If jumping into and mastering local search engine optimization (local SEO) is your New Year’s resolution, look no further for a curated list of useful links, blogs, and other resources on the topic. We made sure to gather information that was published in the last 12 months. So bookmark this page, you’ll be referring to it frequently!

LOCAL SEO: IT’S NOT ABOUT SIZE; IT’S ABOUT GETTING FOUND.

Local SEO Tools

Every list about local SEO tools should start with the platforms that provide listing management services. These platforms partner with data aggregators to build citations — mentions of your firm on third party websites — as well as build links to your site via a plethora of directories (you may want to know those that offer follow links if this is of interest). Citations help your business rank higher for local search (see the blog section if you have a boss who needs convincing).

Perhaps the biggest benefit of using a local SEO platform is the convenience. As an entrepreneur your time is best spent building your business and selling to customers, not faffing about with manual, piecemeal submissions of your company information to directories. If you ever move, change phone numbers, rebrand, etc you will not have the nightmare of submitting 100 corrections to 100 different entities as a good platform will ensure that all changes can be centralized or, at the very minimum, reduced.

There are five local SEO platforms that are perhaps the best known in the US:

1. Yext has one of the broadest service portfolios, including business pages and beacons.
2. BrightLocal has over 1,600 sites in its network.
3. Moz Local is an affordable investment at $84 a year if marketing budgets are very tight.
4. WhiteSpark covers 42 countries which is a fantastic detail if you have a presence internationally.
5. LocalEze is one of the three data aggregators supplying information to directories and search engines, and is generally credited with having the best distribution.

There are as many opinions about the best local SEO platform as there are directories to submit to — our humble opinion is, it depends on your needs, objectives and budget. Some information to check out for due diligence:

1. LocalSEOChecklist displays the major players in a handy grid.
2. Reddit’s SEO subreddit is worth joining, if only to lurk around discussions like this. Or this. Candid conversations and reviews by actual users: Priceless.
3. SIM Partners’ white paper, Local SEO Platforms Buyer’s Guide, has a handy checklist of questions to narrow down vendor choices. (The company has its own local marketing automation platform which, to their credit, they didn’t flog in their guide.)

Local SEO Hacks and Guides

So you’re all pumped up to start. The following are pretty substantive sources that can offer a good macro view of the entire process or just one part, provide comprehensive advice to a specific sticking point, or just even serve up a local SEO topic that hasn’t been discussed before.

1. Normally, pieces that advertise themselves as being ‘definitive’ fall disappointingly short, but The Site Edge’s Brian Niebler stays true to his word with Local SEO: The Definitive Guide 2016. It is a beast. Must-read!
2. To demonstrate how their enterprise platform helps track rankings, SERPs also wrote a pretty meaty local SEO guide.
3. Want to go totally DIY? Phil Rozek’s excellent site, Local Visibility System, has a list of local search citations that he’s collected over the past four years. He has lists for the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
4. Another one for the DIYer: N.A.P. Hunter is a Chrome extension that sniffs out citations for deduplication and cleaning.

Keyword research is essential in order to create a solid foundation for your local SEO efforts. Again, there are a thousand and one opinions on the usefulness of keyword tools, but Globe Runner uses these on a daily basis:

1. SEM Rush and SpyFu to find out competitors’ keywords and how they rank for these terms.
2. Google Keyword Planner to determine search volumes and competition.
3. Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool to compare/contrast their competitive figures with those of Google’s Keyword Planner — the differences can be striking and Moz has its theories on why.
4. Keyword Tool to find long-tail phrases and questions people type into their browser while searching.
5. Authority Labs to monitor keyword rankings for our clients and their competitors.

Local SEO Blogs to Follow

Your inbox will be nice and full everyday with these great resources on local search. And you can pick out factoids that will convince your boss that local SEO is the way to go in 2016.

1. Phil Rozek’s blog on Local Visibility System is chock-a-block all about local SEO.
2. The Local Search Association shares member news, statistics, industry developments and analysis pertinent to local search. Subscribe to it for excellent information such as this infographic on the top 142 categories consumers search for.
3. MediaPost’s Search Marketing Daily has a roundup of the day’s SEO news from all around the web, including local SEO-focused pieces.
4. Search Engine Land is always among the first to report any Google activity that could potentially impact local SEO.
5. Often confused with the previously mentioned site, Search Engine Watch also has a local SEO section, albeit less frequently updated.
6. Rand Fishkin’s blog on Moz is not specifically focused on the subject, but most of his marketing posts have implications for local SEO practitioners. Like this post on 2015’s keyword research tool universe or this one on Google Suggest.

