onboarded. Now, it’s fairly straightforward, and most local verticals are accepted. So long as you’re a local business that accepts clients through lead gen (as opposed to software that would let a person sign up on the site or buy a product directly), you’re likely eligible.

The main distinction is between white collar vs blue collar work (i.e., is this a professional service where the customer will likely come to the business or vice versa). 

However, eligibility varies greatly from region to region, as seen in the examples below.

The list for the UK, while made up of many similar verticals, is much shorter.

If you’re in a region that doesn’t yet support LSAs for your industry, don’t despair. Google (and Microsoft) see the need and desire for this ad product and are constantly adding new regions and verticals. The full Google list can be found here. 

How LSAs Work

LSAs behave slightly differently from traditional paid search campaigns. Rather than bidding on keywords or audiences, brands designate services you are interested in. In doing this, you gain a far simpler targeting method but lose the ability to “outsmart” the algorithm through more manual intervention.

Unlike Local Search Ads (the map pack), you do not appear automatically just for connecting your Google Business Profile. These ads don’t require keywords, audiences, or ad creation (like traditional search ads or Performance Max). 

They require you to either set up a separate account or allow your LSAs to share the same client ID (CID) as your existing Google Ads account. You’ll rank better or worse based on the information you provide, the bids and budgets you set, and how well you respond to leads.

Getting Google Guaranteed

Setting up LSAs is much simpler than it used to be; however, it still requires careful planning. You’ll still need to verify your ad account and go through a background check to get the Google Guaranteed component.

What is Google Guaranteed? 

The Google Guarantee is a badge displayed whenever your LSA is shown. It sends a trust signal to customers.

What You Need to Get Google Guaranteed

The background check component used to take as much as two weeks to complete. Now, it’s usually a matter of a few business days. 

You’ll need the following information to set up your LSA profile:

• Name of business (and any DBA)
• Your legal name
• Phone number (this can be a call recording number—but can only be changed through a Google rep)
• Website (if any)
• Photos of your business 
• Photos of you
• Business Insurance
• Year your business opened/years of experience.
• Professional License  

I find it’s best to collect the info you’ll need before you begin rather than trying to fix it once launched. This means setting up call recording numbers beforehand (use a non-dynamic number).

LSA Best Practice

As we discussed, you cannot do much to manage LSAs. However, the things you can do have a big impact.

Consider your budget and bid aggressively early on

First and foremost, your budget and bid will greatly impact how often your ad serves and where it serves in the LSA bracket. As a general rule, budgets should be set more aggressively than you intend actually to spend. This will give Google the room to ramp up while also ensuring you are competitive in the auction. 

For example, if you intend to spend $10K per month, the budget should be set closer to $30K-$50K per month during the first 60 days of the profile. Once your account is running, you can experiment with dialing the budget back.

Experiment with manual bids

If you’re struggling to get traction, you can experiment with manual bids, which will let you set more or less aggressive bids by the services you’ve opted into. While this usually isn’t ideal once an account is running and bringing in steady leads, it can be a useful tactic to help get the campaign going/improve performance during a slump.

Be disciplined about the services and locations you target

On the subject of services, it’s important to apply a disciplined approach to the number of services and locations you opt into. Profiles can’t really support all eligible services and markets—you’ll want to create multiple profiles to support multiple markets. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to focus on no more than three main services and locations. This way, your budget can do the job you want it to do, rather than being spread too thin. 

While the three maximum is a good rule to live by, it’s also important to be practical. If you’ve historically valued leads the same and/or there isn’t enough volume for a service/location to get its own profile, it can be ok to include it. Just be aware that LSAs do factor proximity into ranking.

Make sure your images include elbows (yes, really.)

Finally, here’s a note about the images you use for your team members. Google has been known to disapprove of images that don’t show the elbow of the person in them. So make sure your headshot highlights at least that much of you. 

Monitoring the Performance of Your LSAs

The lead volume and cost are the main things to keep an eye on with LSAs.

Lead volume is tracked based on calls and messages received. Reports will show you how many leads you received and how many you were charged for. You can also see a breakdown of new, active, and archived leads. 

Archiving a lead means it didn’t work out, so you couldn’t get the business. Disputing a lead means the lead flat out isn’t right. Disputing is a way to potentially get money back and teach Google that they need to amend the kind of traffic they’re sending you. 

Cost and cost per lead are shown in the reports section. It’s normal for lulls in the middle of the month and spikes at the end/beginning. This is due to Google doing its best to spend your budget. 

We also gained impression share in 2023. This means we can get useful insights into whether the volume we’re getting (or not) is due to competitiveness or lack of market.

Get Started with LSAs

Local Service Ads are a powerful channel and are absolutely worth testing if you’re a local business. They have a “first person mover advantage” mechanic, so if you haven’t set them up yet, you may find main metros to be competitive. Consider targeting slightly outside the main metro, and don’t be afraid to restart a profile if it seems to be stuck. 

Don’t forget about Microsoft’s Bing. Microsoft launched a professional service ad offering that harnesses the same functionality as traditional campaigns. If Google is crowded, that’s a way to bypass the competition. 

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. That was one of the reasons I created a Looker Studio report to help break down and visualize the data in easy-to-understand chunks.

The search data in GSC can be overwhelming, especially for many business owners venturing into GSC for the first time. But after following the steps in our first GSC post, we can now show you how to take a slightly deeper look at the search data from a more local perspective. (Not read the first post but eager to get advanced with GSC? No problem! Let’s dive in.)

In this guide, I’ll show you how you can filter through the search data in Google Search Console to help you with:

• Understanding your visitor’s local intent
• Using GSC to create ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ content on your site
• Gathering ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Posting your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Using the data to build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know more about
• Tracking your UTM tagging from your GBP (Google Business Profile)

Filtering the Search Data Using Regex

We’re mostly going to use something called ‘Regular Expressions’ (or ‘regex’) to filter the search data.

When you apply a regex pattern, Search Console goes through your data and only shows you the parts that match your instructions. It’s like filtering out the clutter and zooming in on the important stuff.

