I’ve had many clients come to be for search engine optimization recently and what strikes me is how so many of them still view SEO through the lens of 2009. What I mean by that is that they’re trying to rank high for certain keywords in general search to get some traffic, without any local geographic overlay while competing against thousands for businesses. And for many of us long-suffering Jacksonville Jaguar fans should know, that’s the recent equivalent of the Jags beating Tom Brady in the Super Bowl — four years in a row.

A lot has changed since Google came on the scene, heck my iPhone now has more computing power than my 2003 Mac. And search has gotten more sophisticated too, in the more intelligent answers it gives to people’s queries and most importantly, where they’re looking for answers. So these days search is driven primarily by local search, and performance in local search means ranking high on the map. The tag line for this site — putting your business on the map — was not put there by accident.

So for local businesses, here are few key things to keep in mind regarding SEO. First, for most businesses, as we’ve seen, local SEO is going to carry the day. To be strong in local search results, you have to optimize your website for location information and set up your Google My Business listing properly, post to it often and get as many reviews as you possibly can. The reason for this is that to get any action at all from search, you have to appear in the “three pack” that’s tied to the map at the top of the results page. Even being at #5 in the general search results below is not likely to get you that much action. And on mobile (where the majority of searches occur)  that three pack is often all that people will see.

In this scenario your website is there mainly to support and strengthen your Google My Business listing on the map, so the stronger your website is for the term (what the user is looking for) the more credibility you have with both the user and Google’s algo. You’ll notice I said term not keyword, because Google’s algo in today’s search world is trying to answer a real language query (such as what are the best treatments for back pain) and not just return results that mention keywords that may or may not be completely relevant to the query. So I tell my clients to be strong and authoritative for a topic, and get keywords out of your head.  Other things to keep in mind are that you still need to build links to your site and you should have a blog on your site where you post often. It’s still being debated on how much social signals contribute to Google’s ranking algo, but one  thing is pretty clear — if the choice is between getting a like on Facebook versus a positive review on Google, the positive review is worth exponentially more in local search.

As always, if you have any questions, you know where to find me.