Local SEO Services
Getting Your Business On The Map Starts Right Here!
Result Driven, top-rate Local SEO Service for Houston and Beyond means putting you business on the map using Google Business Profiles.
Reach More Customers | Create More Leads | Maintain Your Reputation
Why Local SEO Matters for Houston
In 2020, nearly half of all Google searches targeted local services and businesses. That’s millions of potential customers looking for nearby businesses and local SEO can be used to connect them to the businesses in their backyard. That’s what local SEO does – boosts the visibility of businesses and professionals that serve a particular geographical area.
Local SEO is a valuable part of every digital marketing strategy if it’s done right, but doing local SEO right takes a lot of work and skill specialization these days. That’s where local SEO experts like Vertical Web can provide an edge. Our battle-tested, proven methods have done wonders for our clients in terms of drawing traffic and converting that traffic into customers.
What is Local SEO?
Supports your local brand so potential clients know who you are. A business now needs 150 touches to make an impression on prospective customers.
Local SEO drives traffic, and more traffic means more sales online as well as offline.
Businesses with outstanding reputations and reviews have better sales. Create that trust and turn shoppers into buyers.
Understanding the difference between
Local SEO vs National SEO
Google started classifying businesses as local in 2013. What that means is there are certain types of businesses that only service a local population for the most part. This has evolved in a specialized type of Search engine optimization to help business owners land in the Google Map pack, where that gets upward of 85% of the traffic.
Vertical Web works with both Houston businesses to develop Local SEO plans, as well as local businesses all over the country, including Lawyers, Dentists and other local professional services, as well as those in the Automotive industry and Restaurants. Scroll down for more on Local SEO vs. National SEO
Local SEO Services for Houston Business
Local SEO isn’t just a single service – it’s a whole bunch of services that fuel a business’s online visibility. We’ve been perfecting local SEO since it first arrived as a discipline and part of internet marketing. Here’s what we can do to elevate your local SEO presence:
Assess existing local SEO
First, our team will assess how well your current local SEO methods are performing. We'll check how your site is ranking in the markets you want to rank in, uncover areas of improvement and build a strategy around this information. Our team will verify that your NAP (name, address, phone number) listings are accurate and visible, review your Google My Business profile for local SEO opportunities, check your local citations and audit your site’s pages for their local SEO impact.
Manage Citations
Your company’s NAP (name address and phone number) citations can influence how well your site does on search results, but only if they are listed properly and on enough sites. Our team will add your company to local business directories and industry-specific sites to build out your local SEO presence and boost your company’s reputation.
GBP Optimization
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business (GMB)) allows business owners to access and optimize it for local SEO. It’s a powerful tool if handled properly. Our SEO team includes GBP specialists. We understand the use of categories and keyword signals to build your profile and GMB content, and ensure your company’s information is error-free as we build your brand with enhanced content. GMB also comes with some useful analytical tools for performance reviewing, and we can leverage this for better local SEO results.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization addresses a variety of important local SEO signals. During our on-page work, our team will integrate location and industry-specific keywords into your site, add SEO-boosting pages like service and location pages, optimize your site’s metadata and dive into the technical SEO side, like improving site performance and ensuring the right schema markup language is in place. We will also establish a social media presence for your business and synergize it with your on-page local SEO.
Back Link Management
Link building is one of the most effective and time-consuming ways to improve your local SEO, so it can’t be left out of a local SEO strategy. And we don’t leave it out. We use white-hat link building methods that include optimized internal linking and targeting high domain authority sites for more effective backlinking. It’s all about quality, not quantity when it comes to link building.
Localized Content
No SEO campaign can succeed without quality content backing it up. That includes local SEO, but quality content isn’t enough. It also has to be optimized for your area’s market, which means incorporating geo-specific keywords and angling content so that it speaks to your target audience. Good local SEO content is valuable, which is why Vertical Web’s team includes content writers experienced in producing it.
Keywords & Categories
Keyword research is a multi-step process and we don’t cut corners with it. Our SEO team will gather industry-relevant, location-relevant keywords, assess their local SEO value to your company and develop a marketing strategy that incorporates them. Coupled with the categories that Google feels your website belongs in, we create the proper optimization for each business we work with.
Review Management
Procuring reviews and helping your company’s reputation is a critical indicator of future success. Forgetting this one component is a mistake because people take customer reviews and negative press seriously. Our local SEO services include online reputation management services for this reason. With our expertise, we can attract more positive relevant reviews, improve engagement with customers and use the power of SEO to highlight your company’s successes and authority.
Conversion
Effective local SEO gets the traffic to your company website, but are those visitors responding to your CTAs when they arrive? If not, we can analyze what’s going wrong in the visitor-to-customer journey and correct it, whether it’s a site optimization, navigation or content-based issue.
Industries that Benefit from Houston Local SEO
Medical & Health Service Providers
Dentists
Attorneys & Legal Practices
Restaurant and Food Service
Small Business
Accountants, CPAs and Book Keeping
Hotel and Hospitality
Veterinarians
Accountants, CPAs and Book Keeping
Automotive
Retail
Banking and Finance
Why We are the Local SEO Experts In Houston
When we started in the Houston SEO business decades ago, SEO was just SEO. There weren’t many, if any, local search elements for SEO experts to deal with. That’s changed pretty quickly in the last 20 years, to the point where local SEO is now its own discipline, discrete from “national” SEO.