For example, if we want to find all queries that contain the word “local” or “near me”, it would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

What does it mean?

• (?i): Case-insensitive flag, ensuring matches regardless of capitalization
• \b: Word boundary, ensuring the words are whole words, not parts of other words
• (?:...): Non-capturing group, grouping the words without creating a capture group
• local|near me: Alternatives within the group, matching any of the specified words
• \b: Another word boundary to complete the word match

Example Matches

If we looked at the search console data for a local restaurant we might see queries such as:

• “find local restaurants”
• “restaurant near me”

We are going to use the example above later in this post but let’s start with something a little easier.

Let’s start with your local town/city and state

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into the search data. We’ll start easy and then increase the complexity of our regex filters. We’ll start by looking at how to filter the results just to show queries that contain just your town or city.

The regex would look like this:

(?i)\b cityname \b

Just copy the above example and replace ‘cityname’ with the name of your town or city, but first, let me show you how and where we’re going to add it.

Log into your GSC dashboard, and under ‘Performance’ choose ‘Search results’.

Now, above the main table of search data, we’re going to edit the settings and apply our first filter.

Select ‘+ New’ and then ‘Query…’

Select ‘Custom (regex)’

We now want to copy the regex example:

(?i)\b cityname \b

And paste it as follows:

You will have replaced cityname with the name of your town or city. Now just click “APPLY”.

Your ‘Queries’ table should now only contain the top queries containing the name of your town/city.  Look at the search data and see what your customers are searching for that includes the name of your town. It can be very revealing.

Well done, you’ve done your first filter using regex! Now let’s build on this.

We’re now going to filter the search data by town/city and state.  For example, my next example is going to use Atlanta, which is in the state of Georgia, which may also be written as ‘GA’.

My regex would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?: atlanta|georgia|ga )\b

Note the use of the pipe ( | ) – the OR operator. Using this means that any of the three options, ‘atlanta’, ‘georgia’, or ‘ga’, can be matched.

Now my search data will list any query containing the words ‘Atlanta’, ‘Georgia’, or ‘GA’.

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Local Intent

In our very first regex example, we used this example:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

Now let’s expand on this just a little and include a couple more variations:

(?i)\b(?: local|nearby|near me|best in )\b

Example matches:

• “Find local restaurants”
• “Best pizza nearby”
• “Grocery stores near me”
• “Best coffee shops in Atlanta”

Context matters. Analyze queries within your specific industry and location. Intent can be implicit or explicit. Not all local queries contain obvious location terms.

Tip: Increase the date range from 3 months to at least 12 months. This will increase the amount of query search data you are filtering and give you more insights.

What questions are your users asking?

Have you ever wanted to know what questions your potential customers are asking to find your product or service? Well, you can do so by using the simple regex snippet below. Just copy and paste the following, as we have done before.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b

You can now use the results from your search data on your website and GBP to:

• Create Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) content on your site
• Discover ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Post your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know about

Tip: You can always just trim down the regex and start with the what, where, when, and why.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why )\b

You can adapt any of these patterns to include additional words beyond common question words. For example:

Commercial Intent:

(?i)\b( best|top|vs|review )\b

Transactional Intent:

(?i)\b( buy|cheap|price|purchase|order )\b

Question and Keyword

What if I wanted to know what questions were being asked that contained a particular keyword?

For example, I have a personal injury lawyer and I want to know what questions are being asked concerning trucks.

The regex for this would be:

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b *\b truck \b

Example Questions:

• what personality traits do truck drivers have
• can truck drivers sleep on the side of the road
• why truck accidents are not like car accidents

Just change the word ‘truck’ for the service or product that relates to your business.

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Company Name Tracking

With this regex snippet, you can gain valuable insights into your company’s online presence. By tracking trends in brand awareness, identifying top-performing pages, and even uncovering potential issues, you can use this information to improve your content, SEO strategies, and overall brand visibility.

Pinpoint your company name variations. List all possible ways people might search for your company:

• Full company name, e.g. “Amazing Products Inc”
• Common abbreviations, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Potential misspellings, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Variations with modifiers, e.g. “Amazing Products reviews,” “Amazing Products near me”

(?i)(\b Amazing Products Inc \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products near me \b)

Replace placeholders with your actual company name variations.

(?i)(\b YOUR_COMPANY_NAME \b|\b ABBREVIATION \b|\b MISSPELLING \b|\b COMPANY_NAME modifier \b)

Remember to monitor the results and adjust the pattern as needed, based on your specific needs and search trends.

UTM Tagging

If you’ve been being a good local SEO, then you’ve been using UTM tagging within your GBP for many years now, for everything from your website links to GBP posts. If you haven’t, then read Claire’s guide on UTM Tagging for Google Business Profiles and fix that right away!

How to Use UTM Tagging with Google Business Profile

Read more

You can see your UTM data quite easily within your GSC search data. However, because UTMs are associated with the page URL, we have to apply the regex to ‘Page…’ and not ‘Query…’.

…and paste, as before:

\?(?:utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_term|utm_content)=[^&]+

Then, switch between the ‘Pages’ tab to see the top pages that are performing, and then switch to the  ‘Queries’ tab to see which queries are producing clicks from your GBP.

Conclusion

For local businesses, mastering regex can unlock a hidden vault of Google search data about your customers. But like any powerful tool, precision and ongoing adjustments are key to keeping up with evolving marketing goals and staying ahead of the game.

I hope these regex examples prove valuable. Should you have any questions, please reach out to me on X (formerly Twitter).

At last count, more than 80 million people head to the site each month in search of somewhere to eat, someone to fix an issue at home, or someone to get them on the road. With dozens of categories and a vast directory of local business information, it’s an indispensable tool for local consumers.

It’s also a great way to grow your online presence, generate leads, and boost your sales figures. From takeout joints to locksmiths and home cleaners to body shops, Yelp is a great way to put your business in front of local consumers.