Local SEO Events to Attend

You’ve read some but want to learn more about local SEO by attending conferences or meetups with fellow enthusiasts. Or you’re looking for more advanced information. Just three among the national events about local SEO to catch:

1. MozCon Local 2016. The creators of Moz Local should have lots of useful information to share. February 18-19 in Seattle, WA.
2. LocalU Advanced. For more experienced practitioners, here’s a conference to learn the latest on local search, mobile, analytics, web design and more. March 5 in Williamsburg, VA.
3. SMX Advanced. The Local Search Advantage Workshop is a full-day dive into various advanced topics such as driving and tracking online-to-offline conversions. June 21 in Seattle, WA.

Find  more national and international SEO events on this thread over at Inbound.org.

Closer to Dallas Fort Worth, Globe Runner’s home, Loco For Local will be held January 27 at La Hacienda Ranch in Grapevine. This local SEO workshop was organized for local businesses in Fort Worth, but non-FW businesses are more than welcome to drop by and exchange notes. Bill Hartzer will talk about local SEO best practices, useful tips and insider secrets.

Got any more to add? List them in the comments section.

On October 26, 2015, Google unveiled its newest algorithm, RankBrain.

What is RankBrain?

RankBrain is an artificial intelligence (AI) system that sorts through Google’s indexed content and provides the most relevant websites for particular queries. RankBrain is one of many algorithms that make up Google Hummingbird. Hummingbird is Google’s overall search algorithm that consists of Panda, Penguin, RankBrain and others.

How does RankBrain work?

RankBrain is just one component of Google’s search algorithm, but its goal is to answer unique queries that Google has never seen before.

Now, according to Danny Sullivan, Google answers 100 billion searches per month. That equates to over 3 billion searches a day. On top of that, roughly 18% of daily search queries have never been asked before.

Therefore, 500+ million searches/day have never been seen before. Answering those queries has been a difficult process, but this is RankBrain’s strength.

RankBrain’s purpose is to interpret queries that may not contain the exact words/phrases that the searcher is looking for. Essentially, it attempts to re-route misguided searches.

How important is RankBrain?

According to Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google, RankBrain is the third-most important ranking signal contributing to the result of a search query. That’s huge!

Google has over 200 hundred rankings signals, all of which are unknown, but highly speculated. For a Google employee to say outright that it’s the 3rd most important ranking signal is big news.

Images are like the helpful elves of content: They can aid your mobile SEO efforts by increasing engagement with users and boosting your presence on search engines. To do that however, they need to be in the best condition possible to assist you.

Here are 3 simple things you can do now to optimize images and make them fighting fit for mobile:

1. Resize your images to a size that suits mobile

It’s estimated that images make up 65% of an average page’s total size. A mobile user waiting minutes for a site to load due to 5,000 pixel pictures will navigate away to find faster alternatives. It’s critical to scale down the size of your image to allow pages to load faster.

This can be as simple as resizing images using the image preview function of your computer or using the save-for-web function in Photoshop. You can also find different tools online to resize images for social media, web pages and other purposes, or to resize/crop in bulk.

The objective is to get to as near as possible to the ideal site load speed of 1 second. Even 5 seconds can be the kiss of death for retailers.

2. Rename your files to make them more descriptive

Surprisingly a lot of people still upload photos without renaming original file names. Renaming can seem like a time waster but it actually isn’t: Many people now use Google Images to conduct a search, and we’re certain none of them involved searching for IMG688. But they are searching for the service, solution or object that your site is about.

In renaming your image files, use descriptive words and include keywords only if these are natural, not contrived.

3. Add alt text to your images

Alt text or alternative text  is an attribute that allows web users to determine the contents of an image — think of it as tagging your picture with information that is helpful for viewers who can’t see it. You’ll see alt text in boxes where an image ought to be, but was stripped out.

Why add alt text? Originally alt text benefited sight impaired individuals, but now their applications have become mainstream. Like descriptive file names, alt text helps users searching for your product or service. Alt text can act as flares for your content, pointing users to your page.

You can add alt text to images and shapes very easily by right clicking and adding copy in Microsoft Office. Daunted by the prospect of adding alt text to lots of pictures? You can batch process them using tools like FastStone for PC and PhotoMill for Mac.

From exchanges to earning, link building has evolved over the course of the last decade and a half.

Link building, as Moz says, is an art, and the way we approach that art adapts in response to a fast-changing digital environment.

