Local SEO & Reputation Management

Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the use of both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA or PPC+) to help your business appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Learn more about SEM.

Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO), is a specific subset of SEO that deals with helping local businesses rank in map results, local business directories, GPS and direction tools, and more specifically but not exclusively in the local pack of search engine results. Local SEO can also be called “Local Marketing” or “optimizing presense” because it helps your business be present in the places where customers are looking.

The Local Pack is a specific section of search engine results that displays local, nearby businesses and has some upgraded features compared to the plain text results displayed below the local pack. These features include:

• A map showing the location of the businesses pinned with map markers 
• The review rating of the business (which is arguably the most important factor for click through rates)
• Call To Action (CTA) icons to make it easier to visit the business website, call the business or get directions to the business.

The Local Pack is a major feature of Google Search Results, which is important since Google owns 80-90% of the search market, even with the advent of ChatGPT (which is not a Google product). On Google, you can control your business data by creating or claiming your Google Business Profile (GBP), formally known as Google My Business. A local pack is also part of other major search engine results like Bing, Duck Duck Go, and others, where they may use first party data or third party data. Local business directories like Yelp are essentially search engines that consist exclusively of local businesses. Sites like Yelp and Yellow Pages might also be called Local Citations.

For local business search queries, like “plumber near me” or “coffee shop in Gilbert, AZ”, the local pack will appear in search results near the top, and they tend to get about 60-80% of the clicks. A local business can be any business that has a brick and mortal location where customers come to you (for example, restaurants), or service area businesses where you go to them (for example, home services).

Quite often the local pack appears just below sponsored results, sometimes without an AI response and sometimes below an AI response. So it is the often first of the organic responses or appears just below AI. Also, users who ask AI directly for similar local or “nearby” queries, such as the Gemini or ChatGPT mobile apps, will actually get local search results; so the advent of AI has not changed the search experience very much for an “in-market” audience (Gemini gets it’s data from Google Maps and ChatGPT gets its data from Yelp). AI generated summaries of search results have change the experiences with “discovery” intent dramatically, but even then, local business data is what fuels those summaries, making Local SEO even more important.

The local pack displays 3-4 local search results with a link that users can click to see more nearby businesses related to the search query. Sometimes the user may click that link, but most often they do not. Sometimes the first result is an ad or a sponsored result. Every single query produces a unique result, which is why SEO tools will either report an average ranking or a rank as a point in time, and generally you want your business in the top 3 results. Some SEO tools will seperate the local results from the remaining organic results displayed below the local pack, and some will combine them. As time passes, the search engines will continue to experiment with changes in design to try to improve the user experience.

Since the first result of the Local Pack can be an ad, and since elements of a Google Business Profile can be displayed with Google Ads regardless of where they appear (including the review rating and other elements), Local SEO is an essential pre-step towards optimizing ads for local businesses who are advertising on Google. And the same is true for other search engines and their accompanying ad platforms.

For a local business, Local SEO is not just the foundation of their SEO and search engine marketing strategies, but the foundation for ALL their marketing. Regardless of where a customer might discover your business, the first things they will do are look at your reviews online and visit your website. If your reviews don’t compete and your website doesn’t convert, then they will go to your competitors who have optimized these steps in the customer journey.

Reputation Management or Review Generation

Reputation Managment or Review Generation is an essential part of Local SEO. Other marketing agencies might treat it seperately from Local SEO, but Mirex Marketing offers it as a combined package. Generating consistent, positive reviews is a major ranking factor for Local SEO results, plus a positive review rating is the crux of the modern consumer journey. A positive review rating is not only important for showing up, it’s an important factor of influence that determines whether the user will continue to explore your business or not. Generally to be competitive, a business must maintain a review rating of 4.6-4.8 out of 5 stars. In other words, for every negative review, a business needs to generate 10 positive reviews. For a new business, an early negative review can make it very difficult to grow or get those 10 new and positive reviews to outweight the negative one. Businesses owners will also tend to notice momentum shifts in their business as they reach higher landmarks of 10, 50, 100 positive reviews and so on.