While you may not see it as such, Yelp is kind of like a search engine. As with any other search engine, the more time and effort you pour into search engine optimization (SEO), the better your results will be. So we’re going to talk to you about Yelp SEO.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take to increase the prominence of your Yelp listing, no matter how competitive or overcrowded your particular category may be.

Why does Yelp SEO matter?  

Yelp isn’t just a key review platform or a place to claim a free business listing. It’s also a business discovery tool in its own right. It ties these three elements together, and that makes it particularly useful for local business owners.

What makes SEO for Yelp especially important is the proactive nature of the directory’s user base. According to its own figures, 83% of Yelp users hire or buy from a business they find on the platform.

What’s more, 57% of users contact the business directly within 24 hours. Those are powerful incentives to make your business as visible as possible. Get that right and you can realistically expect your foot traffic, reservations, and bookings to increase by a notable margin.

Claiming your Yelp listing is also free. As with any other business directory, it’s a useful way to boost your local citation count. Plus it provides a wealth of useful information to consumers. Information such as opening hours, street address, and services offered along with reviews and images are all contained within your Yelp listing. This information makes it that much easier for consumers to match your local business with their immediate needs.

How to Claim a Yelp Business Listing

Learn More

You also won’t be charged for any user interaction with your business. That means calls, emails, and website visitors are all free. You just have to make sure your listing is visible and receiving traffic. That’s where knowing how to optimize Yelp business listing information comes in.

Not only this, but users themselves go to Yelp to perform searches. And, as with other platforms, Yelp has its own algorithm for ranking the businesses it returns.

7 Ways to Optimize Your Yelp Listing

The internet is full of information and tips, but much of it is outdated, confusing, and time-consuming to wade through. Yelp doesn’t tend to share as much insight or best practice advice as Google or Bing, which can make it even harder to know where to start.

The tips below will guide you through optimizing your Yelp business listing. These essentials include category selection, review responses, and the importance of regular updates.

Ready to tap into the enormous potential that Yelp offers? Read on.  

1. Choose a Relevant Business Category

If you’ve been responsible for your business’s local listing management for a while now, you may be familiar with the importance of business categories. It’s a vital part of Google Business Profile optimization and similarly important when it comes to acing SEO for Yelp.

Yelp allows you to select up to three categories when claiming or updating your business listing (more on that later). But that’s not to say you should select three if only one or two are actually a good fit.

How to Choose the Right Google Business Profile Categories

Read more

One of the easiest ways to optimize a Yelp listing is to only select the most relevant business category or categories. There are 1500 categories available in total, so you’ll need to be as specific as possible to ensure you’re getting seen by the right kinds of consumers. 

If you’re a home automation expert, for example, you may be tempted to also select electrician as a secondary category. But, unless you’re also an electrical contractor offering services such as appliance repair or rewiring, you could be undermining your listing’s effectiveness. 

2. Add Relevant Services 

While a category is a broad definition of your business offerings, services allow you to be much more specific. Here, you can select as many services as you offer. And, you can do so for each category you select.

This gives both Yelp and local consumers a much clearer idea of what you can offer. It provides both Yelp and local consumers with a much clearer idea of what your business does, helping to boost your listing’s relevance within search results. 

Make sure you select every service that your business offers. Again, don’t add irrelevant services in the hope of attracting more traffic. Focus instead on what you do offer so that your efforts to optimize Yelp listing information deliver meaningful traffic which could boost your sales figures. 

3. Carefully Craft Your ‘From This Business’ Text

Yelp research suggests that as many as 90% of Yelp users use the platform to compare local businesses. Your ‘From This Business’ text is your opportunity to connect with Yelp users and introduce some keyword-rich content to your listing at the same time.

The ‘From This Business’ area of your listing is split into three sections:

• An introduction
• Business history
• Specialties

Each of these components provides a space to connect with local consumers, highlight how your business can meet their needs, and feed the Yelp algorithm with more intel about your local business.

Try and include keywords, such as products or service names, within the text. The specialties section in particular will naturally be keyword-rich, but you can also add other useful information in the intro and history sections.

4. Ensure Your Opening Hours Are Correct

Getting your opening hours right is a basic but necessary Yelp optimization task to tick off. Having incorrect hours can be frustrating at best and at worst, could actively cost you custom. BrightLocal’s Local Business Discovery & Trust Report found that 53% of consumers saw opening hours as the most important information for a business to get right on their listings.

A consumer who sees that you’re open on Yelp and travels to your location isn’t likely to have a great impression of your business if they arrive to find you closed. Chances are, they won’t risk it a second time and will go to a competitor instead.

One of the nice things about Yelp—and key to managing your Yelp business listing effectively—is the option to add special hours. If you’re closed on Thanksgiving for example but open 24 hours on Black Friday, you can add special hours to your listing. You can add as many special hours or extended closure details as needed, so be sure to keep this area updated.

How to Get Your Google Business Profile Holiday-ready

Read more

To add special hours, just navigate to the business information section of your listing and hit edit.

5. Take a Proactive Approach to Photos and Videos

Visual content is a very powerful asset for any local business. Images and videos allow consumers to build a detailed picture of your business without ever having visited or tried your services.

They help in decision-making and allow you to showcase the quality of your offering, the ambiance of your venue, and the professionalism of your staff. What’s more, when you head to the Yelp home page, it’s impossible not to notice that the top spots are invariably occupied by listings that have plentiful visual assets.

Images and videos are also an easy way to build trust. This is especially true if your Yelp SEO activity leads to more consumers uploading images alongside their reviews.

Yelp’s official advice states ‘Upload multiple photos to look your best’. That’s frustratingly ambiguous, so as a good rule of thumb, we’d suggest mirroring Google Business Profile photos best practice and uploading a well-rounded selection of images.

How to Upload and Manage Google Business Profile Photos

Read more

Aim to include shots of the interior and exterior of any location open to consumers, team photos, and product and service offerings. For bars, restaurants, and other hospitality venues, you’ll also want to include shots of your best dishes and most striking spaces.

It’s very simple to upload images.

1. Log into your Yelp business listing.
2. Select ‘Photos and videos’ from the left-hand menu.
3. Then upload from your device.