The quality and relevance of your links matter when it comes to building up your ranking. If you can manage to develop high-quality links that point back to your website, Google rewards you. Over time Google has refined its process in combing out ‘bad’ link building practices.

To help map that change, we created an infographic that takes you from the early days of link building and carries on to the future. Feel free to share and embed it on your blog.

Share this Image On Your Site

Dun & Bradstreet, Assumed Names & Secretary of State Records

But First, Are Citations Still Important for Search Rankings?

In regards to Local search engine optimization, citations are mentions of a business name, address and phone on an authoritative site, and they still play a role in rankings online. Search engines like Google use this data to understand where your business is located and what it is called.

In the most recent Moz study of Local SEO ranking factors, citation consistency is still a top contributor. 15.5% of the reason your business or a competitor ranks well in local results is due to a consistent business name, address and phone number online.

Brand signals are also becoming more important in 2015 and will continue to affect organic results. The number of customers searching for your business name in Google, is a widely speculated ranking factor, revealing strong brand awareness. Press and media should refer to your business name and products correctly, spelled correctly. Ideally, all online mentions of the business name and address, should match Dun & Bradstreet, Assumed Name Records and Tax Records.

These three citations in particular are often overlooked by business owners and SEO consultants, yet reveal issues in NAP (name, address and phone) and the brand, that can plague a business online and cause more headaches if ignored.

The Most Official Citations

Dun & Bradstreet, Doing Business As (DBA) or Assumed Name records and Secretary of State Listings are the most official citations, created when the business was originally started or each year during tax season. Dun & Bradstreet is the oldest business directory in existence, since 1841. That predates YELP by a few years I believe!

The first task of a local SEO campaign is to lock down the business data: the official business name, address, phone, website, pictures, categories etc. Here’s the problem, you can’t simply ask the business owner what the official name of the business is… In the same way you should check address formatting using the USPS zip code tool, it should be a mandatory step to check the legal business name on all three of these official sources.

More reasons why these three citations are important

1. The NAP is indexed by Google and visible to customers
2. The NAP is shared with other data aggregators, meaning inconsistency on these three citations will affect many other sites.
3. The NAP is official government information and a strong signal of brand name and geolocation signals.

Ready to get started? Find out how to update and claim these citations in the following guide. As a bonus, we will even address several common questions around business names and the implications it can have online.[contact-form-7 404 “Not Found”]

Google has changed the name of Google Webmaster Tools to Search Console, announcing the new Webmaster Tools. They have updated Google Webmaster Tools to now include the Search Analytics, but right now the only real change that’s taken place is the name change.

As you log into the Google Webmaster Tools, which is still available by going to Google.com/Webmasters, I have a feeling that that URL will soon be removed, and we’ll need to go to the Search Console URL, which Google says is at http://g.co/SearchConsole

My suspicion is that over time, we will be phased out of Google Webmaster Tools, and eventually will be using something different then Google Webmaster Tools. For example, we may be losing some tools that we’re used to using, and we may continue to see other tools that are either more helpful or pretty much useless.

Typically, when we see a name change of a product or service, that comes along with some other major changes, and the name is only a small part of the changes. For what it’s worth, frankly I have been fairly happy in the past with using Google Webmaster Tools, as that’s what it’s intended for: a site’s webmaster to use, and not the typical “business owner” or website owner. There are a lot of business owners that I know who would not feel comfortable with using Google Webmaster Tools, and they generally wouldn’t understand what it all means (nor do they care to use it).

As of this post, though, the only major change that’s happened to Google Webmaster Tools is then name change (and the addition of the Search Analytics tool). Let’s wait and see what other changes happen. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s official: Globe Runner’s Fort Worth operations are now up and running under the helm of local entrepreneur Chris Miller.

Extending our operations to Fort Worth was logical given the growing number of clients we have in the area.

Miller was one such client of Globe Runner. A native of Fort Worth, his online business Jerky Dynasty flourished and saw improved traffic under Globe Runner’s proprietary SEO methodology.

“Fort Worth has the highest population growth right now in the US, which is spurring a never-before-seen level of business activity,” Chris says. “Whether an entrepreneur plans to benefit from this surge with a bricks-and-mortar or online business, SEO is critical to getting buyers through the door.”

Artistic links with Fort Worth

In addition to business reasons, Globe Runner’s other ties with Fort Worth are artistic. In 2007, Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty, a sculptor by profession, created United We Stand, an outdoor bronze sculpture and window installation for Fire Station #8.