We’ve kept pace with the manifold changes search engines have made over the decades, and our results speak for themselves. Here’s why our clients pick us and stick with us:
Our clients are experts in their field
Our clients’ expertise is a major marketing advantage, but few SEO companies leverage it effectively. From the very beginning, our team will work with your team to craft a local SEO strategy that brings your expert voice to the forefront. What companies do well is what potential customers are most interested in, so your company’s site should communicate that thoroughly, in terms of site design, site structure and site content. We specialize in all three.
Comprehensive: national and local SEO
We’ve executed successful digital marketing campaigns for both national and local clients. We aren’t limited to either silo and can blend local and national SEO tactics for our clients.
Our Local SEO Generates Leads
Vertical Web’s team includes Houston local SEO specialists - people who have deep knowledge of how local ranking signals are deployed and optimized. Local SEO isn’t a side-offering for our team - it’s something we’ve practiced at a high level for more than a decade.
We are Web Experts
No digital marketing strategy is complete without SEO, but SEO isn’t the end-all, be-all when it comes to online success. You need a full range of web services, including web design, that are aligned with each other for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Vertical Web is a one-stop web service shop. We provide everything your company’s site will need to justify the investment. Web hosting, development, design, optimization, marketing, content production - we do it all.
What’s the difference between local SEO and National SEO services?
The point of national SEO and local SEO is the same. In both cases, you’re using SEO tools to climb up the SERPs, build your brand and convert visitors into customers.
However the process is not the same. When Google receives a query for local businesses, it has to pick which local businesses to show the user. And Google wants to be absolutely sure that it picks the most relevant, the best business websites it can.
Google does this by evaluating sites using its own internal metrics, and there are many, many factors that feed into the search engine’s SERP decisions. Local SEO experts are knowledgeable in what these factors are and how they can be used to the site’s advantage. Among SEO types, you may hear them referred to as “ranking signals.”
Ranking signals? Just tell me how Houston local SEO works
Imagine it’s lunchtime and someone is looking for a local deli. They run to Google and punch in a search query for “deli near me.” The local SEO magic begins.
First, Google notices that there’s a local intent in the search query (the “near me” part), so it knows that the user doesn’t want just any deli – they want one close by. To do this, Google is looking for sites that scream out: “Hey, we’re a deli that’s close to the user – pick us!”
The better the site’s local SEO ranking signals, the easier it is for Google to find them and to verify that they are, in fact, a local deli. That’s just the beginning, because search engines are also looking for well-optimized, well-organized sites that feature strong content. Even in the local SEO game, you need a strong overall digital marketing strategy.
This is where some of the overlap between local and national SEO starts to creep back in. SEO experts go about local and national SEO a bit differently, but they both rely on a higher level digital marketing strategy to reach their full potential.
What kind of local SEO ranking signals is Google looking for?
Search engines consider hundreds upon hundreds of ranking signals before spitting out a SERP for the user. If you want the best SEO impact possible, you’ll want to optimize as many of them as possible, but only some are relevant to a local SEO strategy.
Some of those local SEO ranking factors include:
- Your GMB profile and its content
- The presence of location-specific keywords
- Link building with high authority sites
- Your company’s NAP citations and their consistency
- Your site’s domain authority
- The quality of your customer reviews
- The quality of your site’s user experience, taking into account things like site speed
- Strong technical SEO and site architecture
Why every business should consider local SEO services
Retail shops, restaurants, car dealerships, doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants – all can benefit from local SEO services. Operating out of a single location? Local SEO can help. Operating out of 20 locations? Local SEO can help. Brick-and-mortar? Absolutely. Online only? You bet. Here’s why every business needs local SEO, no matter what your business does:
Local SEO efforts can bring in a highly-targeted audience
The point of local SEO is to attract people in your area who are looking for what your business provides. The goal isn’t to maximize random online traffic – it’s to reach the people most likely to become a customer. For neighborhood businesses and professionals (like doctors and lawyers), this is a vital advantage.
Local SEO services can help find and leverage low-competition keywords
One of the great things about local SEO is that it allows your business to properly frame its competition. Local SEO services target lower-competition keywords that allow your business to quickly build presence in its target market. You may need to compete with national brands eventually, but conquering your area is a valuable foothold to have first.
Local SEO focuses brand and visibility-building where it is most valuable
It’s difficult to quantify the value of branding, but there’s no doubt that strong branding carries a lot of value. In addition to driving targeted traffic to your site, local SEO services can improve your company’s regional presence. When you’re at the top of the SERPs, establishing your business as an industry expert and active on social media, you’re reinforcing brand power.
Vertical Web has perfected local SEO in Houston
In a market as competitive as Houston, climbing to the top of the local SERPs can be a scrum. Don’t go it alone. Vertical Web has propelled many professionals and businesses to the top of their area market, and we can do the same for your company. If you’re interested in attracting new clients and cultivating your company’s brand, contact us and let’s get started.