6. Respond to Reviews (Good and Bad)

Review management is a critical part of any local SEO activity. Yelp users are known to be very engaged, are prolific reviewers, and often call, message, and visit local businesses. We already know that reviews are a primary Google Business Profile ranking factor. They’re also vitally important to consumers, with 88% citing business owner responses as a top influencing factor when deciding which local business to choose.

Responding to reviews doesn’t only show Yelp users that your business is active, engaged, and values customer feedback; it also sends those same messages to Yelp, which could help you stand out from less responsive, less active competitors. 

It’s worth noting that how you respond to reviews matters too. We’ve shared lots of tips here to help you navigate responses to feedback both good and bad.

Responding to Online Reviews

Read more

7. Encourage a Regular Influx of New Reviews

A regular influx of good reviews is also important. Many consumers will only browse the most recent reviews. New reviews also help Yelp to understand more about your business, its popularity, and its relevance for consumers searching for specific products and services.

Yelp discourages local businesses from soliciting reviews. Suspected requested reviews are tagged as ‘not recommended’, with Yelp saying they can be more biased. However, there are ways that you can nurture a steady stream of incoming reviews to keep your business listing current.

One easy way is to link to your Yelp listing on your site. The platform also suggests using a ‘Find us on Yelp’ sticker at your physical location. You can take this a stage further by adding a link to your Yelp listing within your email signature, adding a Yelp logo to your business card, or including it within your physical marketing material.

Remember, you’ll need a plan to respond to your incoming reviews as quickly as possible. 

It’s Time to Work on Your Yelp Listing

Knowing how to optimize a Yelp business listing is easier than you may think. With many similarities to Google Business Profile optimization, it shouldn’t take too long to get to grips with.

Even better, growing your visibility on Yelp can directly impact the success of your business. With an engaged user base and the ability to share useful business information, it’s well worth adding Yelp SEO to your local SEO to-do list.

Not only will it help you be easier to find within Yelp itself, but optimizing your business listings is beneficial for your local SEO too. Making sure that each of your listings is accurate and working harder for you, rather than just building and forgetting, is a good move for any business.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how multi-location businesses can effectively leverage BrightLocal to understand location performance, deliver on rankings and key performance indicators (KPIs), and showcase their value to stakeholders.

Understanding Location Performance

To ensure that each location is thriving, it’s vital to start with a top-level overview and identify weak spots. BrightLocal’s Horizon is an excellent starting point. Horizon is the only rank-tracking solution that’s purpose-built for multi-location SEO. It enables you to consolidate and visualize ranking performance across hundreds or thousands of locations into a single, intuitive dashboard.

Here’s how you can make the most of it.

Identify Weak Spots

Utilize Horizon to pinpoint locations that may not be performing as well as others. The visual representation helps you identify areas that require attention.

Anything marked in green is in a good position. Anything marked in red needs some attention. For instance, the business in the image below is ranking well in Idaho—3.3. But not so well in Massachusetts—10.1.

To get a better idea of what’s holding these states back, we can click on the square—let’s click on Massachusettes—and we can see which specific locations in that state are struggling to rank well. 

In order to dig deeper, we can simply click the locations on the map and we’ll be taken to their individual Local Search Grid reports. Here we can find out what we might be able to do to outrank them. 

Identify Top Competitors

Identifying who your main search competitors are becomes complex for businesses with multiple locations. Fortunately, Horizon streamlines this process by pinpointing top competitors for each of your locations, as well as the top one in each state. This allows you to gain insights into your competition nationwide, analyze their strengths, and strategically plan to outperform them, ensuring you stay at the forefront of the game.

What to Do With Local Search Grid Data

Read more

Drill Down for Details

Once you’ve identified locations that need improvement, use the single location tools within BrightLocal to dig deeper. Analyze the specific factors affecting performance and make necessary adjustments.

For example, you could check out their individual Local Search Grid report as mentioned above or run a Local Search Audit report to quickly see what’s holding a location back. With this information, you can work out the best course of action.

You can see here that the Location in the image above needs to work on their local listings. Their next steps could be to run a Citation Tracker report in BrightLocal to help them find and fix current listings and uncover new citation opportunities. 

Delivering on Rankings and KPIs

If you’re going to deliver on rankings and KPIs, as a multi-location business, you need to use a combination of strategies, tools, and techniques to enhance your online visibility, attract more local customers, and ultimately drive revenue. This often includes optimizing websites, managing online listings, maintaining an active and positive online reputation, and implementing effective marketing campaigns.

BrightLocal offers a range of tools and features to assist you in this area.

Review Generation and Responses

Review Inbox allows you to streamline your multi-location reputation management. You can view, sort, and filter every customer review by status or rating, for every location you manage in BrightLocal, via a single feed. If you have integrated your GBP or Facebook Pages to your reports, you’ll also be able to respond to reviews from these sources directly from Review Inbox.

Learn how to set up and understand Review Inbox here. 

Listing Management

Active Sync is a tool that helps you to keep your most important listings accurate and push out updates when you need to. 

Listings have changed over the last decade. Searchers used to use hundreds of different sites to discover local businesses. However, now just a few key listings dominate: Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), Facebook, Apple Maps and Bing. 

These listings have become the key sites that consumers actually use to discover, evaluate and engage with a brand. They also supply your information to other sites and voice-control devices such as:

• Google Business Profile – Google Maps, Waze, Google Home
• Facebook – Instagram
• Bing – Amazon Alexa

Consumers rarely use other listings sites, but they can help businesses to build authority with search engines. Which is where our Citation Builder service comes in. You may be using expensive listing management solutions that hold your data hostage for minimal output; Citation Builder is a managed service where we build out listings for your brand at scale and give you true ownership of your data moving forwards. 

Active Sync helps you to take care of those important listings—Google Business Profile, Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing—all in one place, making sure they are accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you have connected to the listings from your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

What are Google Business Profile Attributes?