Eric’s work was nationally recognized at the 2007 Public Art Year in Review as one of the 40 best public art projects of the year. It was also voted that same year as Best Outdoor Art by Fort Worth Weekly’s Reader’s Choice Award.

Eric has since been commissioned by the city of Fort Worth to create another public art piece, this time for Six Points Urban Village.

The mission to provide Fort Worth world-class SEO has started

We’re happy to be part of Fort Worth’s artistic and economic evolution. In November, Globe Runner Fort Worth founded the Fort Worth SEO/Online Marketing Meetup group which has 95 members. The group has already held two Meetups talking about SEO and remarketing.

For more information about our Fort Worth SEO services and joining the Fort Worth SEO/Online Marketing Meetup group, contact Chris Miller for details.

The impending extinction of public relations due to SEO and the looming death of SEO at the hands of public relations were gripping topics in 2014, no matter which side of the fence you found yourself on.

Searches for ‘Is public relations the new SEO?’ and ‘Is SEO the new public relations?’ were roughly parallel at 1.5 to nearly 1.6 million results. All riveting questions, especially since they were premised on intelligent musings and coached in respectful dialogue. Well, most of the time.

As a PR person thrown into the deep end of the SEO pool this year, experience has shown that nobody will be replacing anyone anytime soon. SEO and PR will not only continue to co-exist, they will be elemental to each other’s survival. And they still have a lot to learn from each other about how their roles can evolve.

What SEO can teach PR

Apart from the fact that NAP does not mean a quick snooze (it’s the SEO acronym for name-address-phone number) and that citations are not traffic violations, there are a few useful lessons PR people can learn from SEO, if only to avoid the one constant irritant in our lives:

Quantifying our efforts.

The following will sound dismally familiar to every PR person, especially in-house hacks:

When introduced, you are described as ‘the girl who handles our Facebook.’

You never have enough budget, resources or authority because people think what you do is fluffy, i.e. not deserving of serious investment.

You are at the periphery of strategic planning unless you’re lucky to have a boss or company who recognizes the value that PR brings to the table.

Learning SEO – at a minimum, Google Analytics with all its squiggly blue charts – will teach you:

How to demonstrate tangible ROI 

We’ve always been told that there is no hard link between PR and sales. SEO blessedly tells us otherwise.

Every piece of content created with the purpose of driving visitors to a website kick-starts the sales process, whether it’s a press release, a link shared on social media, or advertising creative.

With SEO, you can determine which channels send visitors to your site and what actions they should execute afterwards to qualify them as sales leads. These actions are goals that you can set up via Google Analytics. A goal that is completed is a conversion.

For an e-commerce firm, goals are as straightforward as hitting specific revenue. For a B2B firm selling professional services, relevant goals could be completing and submitting a contact form, downloading a white paper, even making a phone call.

Agree with your boss what type of goals and number of conversions are relevant to your company. And use these are your yardstick in assessing your performance.

If your company’s Facebook page is driving 90% of the traffic to your website, being described as ‘the girl who handles our Facebook’ loses its sting, does it not?

How to create content more efficiently

A huge part of public relations is content. Writing blog posts, posting on social media, creating corporate videos — it never ends. This is the reason behind the popular notion that journalists make good publicists, a controversial topic that needs delving into some other time.

What comes as a rude surprise is how much of this content goes to waste, mostly because there’s a flood of stuff out there competing for shrinking attentions and increasingly jaded appetites.

Knowing SEO gives PRs a leg up by a) determining content that has historically performed well (BuzzSumo is really helpful), b) using keywords that help content rank higher on search engines (Google Webmaster tools) and c) knowing who to pitch because they’ve covered the subject before (thank you, ahrefs).

Google Analytics will tell you what pages of your website are most visited and dwelt upon, what blog posts delivered and which didn’t. Want to check out what’s working for the competition? Look them up on Majestic SEO or SpyFu.

Knowing what works and gets the most response is more productive than dedicating six hours of your day waxing lyrical on a blog post that no one will read.

How to have the final word on creative decisions

Exhausted PR people who tussle constantly with clients over branding and design decisions should take a leaf from the SEO playbook: Facts win the day. Facts trump opinion every single time.

Is your client insisting on the stupidest brand name ever because it was their pet idea? Gently remind them smart keyword use is critical to any naming protocol, since the brand needs to be found by its customers online.

Does your boss want animation on each web page? Point out that site loading speeds are a Google ranking factor and too many page elements dilute the call to action.

