Optimizing local search results for your business

Optimizing local search results for your 

business 

By Bradley Simonis, Special to the U-T  

 

Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 9:28 p.m. 

 

Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how 

to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week’s feature is from Bradley Simonis, 

founder of E-Marketing Solutions Network (e-marketingsolutionsnetwork.com or on Twitter 

@emktgsolutions), specializing in local search, social media and mobile apps for restaurants 

and the service industry. 

 

Lately, local search has been at the top of everyone’s radar, from search engines to social media 

sites to local advertising such as Groupon or, more locally, TipCity. As a small-business owner, 

you are missing a huge opportunity if it’s not on your radar. 

 

So as a small-business owner, what can you do to increase your website’s local ranking without 

being a website programmer or search engine optimization guru? Put on your Google goggles 

and look at your website the way Google does. 

 

Factors that determine your local rankings 

 

There are two big factors you can control that help determine your local ranking results. One is 

your main identifier, known as NAP (Name, Address & Phone), and the other is your social 

media presence. 

 

Imagine for a moment that somehow you have ended up with a listing under Juan’s Mexican 

Restaurant on one site, and a listing under Juan’s Mexican Café on another. When a search 

engine is looking at your Internet profile to determine how “important” your restaurant is, it 

cannot make a connection between the two locations so it assumes they are two different 

businesses. Sure, the address and phone are the same, but that is not enough to give the search 

engine the confidence that you are in fact one location. Such discrepancies are very detrimental 

to local search results. 

 

Here are four steps to take control of your local business listing 

 

1. Do a search under your business name, under your business category, under anything that 

might pull you up. Look at local business directories like Merchant Circle, look under 

review sites like Yelp, and determine if your NAP is consistent. 

 

 2. While you are on each of these sites, claim your listing if that option is available. 

 

3. Most sites have a place for additional information: products offered, coupons, hours of 

operation, credit cards taken, etc. It is critical that you complete all of the fields on every 

site. 

 

4. Now go to the two main sources of all business listings. That will be Localeze.com 

(sdut.us/localezelisting) and InfoUSA.com (expressupdateusa.com). Register your site, 

again with the exact NAP and all additional information they are seeking. The results will 

take time to permeate the Web, and you may have to go back and remake corrections you 

have already made, especially on the individual sites. 

 

The role of social media in local search 

 

By looking closely at a search query results page, in Google’s Places section for example, you 

will see that after a brief description, Google shows an address and phone (culled from your 

NAP). A recent review and its source are shown below that. Then the total number of reviews 

are shown to the right, as well a breakdown of review counts by source at the bottom of the 

listing. 

 

So we can see that reviews are extremely important. And it makes sense. The more people are 

talking about you, the more Google assumes your location is a popular choice. (Assuming your 

reviews are all or mostly positive.) As such, you need to be proactive in gathering and 

monitoring reviews. Encourage your good customers to write about you and have them do it on a 

variety of review sites. 

 

Finally, your social media presence plays another big role, and for the same reason. If two 

websites are created equal, doesn’t it make sense that the one with a higher social media profile 

must be a more popular place? Maybe that will help motivate you the next time you dread 

posting on your Facebook site. 

 

Don’t just look at social media as something you know you should do because everyone is doing 

it (even though you don’t see results from it). It’s critical for getting your business found. 

 

Join the conversation: Are you a social media professional in San Diego County? We’re looking 

for your tips. Contact Money Editor Diana McCabe on Twitter @mcdiana.