Recently, Google introduced Carousel for local search results. Now, when you search for a local business like a hotel or restaurant, the results appear in an interactive carousel at the top of the page. Click on one of the results in the carousel and you'll see the address, photos, overall review-based score and links to the actual reviews.
Claiming Your Local Listings Can Land You In the Local Carousel
The obvious question--how can a local business earn a spot on the carousel? A well-managed Google+ page with updated content, attractive images and customer reviews is the critical first step. Claiming and managing other local listings and review sites is also important. This can be a time consuming task, so get started as soon as possible. There are potentially 100’s of local listing sites to get a citation from.
Take Care Of Your Web Presence For Good Local Search Results
A click on the carousel result leads to a branded search, showing more results for the local business. A business that persistently takes charge of its web presence and reputation (with social media activity, blog posts, videos, infographics, press releases, customer reviews, etc.) is likely to draw more customers to its website and rack up more leads than a business that’s not doing much or any content marketing.
Diversify Your Content
The basis of a solid SEO program is a diversified content marketing plan, with each piece of high quality and unique content posted on a distinct website. This means putting good content on Facebook, writing an interesting blog post on your own page, and making a great video that can be posted on YouTube. Recycled content doesn’t cut it, so this means don’t post the same video on your blog, homepage, and YouTube with links going to the same page using the same anchor text.