All review platforms – Google, Yelp, etc. – will each have their own policies, and they must be followed explicitely or the business can be penalized on that respective platform. Reviews are not the same as tagging and posting on social media. It should be regarded with more respect, because it can be a terrible set back to have a business hidden or suspended on a platform that was previously producing traffic and leads.

Each review platform has their own nuances. For example, most business owners don’t like Yelp’s automated filtering system since it is known to filter legitimate reviews; and Yelp has a specific “no solicitation” policy. Yet, the businesses that thrive on Yelp are the ones that build positive review profiles in compliance with Yelp’s policies, and Yelp can be very profitable for businesses. On the other hand Google is happy to let businesses solicit reviews. The most important and most common criteria that all platforms want is for reviews to come from actual customer interactions. See also 5 Essential Steps For Dealing With Negative Reviews.

How to Generate Postive Reviews On Google and Other Platforms (not Yelp)

For most review platforms, besides Yelp, the most effective way to generate reviews is through automated review requests that are sent to the customer immediately after a sale or after a job is completed. There are hundreds of review generation software options, but they are certainly not created equal. Many of them have “review gating” which is not compliant with most review platforms. Review Gating means they don’t allow or don’t make it easy for all customers to leave reviews, even if its a negative one. Many of them force the business to use specific lesser-known platforms besides Google or Facebook; these are designed to build and support the obscure review platform over supporting the businesses themselves.

Due to the importance of generating reviews, businesses should pick the review generators that work the best, not the ones that are the cheapest or that happen to be part of a CRM they are already subscribed to. This is important enough to use an application that is specifically designed for review generation with an easy user experience. Of course Mirex Marketing offers one of the best available and we offer it affordably.

The importance of review generation should be a major factor, indeed, one of the top factors, when businesses are shopping for CRMs or business management programs. A CRM is a Contact Relationship Management application that can be used for sales, customer communications, dispatch for service businesses, and other features depending on your business industry. If the review generation feature of the CRM is inadequate and if the CRM is not integration-friendly, then don’t get it. All it will ever do is hold your business back. If you need a CRM then talk to Mirex Marketing; we offer one of the best that is marketing-focused and integration-friendly, plus it has multiple other features that your business can use, such as pipeline management, e-signatures and appointment calendar booking. It can even include Conversations AI to optimize marketing lead capture.

How to Generate Reviews on Yelp

Yelp explicity has a “no solicitation” policy, so the review generators mentioned above cannot be used with Yelp, and if you ever come across review generation apps that say they include Yelp, do not use them for review generation. Sometimes they can used for other features like replying to reviews, review aggregation (displaying all you positive reviews in one place on your website), and analytics, but they should not be used for review generation or solicitation.

While Yelp does not want you to use the phrase “leave us a review on Yelp”, they do allow the phrases “people love us on Yelp” and “check us out on Yelp”. Using these phrases in your marketing at least indicates to users that you have presence on Yelp. Once active users on Yelp see that, they might actually check out your business and become a customer. Then they, as an active Yelp user, can leave a review that is less likely to get filtered. For new businesses, the no-soliciation policy creates a “catch-22” since you need to offer services to Yelp users to get Yelp reviews, but Yelp users will pick businesses with a good review profile. While the process of building a positive review profile on Yelp is a slower process than other platforms, it generally pays off. Yelp users are often particularly loyal to Yelp and don’t go anywhere else to find a local business.

One possible way to attract more Yelp users is to advertise on Yelp. Advertising on Yelp does not result in Yelp filtering less reviews, but it does make the business more visible on Yelp, which means more customers come from Yelp, which means more active Yelp users are eligible to leave a review for your business. On the other hand, some businesses may choose not to advertise on Yelp until they can build the review profile, because a better review profile does make the ads more effective. What also makes the ads more effective, regardless of the review profile, is prompt business responsiveness to the leads. Mirex Marketing is a decentralized Yelp Advertising Partner, which means you can save by advertising on Yelp with Mirex Marketing, compared to other agencies, and we can stop those annoying Yelp sales calls.