Read more

Once you’ve set Active Sync up it will then send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if a suggested edit is published by Google, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can either accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, allowing you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Bulk Google Business Profile Posts

GBP Post Scheduler is a true game-changer when it comes to scaling up your Google Posts. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation.

As a multi-location business, there could be instances where you need to push the latest national promotions to every location at once. Rather than have to do this one location at a time, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you potentially hours of tedium. This ensures consistent content across your entire network of locations (or just a select few) in just a few clicks. 

You can schedule posts to go out at the exact right time and set the relevant expiry dates to ensure a consistent stream of content for potential customers to engage with. You’ll get full visibility of what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired from a single dashboard. It’s as easy as setting it and forgetting it! But if you need to make changes, then it’s just a case of editing anything that’s already scheduled or deleting anything that’s live.

You can also say goodbye to writer’s block with our AI-powered content generation. Our integration with ChatGPT ensures that you always have engaging and captivating content at your fingertips. Simply add a description of the message you want to put out, and in seconds, our AI writing assistant will give you content ideas to run with and optimize. 

Learn how to bulk post with GBP Post Scheduler here. 

Showcasing Value to Stakeholders

Demonstrating the value of your efforts to stakeholders is crucial. BrightLocal offers a range of reporting and auditing tools to help you showcase progress and results.

Rank Tracker Rollup Reports

Keep stakeholders informed about your MLB’s local search rankings with Rank Tracker Rollup Reports. The Rollup Reports feature allows you to present comprehensive ranking data in an easily digestible format.

They can be accessed by clicking the ‘Rank Tracker Rollup Reports’ tab on the Rank Tracker overview page.

Google Business Profile Audit Insights

Let’s imagine you had a location that was being held back by their Google Business Profile. You picked up on this issue using the BrightLocal GBP Audit tool and made the necessary changes which have improved the number of calls and clicks the location is getting via their GBP. Now, you can demonstrate this by sharing the Insights tab in the GBP Audit report.

For example, the business below optimized their GBP at the end of October and you can see that this has increased the number of website clicks and views on mobile and maps they’ve got since then. 

BrightLocal Horizon

Continue to utilize BrightLocal Horizon to visualize progress across your MLB. This tool helps you monitor overall performance and determine where additional focus may be needed.

BrightLocal for Multi-location Businesses

BrightLocal can equip your multi-location business with the tools you need to thrive in the competitive world of local search optimization. By understanding location performance, delivering on rankings and KPIs, and showcasing value to stakeholders, you can your own local SEO efforts to the next level. 

To get started and see how BrightLocal can benefit your business, we invite you to speak to our sales team. Start using BrightLocal’s tools and features strategically, and watch as your multi-location business reaps the rewards of enhanced visibility and success.

Too many articles about local SEO focus solely on ranking.

You can rank for irrelevant queries and it won’t help you grow your firm. You can rank for relevant queries, but if you don’t have a competitive number of reviews, potential clients won’t call. It’s not that ranking isn’t important, but it’s a means to an end. In the context of law firms, one of those ends is earning new clients.

Your Local SEO Checklist for Lawyers

1. Local SEO Research and Analysis
2. Website Optimization
3. Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization
4. Reviews
5. Citations and Directories
6. Link-building
7. Content Marketing
8. Performance Measurement and Management

Why Local SEO is Important for Law Firms

At AttorneySync, we surveyed 5,000 Google Consumer Survey respondents. We asked:

“If you thought you needed a lawyer, how would you find one?”

The top two responses?

• Google (17.2%)
• Internet (11.7%)

Most recent legal profession research that I’ve come across reports similar results.

Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2019 found that 57% of respondents searched for a lawyer on their own, as opposed to a referral, with leading sources:

• Search Engine (17%)

Martindale-Avvo’s Hiring An Attorney 2019 survey respondents were asked:

“What resources did you use to find an attorney?”

If you hadn’t guessed by now, search came out right near the top:

• Google (43%)

Further, online review sites, like Yelp, Avvo.com, Lawyers.com, Google and online directories came in at 46.53%. And how do many people access sites like these? Yes, a Google search.

Search engines (organic search), particularly Google, are a leading destination on a legal services consumer’s journey to hiring a lawyer. Local SEO is how you attract and convert clients from organic search.

Understanding the Local Legal Services Searcher

Perhaps the most important aspect of successful local law firm SEO is understanding the local legal services searcher. Too many lawyers and legal SEO consultants fail to prioritize audience research.

While most focus on bottom-of-the-funnel lawyer searches (i.e. chicago personal injury lawyers), few focus on potential clients that are at an earlier stage in their hiring journey. The overwhelming majority of local legal searches relate to research on a life-legal issue.

For example, many people are searching for answers to questions about getting arrested, well before they search for a criminal defense lawyer near them.

Another common local legal services searcher oversight relates to geographic modifiers. Many legal queries lack geo modification altogether (i.e. lawyers near me). In the U.S., others are modified by state, county, and city. In fact, in major metropolitan areas, these searches may also be modified by neighborhoods and other local community districts.

While you should conduct research for your own firm, here are a couple of additional observations from my experience:

• Proximity matters a lot to local legal services consumers.
• In many contexts, people tend to perform legal searches outside working hours.
• Many legal services consumers will contact firms without clicking through to websites.
• Legal services consumers prioritize reviews over rankings. Ranking is necessary, but not sufficient on its own.

Understanding the interplay between how legal services consumers search and how Google localizes results is essential to maximizing local SEO results.

Local Law Firm SEO Basics

First, it’s worth distinguishing between Local Services Ads, the Local Pack, and localized organic results.

Here is a Google SERP for the query “lawyers near chicago”:

Local Service Ads for Lawyers

Notice the first two results. These are Local Services Ads listings (denoted by red x and Ad). With this advertising product, lawyers pay Google per lead. The third result (also denoted by red x and Ad) is also an advertising listing. This time from Google Ads, their pay-per-click auction platform.

Lawyers are eligible to run Local Services Ads where available. Lawyers participating in Local Services Ads are also eligible to apply for Google Screened designation. At the time of writing, Google Screened is currently only available in select verticals in the US and the UK. 

