If you own a local brick and mortar business and noticed a drop in your Google search rankings since late July, it isn’t a coincidence. Google tweaked its algorithm and came up with the Pigeon update (as named by Search Engine Land). This update is designed to give searchers more relevant results for their location; i.e. to help them find the closest hardware store, or Mexican restaurant, or whatever they’re looking for.
The good news is you can take some steps to get your rankings back up there and reach out to your all-important local audience.
- Location, location, location! Optimize your content for your location. Make sure your location is in your title tags, your alt attributes (image tags), your content, your headings, etc. Any place that you’ve optimized for your keywords needs to be optimized for your location.
- Create a unique page for each location. Each location gets a page with its own URL that includes the location. The content for the page must also be optimized to that location.
- Have a social media presence and encourage your customers to review your company and comment about you. This can be as easy as giving them a business card that asks them to give you a review on Yelp or you can choose to have a very involved social media campaign. The choice is yours.
- Join Google+ and optimize your location pages. This is not the world’s most popular social media site – yet – but it is Google’s, so having a presence there is a smart business move.
- Skip the zip. If your idea of a store locator is to have someone input their zip code and you give them a result, consider changing that approach. Your store locator needs to be crawl-able by the Google search spiders so they can catalogue your location information. This means you need to have a locator page for each physical location (if you have more than one). You have to pack it with all the contact and location information you can in simple English words. Remember to include your hours of operation and phone numbers and email addresses, too. All of this extra information will help customers find you quickly. You can also add an XML sitemap which can act as a standalone landing page.
Bonus Tip – Check your information. It seems obvious but some companies create a website and then never touch it again – even if their phone number or address changes. The smart website owner updates their locator page whenever there’s a change. Even small details like parking availability during maintenance that may require parking in a certain portion of the lot. Remember that “touching” your website frequently tells Google that it’s current and that you value it.
Want to add more of the right touches to your website? Click right here!