Is your client too obsessed with getting social media followers? Furnish stats that her Pinterest board is driving 1% of traffic to her site and watch her focus magically shift.

The wonderful thing about SEO is that what PR people have known intuitively all along can be backed up with facts. Facts which even the most combative client cannot ignore.

Having said that, PR people’s tribal knowledge is the right brain to SEO’s left brain, the butter to their toast.

It may just be possible that SEO is the new public relations, but only if SEO learns a skill PRs have that just can’t be hacked, despite every black hat tip in the world.

Influence.

What PR can teach SEO

Working at an SEO agency and managing SEO clients brings to light the significant overlap PR has with SEO in terms of objectives, and the marked differences in rationale and solution.

Both, for example, think getting a link from the New York Times is the Holy Grail: SEOs because the New York Times has high page rank and domain authority, PRs because well, everyone reads the New York Times. Both are right.

And how does one get a link on the New York Times? To an SEO, this is what’s involved:

PRs know that not everything can be won from behind a laptop. There’s in-person or phone pitching (what separates the men from the boys); introductions through connections; networking and events.

After all, this is how PR managed to do great stuff in the Jurassic years without the Internet.

And it’s where PR can teach SEO a thing (or three), like:

How to build influence, not just links

Any PR worth his or her salt can teach you how to identify stakeholders beyond visitors to the site and how to customize channels, approach and messaging for each audience —  not all of which are are best done online.

This is a massive step beyond SEO’s approach of combing online tools for backlinks to competitors’ sites, which is a reactive practice.

A PR’s job is to create bonds with all publics – from employees to management to shareholders, media and the community — and to maintain these bonds. Strong relationships will sustain your online and offline presence even through the tenth Penguin update. Strong relationships mean you are considered early in the creative process, not afterwards.

How to write for Google

Not too long ago SEO was about keyword stuffing; Panda took care of that. Google now demands high-quality content, writing for actual reading, because — shock, horror — real people read websites, and they won’t frequent a site with poor content.

To SEOs, this was a revelation; to public relations practitioners, this was like saying the sea is wet. PRs have been delivering high-quality content long before Google was around because their jobs depended on it.

Here’s the litmus test: Try pitching a story to a journalist. Even better, do it on the phone. You’ll soon get what quality content is — it’s the story that didn’t get you yelled at or hung up on.

Public relations people are initiated into this practice early in their careers. They learn that to get coverage, you have to provide value. Who better than they to determine whether your content is up to par?

Other best practices on quality content that PRs can teach SEO:

How to craft a winning lede (not a misspelling) and structure copy flow to entice readers to stay on the story and, by virtue of that, stay longer on the site. (Hopefully causing bounce rates to fall.)

How to make your content work harder: Public relations people have dozens of ideas on how to recycle content into other formats, e.g. turning a blog post into a slide show, an infographic, a video, a podcast, a quiz.

How to get people to interact with your content: PR experts can teach you how to strike the right note to invite comments, encourage conversation, and increase the likelihood of sharing.

In public relations every action — writing, events, media relations — plays a part in a complex mise en scène. And this macro view yields the best lesson SEO can learn from PR:

How to stay relevant long after the job is done

SEOs know whereof I speak: There comes a time when everything is done for a client.

The site is as optimized as it can get. The content and performance are solid. The competition doesn’t even come close in rankings, keywords, links and traffic. It gets harder and harder each month to justify your fees.

Unless you go beyond what is expected of you. One of the biggest frustrations for SEO is clients’ assumption that SEO is tactical, that it is merely a means to an end.

As much as PR is somewhat responsible for its fluffy reputation because of its slowness in embracing quantification, so does SEO not help its tactical image by focusing on, and sweating the small stuff.

What we do in SEO is so much more than driving traffic to a site, getting penalties revoked or doing local citation bursts. There is a higher purpose to SEO that tragically gets buried under the incessant rabbiting of DA, PA and other acronyms that are gibberish to a client and the refusal to look outside of Moz and the search engine world to create context for what we do.

Not to mention what we can do. Has SEO even thought about the potential that lies in providing crisis management services?

SEO’s challenge is to confidently claim its spot in the bigger marketing picture by thinking bigger of what it does and to communicate its value in language everyone understands. In short, it needs PR before it thinks of taking over PR.

For the reasons above, practitioners in both industries can climb down from the parapet. Thanks to each other, both PR and SEO have never looked as promising, exciting and further from death than they do now, 10 days away from a new year.