On Local Services Ads listings, lawyers who meet the eligibility criteria receive the Google Screened icon:

At the risk of stating the obvious, advertising is not SEO. While I won’t go deeper into Local Services Ads here, I encourage you to learn more from Tom Waddington’s guide for BrightLocal.

What Are Google Local Services Ads? A Guide to LSAs

Read More

The fourth result of that SERP starts the organic Local Pack results (denoted by green check and Organic SEO):

Local Pack for Lawyers

Local Pack listings come from a business’s Google Business Profile (GBP) listings. If you’re new to Google Business Profiles, check out BrightLocal’s GBP Guide.

Generally speaking, according to Google, these results are generated based on the relevance, distance, and prominence ranking factors.

In my experience, the lawyers and law firms that tend to have the most local pack visibility share the following three characteristics:

• Distance (proximity) – They are very close to what Google believes is the searchers location or to the location term used in a search.
• Prominence: Reviews – They tend to have the most reviews and positive ratings.
• Prominence: Links – They tend to have robust back link profiles (in terms of number of linking root domains), particularly with respect to geographic relevance (i.e. local links).

Whether you’re hanging your shingle for the first time, moving, or opening new office locations, you ought to consider the importance of proximity to your law office’s physical location in the context of local SEO. In my experience, you should be weighing the following factors:

• Proximity to target audience.
• Relative competition level near and at location.

Andy Simpson provides an excellent personal injury attorney example in How to Choose the Next Location for Your Business Using Local SEO.

How to Choose the Next Location for Your Business Using Local SEO

Read More

In my experience, you ought to try to avoid being at the same location as other law firms, and in particular, those with the same GBP categories as yours.

Beyond distance, prominence is the factor to spend most of your resources. Law firms that are able to earn a competitive number of reviews on GBP and around the web, tend to enjoy the highest local pack visibility.

Lawyers should focus on earning a competitive number of reviews on GBP first. These are essential both for visibility, as well as converting local pack visibility into potential clients.

After reviews on your own GBP, I recommend focusing on legal services review sites, review sites that rank for searches on your name, and then the general review sites.

Of course, you should also build citations. Start with the top citation sites for attorneys. As with links, make sure you prioritize citation sites that rank for your target queries. Google is already telling you these sites are relevant since they are surfacing them for your queries.

Finally, despite recent reports of their demise, in my experience, links still matter a lot. But, not all links have equal value. Instead of trying to scale links from high DA sites, find ways to earn topically and locally relevant links.

Here are a few ways to do effective local link-building:

• Go hyper-local. Begin your prospecting research with Google Maps. Start with your business location and radiate outward to uncover more local link-building opportunities (i.e., neighborhoods, blocks, and other hyper-local language).
• Use crawlers to identify link opportunities. Many local sites have a variety of issues that present great opportunities for local link-building (i.e., broken links, linking to outdated content, etc). Crawlers can also make it much easier to identify the path of least resistance for earning a link (for example they already link to pages like yours). 
• Use competition-informed prospecting. Look for sites linking to your competitors but not to you… but don’t obsess over copying competitor link profiles. Most of the links you’ll find there probably aren’t helping much. You’ll waste a lot of time and money trying to build links that won’t move the dial.

I know there are many other local search ranking factors. I’m well aware of the impact of changing your firm’s name to include keywords, adding services, and the impact of behavioral signals (engagement with your GBP profile). But, if I had to narrow it to three, I’d take distance, reviews, and links.

GBP Guidelines for Individual Lawyer Practitioners

Google Business Profile Help provides guidelines for individual practitioners:

An individual practitioner is a public-facing professional, typically with their own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance or real estate agents are all individual practitioners. Business Profiles for practitioners may include title or degree certification (for example Dr., MD, JD, Esq., CFA).

An individual practitioner should create their own dedicated Business Profile if:

• They operate in a public-facing role. Support staff should not create their own Business Profiles.
• They can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours.

A practitioner shouldn’t have multiple Business Profiles to cover all of their specializations. Sales associates or lead generation agents for corporations aren’t individual practitioners and aren’t eligible for a Business Profile.

Multiple practitioners at one location

If the practitioner is one of several public-facing practitioners at this location:

• The organization should create a Business Profile for this location, separate from that of the practitioner.
• The title of the Business Profile for the practitioner should include only the name of the practitioner, and shouldn’t include the name of the organization.

There are several issues to be solved when deciding whether to create individual practitioner profiles.

First, note that the guidelines only permit one listing per practitioner. Per the guidelines, lawyers ought not create GBP listings for every practice area they serve. Multiple practice areas should be addressed through categories.

Second, Google may prefer one business listing over another for the same business. For example, a physical office location listing may compete with an individual practitioner listing for the same query. Sometimes, individual practitioner listings with fewer reviews may appear instead of an office listing with many more reviews. This may be undesirable from a branding and conversion perspective.

Third, law firm owners should have clear policies relating to ownership of individual GBP listings. Keep in mind that reviews are attached to listings. Therefore, if an individual lawyer earns reviews on their individual practitioner listing, those reviews travel with that listing and may travel with the lawyer to a competitor firm.

How to Effectively Manage Practitioner Listings with BrightLocal

Read More

Generally speaking, solo and small firms that aren’t serving a high volume of clients should consider consolidating their “GBP equity” in fewer profiles. Creating profiles for several locations and practitioners, without earning a competitive quantity of reviews, is unlikely to deliver value in terms of new clients from those profiles. On the other hand, larger firms with high volumes of clients ought to be strategic in terms of maximizing their visibility across locations and practice areas.

Tactical Google Business Profile Optimizations for Lawyers

Business Name

If you perform any bottom-of-the-funnel “lawyer lookup” search for a competitive location and practice area, you’ll likely see at least one firm that has keywords in their business name. In fact, in many competitive legal SERPs, you will likely find all three listings taking advantage of this tactic. Like it or not, at the time of writing, this works really well.

Before you go updating your GBP’s business name field, there are a few things you ought to consider.

