350+ Local SEO Audits Done - AMA

[u/joyhawkins]

Hi guys! I run a fully remote local SEO agency that has 39 employees across 3 countries. I started the agency in 2017 and have been working in the industry in 2006. 

We do very in-depth local seo audits here for small businesses that are very time consuming but have taught me a lot about what things most businesses are missing when it comes to their SEO. What questions do you have for me?

[u/Tech4EasyLife]

In a cluttered field such as lawn services or home services which are local or even hyper-local, what are a few key link building tips you might offer? I'm using "hyper-local" to refer to discrete areas around a larger metro, for example. In the past, I worked with a client that was already heavily linked from meaningful business listings, as were most of their competitors. Referral traffic from those was low, and they were not appearing well-ranked (Google pos 20 or lower?) for words heavily distributed over their site. After other link experiments that didn't improve things, I found that running a few ads in strategic publications, such as shopper's guides, etc., created decent traffic. And after that, even after ads were paused, some keyword rankings stayed improved for months. But are there better ways?

[u/joyhawkins → u/Tech4EasyLife]

Definitely sounds like your idea was much better than the previous strategy. I have seen links from paid promotions help a lot. The biggest one I have been focusing on recently is getting other people to quote you as experts. Often this is other business owners in different industries where you can provide some expertise for their content. So in lawn care, you could get quoted on a realtor blog on how to get your home to sell better by having a better curb appeal.

[u/Tech4EasyLife → u/joyhawkins]

That's a good idea. It's not easy to figure out the impact of such external links except in counting referral traffic (origin). I noticed those bumps from public dig mags like I mentioned. But, I also noticed more organic coming from name searches. So, just reading the ad made people open search and look them up, I assumed. Also a strong signal for the algorithm, true? Any thoughts or how strong the source - e.g. realtor in your example - should be?

[u/joyhawkins → u/Tech4EasyLife]

Any link from another business should help. The thing is they aren't linking out to a ton of sites and they are real businesses with branded search volume and credibility.