12 Things To Check In Your Local Homepage SEO Audit + 2 Warnings

[Linda Buquet]

Your homepage is by far the most important page of your site.

At Search Engine Land today, Chris Silver Smith offers up some great local site audit tips.

<a href="http://searchengineland.com/12-things-check-local-homepage-seo-audit-204739">12 Things To Check In Your Local Homepage SEO Audit</a>
(Just a snippet - REALLY GOOD - so click the link to read full post.)

Wonder what an advanced local SEO consultant might check on your local business site’s homepage? Here’s a list of some of the top health-check items that should be performed in analyzing your homepage to get recommendations for improving your Local SEO game.

I added 2 comments I wanted to share here as well. They are 2 of my pet peeves and I share them in detail in my Onsite Local SEO training, because they can cause Google to disconnect you from the local pack.

I'd like to elaborate on #7 which is a pet peeve of mine and something many local sites get wrong.

One thing I teach is that to rank in the local pack you need to give Google the right signals to help her tie the local and organic listing together, so you rank in that blended 3 or 7 pack. We all know Phone is an important part of NAP and needs to match what's on the G+ Local page. So if she can't understand the phone# on your site it can break that match.

IMO On your site the phone should be formatted (123) 456-7890.

Type your the business phone # formatted as 123.456.7890 into Google Maps. She usually chokes on it and says, "Did you mean..." and guesses some number in Thailand... Up until recently she would also choke on 123-456-7890. But lately she seems to understand that format most of the time.

I like to find out what Google likes and give it to her. I think she's partial to standard phone format, like: (123) 456-7890.

Also wanted to offer a word of warning about #1 - Redirects.

I know this post is about on-site not Google My Business data - but wanted to mention this since it ties into redirects.

Often when doing local ranking troubleshooting I often find that the URL on the G+ L listing does a redirect and you may not notice it if you are not looking closely. The site is Example Domain but in the GMB dash they entered Example Domain. OR the old mature high ranking site is drwhatever.com. But they buy a new branded domain texasbrightsmiles.com and that's what they enter in GMB. But when you click you see it redirects to drwhatever.com.

Google really does not like redirects. Plus the site that's ranking in the SERPs needs to be the one you link to in GMB to help her match things up right, do you rank in the blended pack. I've seen lots of listings that got disconnected and dropped out of the pack for this specific reason. So I think it ties in and is worth a mention.

(Although Pigeon does not seem to mind quite as much as the previous algo did, it still can create issues.)

What do you think???

 

[billbean]

That's a good checklist. For most businesses, just doing those things would make a remarkable difference, I'm sure.

 

[accessted]

Google really does not like redirects. Plus the site that's ranking in the SERPs needs to be the one you link to in GMB to help her match things up right, do you rank in the blended pack. I've seen lots of listings that got disconnected and dropped out of the pack for this specific reason. So I think it ties in and is worth a mention.

I wrote a response in there but it did not come up. Not sure why..

So if we have out domain.com in GMB and one of our pages is actually ranking higher domain.com/keyword you are saying to change it? Would we put that in GMB?

What about all the citation NAP info out there?'

or am I reading this wrong?

Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

So if we have out domain.com in GMB and one of our pages is actually ranking higher domain.com/keyword you are saying to change it? Would we put that in GMB?

What about all the citation NAP info out there?'

or am I reading this wrong?

No that's a totally different situation. Would depend.

No what I was referring to is http://john . com is ranking and is the main home page.
But in dash someone enters http://www.john. com and that version of home redirects to the NON www version.

OR http://john . com is ranking and is a mature domain. But he gets a new domain he likes better like bestdallaswidgets .com and forwards it.

Then enters bestdallaswidgets .com in dash which pulls a fast redirect to the mature domain.

So all I'm saying is your main home page that's ranking should be whats in GMB.

However there are cases where you have a high ranking page or multi-location landing page that it makes sense to enter in GMB. That's fine but that's a totally different issue.

I'm just talking about not putting a page that redirects in GMB.

 

[accessted]

Got it..

Thanks for the tip