First, what are the potential consequences for your brand? By adding keywords, you may actually dilute or harm your brand equity.

Second, you should be sure that your jurisdiction allows for the use of trade names.

Third, if you’re inclined to change your firm name, be sure to officially change it with both your state bar and your state’s business registry. Failing to officially change your name may lead to issues with your GBP listing including suspension.

Business Category

Selecting business categories can have significant consequences on both your firm’s local pack visibility and conversion. Ideally, you will be able to select a primary category that is most relevant to your practice. You should also add as many additional relevant categories as are available.

While some local SEO consultants have suggested that adding several additional categories may “dilute” a listing’s visibility, that has not been my experience.

Keep in mind that those categories are displayed in local pack listings. While Google will generally match the most relevant category with the query, the machine doesn’t always get it right. Conduct your own tests and experiments to see what impact various category settings have on your visibility and ability to convert searchers into potential clients.

Photos & Videos

People tend to hire lawyers, not logos. Using photos and videos on your GBP is one of the most effective ways to motivate a searcher to engage with your listing and convert them from a searcher to a potential client. Here are some examples of photos and videos that tend to be effective for lawyers:

• Client testimonials: You can convert testimonials into graphics and record happy clients singing your praises.
• Community service: Highlight local community service involvement.
• Leadership: Highlight professional recognition and leadership positions.
• Explainer videos: Create videos that share your knowledge, skill, and experience in a particular field.
• USP videos: Create videos that position you as an expert in your niche. Describe why you are uniquely qualified to serve your clients’ needs

Products & Services

Lawyers tend to think in terms of services, not products. However, in the context of GBP, lawyers should consider adding Products to their profiles.

GBP Products get a lot of real estate in SERPs. They’re also highly visual.

In addition to this, GBP Services seem to disproportionately impact visibility. Put simply, adding as many relevant services as possible seems to impact local pack visibility more than it ought to.

Services also enjoy prominent visibility in local pack and map finder results.

Consider the impact of various Services on your firm’s ability to convert searchers into potential clients.

Check out Claire Carlile’s Add and Manage Google Business Profile Products and Services.

Add and Manage Google Business Profile Products and Services

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Updates

GBP updates are effective for driving engagement and conversion. Law firms ought to test updates for various stages of the legal services consumer journey. Use UTM tagging with Google Business Profile Update links. That way, you can test which Updates are driving the most engagement and even clients!

Localized Organic for Lawyers

Now let’s turn to localized organic results. Here are some of the localized organic results for the same example query “lawyers near chicago”:

Bear in mind that for most bottom-of-the-funnel legal queries (i.e. include lawyer or law firm), localized organic results appear below Local Services Ads, Ads, and Local Packs.

Instead of prioritizing ranking for these queries, your localized organic search strategy should focus on top-of-the-funnel research queries (i.e. how do I file…). These types of queries tend not to show LSAs and Local Packs. Therefore, the traditional localized organic results appear much more prominently.

Notice that this query is not geomodified but Google is still showing localized results based on what they know about the location of the searcher (in this case me, in Michigan).

When planning your local content strategy, be sure to research and analyze localized organic SERPs to understand what Google is showing for both geographically modified and unmodified queries. While these queries might not convert to clients at the same rate as bottom-of-the-funnel searches, based on their volume, they can be quite valuable.

In my experience, localized organic search success depends even more heavily on links than the local pack. These results tend to be dominated by large sites with many links. These typically include:

• Legal Directories
• General Directories
• Legal Review Sites
• Law Firms

If you have a newer site with limited content or a site that has struggled to earn links, it will be difficult to rank in competitive localized organic search. However, you may find success in the long tail if you go hyper-local and practice niche. There tends to be much less competition in these SERPs and there can still be a lot of value even without much volume.

Final Thoughts

Local law firm SEO can be extremely competitive. If you’re in any major metropolitan area with a direct-to-consumer practice (i.e. personal injury, criminal defense, divorce, etc), it can be very difficult to command the most local pack market share. Nonetheless, you should commit to making a long-term investment in improving your local pack visibility. It is among the most valuable online attention you can earn.

Begin by developing excellent systems for potential client and client experiences

This must include empathetic and professional intake. Too many firms focus on ranking only to end up with negative reviews due to poor intake experiences. Reviews are the most valuable aspect of local law firm SEO.

Next, get active in your local community

Ideally, find local organizations and events that overlap with the clients you serve. For example, personal injury lawyers might co-sponsor an event with a physical therapy or rehabilitation company or organization.

These investments can have a remarkable impact on your business. Plus, they can drive valuable local links. These local links are among the most competitive difference-makers in local SEO.

Finally, get social

The impact of social media on local SEO is undeniable. Social tends to be one of the most effective distribution channels for content marketing. Not to mention that video content from YouTube and other social platforms regularly surfaces on local legal queries.

Further, Google’s announcement of Perspectives is likely to increase the importance of publishing on social and forum sites in the context of local SEO. Publish video content on these platforms regularly.

Follow this plan and regularly execute and you will begin to see meaningful results. Local law firm SEO lends itself to measurement. Measure the value of new clients all the way back to a local search. You will likely find that it remains one of the most valuable online legal marketing channels.

The ‘activities’ module has been spotted on a range of business profiles including hotels.

Google Business Profiles now shows the Add "Acitivies" option for Hotel Category businesses. #GBPupdate #LocalSEO #SEO #googlebusinessprofiles@googlemybiz@rustybrick pic.twitter.com/qEBK9Byhnv

— Sohan Jain (@sohanjain) November 3, 2023

Though, personally, I have not yet seen this rolled out to hotels or accommodation categories.

If you have these buttons, lucky you! By adding your tickets or your activities, you’ll be able to secure a presence in any of the free ‘Things to do’ units that Google might be adding to your local knowledge panel. We’ll talk you through what this means below.

What is Google’s ‘Things to do’?

Google’s ‘Things to do’ program is part of Google Travel. It aims to make it easier for searchers to find and book tours, activities, and tickets based around Points of Interest (POIs).

