What’s all this talk about local citations? Do you really need them for your business? How can you build them yourself or have someone on your team build them?

Don’t worry, I’ll answer all of these pressing questions. Lets start here…

What the heck is a citation?

A citation is a listing on a local directory site. Take one of the most well known sites, Yelp. Your business listing on Yelp would be considered a local citation. Or how about Yellowpages, that companies still around? Yep it is and that’s another citation.

The process of building citations is long and somewhat painful because you need to do each one manually. You could use an automated service but if you’re serious about local SEO then you need to put some sweat and tears into it and build them yourself (or hire an SEO company to build them for you… hint hint).

Do I really need these for my business?

Absolutely. You should start today if you can. Two main reasons why citations are so important.
1. It’s a place for your customers to find your business.
2. It’s tells Google that you’re a real business and are listed on legit platforms. [Read more…]

Are you fearful of getting a bad review online about your business? Maybe you already have a few and you don’t know how to respond. The truth is that no matter how awesome your business is, you’re going to get a few bad ones here and there. It’s bound to happen.

Below I’m going to outline some steps you can take to respond and deal with negative reviews. It’s important that you respond because potential customers want to see that you care about your business. Think about how you would perceive a company responding to a bad review. As long as it’s a professional response you would respect them for caring.

Immediate Steps to Take

1. Take a deep breath and cool off. You’re probably not going to be happy about what your customer is saying. The absolute worst thing you could do (even more damaging than the negative review) is going off on the the customer and exploding in a response. It hurts when customers don’t like something about your business but it’s important feedback to make your business better.

2. Look into the issue. If it’s a legitimate complaint then fix that problem. A negative review is valuable feedback and can point out issues with your business. Maybe your front desk employee has an attitude, or your waiting room is too cold.

3. Don’t take too long to respond! How terrible does it look if you respond a month later? Horrible. Be prompt and try to respond within a couple of days. Follow the steps below to craft your response.
[Read more…]

Like them or hate them your business should be listed on Yelp. It’s great for local SEO and also tons of users go to Yelp to search for businesses. Being in the SEO business I have a bad taste in my mouth about Yelp but I’ll save that to the end of this article.

It’s not hard to setup a Yelp profile. Follow the steps below:

1. Go here https://biz.yelp.com/signup and search for your business.
2. Click Claim if it’s listed, create an account and then phone verify the listing.
(If you don’t see your business listing go here and add it https://biz.yelp.com/signup/new)

You should get the most out of every web entity that you’re listed on. For maximizing the exposure of your Yelp listing follow the tips below.

1. Make Your Profile Unique
Create a unique description for your business. Don’t try to stuff keywords into this description and talk to the reader. If you can include a keyword then I would include it one time only.

2. Delete the Dups
If you see a duplicate listing remove it! Go to this link http://www.yelp.com/contact and from the dropdown select remove duplicate listing.

3. Be Relevant
Add all relevant business categories and don’t add ones just to add them. [Read more…]