Local SEO master, Mike Blumenthal, put together an awesome infographic at the beginning of this year that clearly lays out the various assets and activities required to create a comprehensive local online presence. The core begins with the business name, phone number, and domain name that can then be used to populate the primary local online assets — N.A.P. (an acronym for Name, Address, Phone Number which are key pieces of data for syncing local profile data), website, and blog.
Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.
Owning Local Web Presence in Search
The left side of the chart describes what assets / activities are help with search visibility. The breadth of which are local directory listings which need to exist to allow links, citations, and reviews to be created and picked up by Google. Creating local directory profiles on sites that are authoritative and relevant to your industry provide clear indicators to Google about the context of your company when determining to display your Places listing or website in search results.
Owning Local Web Presence in Social Media
On the other side of the graphic, Mike presents those components essential to owning your social media presence online. If word of mouth is the lifeblood of many local companies, then social media is like word of mouth on steroids as it gives the business owner the ability to stay in direct contact with prospects and customers through social media updates focused on news, events, or just dropping knowledge on that companies area of expertise.
To really own your online presence, you must stake a claim on both sides — search and social — and engage in some level of ongoing activity. The ubiquity of scale marketing which used to not be accessible to local companies is now an affordable option that can dwarf traditional direct marketing (mailers, flyers, postcards, etc.) in cost effectiveness and new business creation.
Have you fully claimed your local online presence?
Free Online Visibility Self-Assessment
Do you need help assessing if you’re doing all you can to maximize your business’ online visibility?
If you want to know what to look for, here is a free self-assessment that will help you review your online visibility so you have all the pieces in place to maximize getting found and contacted by your prospects.
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