A ‘Point of Interest’ is a place that someone might find interesting. For example, if you are on holiday you’ll find restaurants and places to stay of interest. If you’re looking to relocate to a new geographic area you’ll find schools, libraries, and hospitals of interest. 

Google Maps (as well as other platforms like travel apps, event apps, food and drink apps) uses POIs to help searchers find places that they are interested in. Your business on Google Maps (and indeed any of those other platforms) is a POI.

Since ‘Things to do’ is part of Google Travel, the POIs will consist of the types of business locations that have relevance—attractions, experience providers, restaurants, and hotels. If you’re involved with the Google Business Profile listing of any businesses like this, Google’s ‘Things to do’ program could very likely be making an appearance in your SERPs of interest.

There are both ‘free’ and ‘paid ad’ elements to ‘Things to do’.  This is how Google describes it:

“With Things to do, partners can surface their inventory via free listings and through a dynamic ad format. We encourage attractions, tour operators, and activity providers to work directly with their restech provider to take part.”

‘Things to do’ products are displayed in various formats across several surfaces. To simplify requirements they can generally be split into four different modules, 

• the Ads module, 
• booking module, 
• experiences module and 
• the operator booking module

It’s the ‘booking module’ (‘tickets’ in the NMX) and the ‘operator booking module’ (‘activities’ in the NMX) that we’ll focus on in this post. Both are free and can be populated by the business using the NMX.

‘Things to do’ and Third-party Listings

If you’ve been involved in digital marketing for hospitality businesses like restaurants and hotels you’ll be aware that OTAs (online travel agencies) and third-party platforms (such as DoorDash) can make paid or organic appearances in our business’s local knowledge panels:

Below: Ads in a hotel’s local knowledge panel

Below: Third-party providers making an appearance in Alinea’s local knowledge panel

It’s worth noting that there isn’t much we can do about the ads—if you have a third-party partnership and Google chooses to show third-party provider ads then beyond no longer working with third parties you don’t have much of a choice (check out the work of Tim Capper for more details on how hotels pull the short straw when it comes to free and flexible functionality).

Google My Business for Hotels: How to Set Up and Optimize Google Hotel Listings

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At the time of writing, there is something that a business can do when Google includes an OTA or a third party in one of the ‘not paid for’ units. 

Businesses need to proactively monitor what is appearing in their local knowledge panel and make sure that they make the most of all opportunities to add their own content. In many cases, adding their own content will push those third-party listings further down and reduce the number of eyeballs and clicks that those third-parties can earn. The same can be said when they add their tickets or activities. Moreover, Google will add an ‘official site’ badge to the activities or tickets that you add:

Ticketing/Admissions: The ‘Booking Module’

The local knowledge panel for many attraction-type businesses will include a ‘ticketing’ section.

On a desktop it can look like this:

Click on the tickets link to see all of the ticketing options:

Note that if you have added your own activities, you’ll appear right at the top of the list, above the third-party listings that can populate this section.

Be aware that this module in Google search allows potential customers to quickly and easily compare entry ticket prices between the official ticket provider (you, as a business) and the OTAs. So, if you’re offering discounted rates to OTAs this won’t look appealing to potential customers, who are likely to click on a third-party listing if it appears to offer a cheaper rate.

This is what Google tells us about how these results are displayed:

“Tickets are ranked based on several factors, but mainly by price. Official tickets are given preference in the ranking. Ticket suppliers don’t pay Google to appear in these search results and can’t pay to influence their ranking.

Prices are based on standard adult entry and may vary depending on the specific ticket types, dates or eligibility for other discounts. Displayed currencies may differ from the currencies used to purchase tickets.”

All attraction businesses are eligible for ‘tickets’. If you are an attraction and you don’t have the option to add tickets you should contact Google Business Profile help. You’ll need to make sure that you’re following Google’s ‘Things to do’ general policies and price policies.

How do I add my own tickets?

Click on ‘tickets’ in the NMX. 

From here you can add your ticket options in these fields:

All of the data here must match what is on your product landing page—so make sure that the ticket name and the price are correct.

At this point only the ‘Adult’ visitor type is supported:

You’ll need to add a link to the relevant product landing page. Make sure that you add UTM tagging so that you can use Google Analytics to track visitors to your website from your ticketing links and any conversions that they go on to make.

Activities and Bookings: The ‘Operator Booking’ Module

The ‘Things to do’ operator booking module provides a way for tour operators to display their products on their own Google Business Profile entry. Alongside the tour operator products, tours provided by this operator via different OTAs are also displayed.

If you have activities showing in your local knowledge panel they’ll look like this:

Note that if you have added your own ticketing you’ll appear right at the top of the list, above the third-party listings that can populate this section. You’ll need to monitor your local knowledge panel to see which third-party listings are being pulled in. Click on ‘view more’ to see any additional options:

If you see the ‘activities’ button in your NMX or in your local knowledge panel, you can go ahead and add your own activities:

Just click on the ‘activities’ label and you’ll see this:

Click ‘get started’ to go to the first of 2 screens:

Complete all of the fields according to your product. Remember to UTM tag up your Booking URL link so that you can monitor visits and conversions in GA.

On the second screen:

You can upload a photo according to these guidelines (see full image guidelines here):

• Format: JPG or PNG. No animation.
• Recommended dimension: 2048 x 1366 px (or 1024 x 683 px)
• Minimum dimension: 300 x 300 px
• Maximum file size: 16MB
• Recommended ratio: 1:1 or 4:3
• Quality: Make the attraction or activity the focus of the photo. Use images that are sharp, well-lit, and true to life.

And, at this stage, you’ll also add the activity duration and language.

An Essential for Hotels and Attractions

Adding these ‘Things to do’ is a quick way to show both Google and potential visitors the options they’ll have. Not only that, but it gives you a chance to own the whole booking journey for your customer, helping skip those pesky third-party resellers and allowing you to drive more website visitors from your GBP.

For POI businesses in the relevant categories, it’s now a ‘not to be overlooked’ part of the Google Business Profile optimization.