Whether you’re a small business owner or an up-and-coming corporate executive, search engine optimization (SEO) should be a part of your marketing strategy.

There are a variety of different SaaS (software-as-a-service) tools out there for SEO solutions, each of which purports to solve all of your problems; however, it’s important to find the right tools that fit your business' or clients’ SEO needs!

We’ve tested Moz and Yext (the two most well known SaaS tools) and put them head to head so you don’t have to. With the right tools behind your business, you’re guaranteed to succeed against even the fiercest competition!

It's mid-November here in Dallas, which means that the weather is cooling off, the shops are all blaring Christmas music, and (most importantly!) families and friends everywhere are preparing for a Thanksgiving feast!

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity for friends and family to get together and show appreciation for what they've got; however, an unprepared Thanksgiving can be fraught with chaotic commotion and panicked last-minute oven roasting.

Make sure that you're treating your business' local search engine optimization (SEO) strategy like it's a Thanksgiving feast: be prepared well in advance, let everyone know where (and when) it's going to be, and make sure each that everyone's got food to eat! 

With Google’s announcement about the introduction of their new Lens technology, the information available about your business online is becoming more important than ever.

Google Lens is an augmented reality feature that will work through your smartphone’s camera to provide users with real-time information about your business. 

Combining geotagging with image recognition, Lens will allow users to point their camera at your storefront or sign and Google will provide relevant information about your business.

Reviews, hours, and even reservation information can be displayed. If a user doesn’t like what they see, they won’t even need to slow down as they pass your business by.

Google Lens isn’t due to be released until later this year, so you still have time to get “Lens Ready”. We’ve put together a list of a few things you can do to make sure your business stays in focus.

Local SEO can be tricky for businesses with multiple locations. Knowing how to get each location to rank on local searches can drive a lot of traffic to your business and give a boost to your overall SEO efforts.

There are two basic steps to this process, listing each location separately in directories and creating individual pages for each location on your website.

In each case, making sure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) info is correct is crucial to local SEO rankings.

We’ve put together some best practices to get the most from your business’s directory listings and location pages.

Local SEO Directory Listings

In order for each of your business’s locations to show up in local search engine results, they’re going to need to be listed individually.

When someone searches for a business in a specific location or for a nearby business, search engines use NAP info provided by directory listings to supply this information.

If one of your locations is at or near the area but doesn’t have its own listing, it won’t show up in a search. To avoid this, list each location separately.

Here’s a list of the top 100 directories. We recommend you concentrate on the top 50 directories - that should be enough for search engines to draw good data.

NAP Info

For each location’s listings, the NAP info will need to be identical to avoid confusing your customers and search engines. Here are a few guidelines to follow when listing these businesses:

The quickest way to lose a customer is to send them to the wrong location or to give them the wrong phone number.

Make sure your customers are given accurate information by providing correct name, address, and phone number (NAP) data in listing directories.

If your NAP info isn’t correct in listing directories then your customers may be given the wrong phone number or be sent to the wrong address, or your location may not get listed in local SEO at all.

Don’t lose your customers! Make sure your NAP info is correct everywhere.

Before you can correct any discrepancies, you need to know that those discrepancies exist. Let’s learn how!

If you want to drive traffic to your business, you need to give your customers good directions. This is what NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is all about.

Your customers need accurate contact information about your business in order to find you, and the NAP info provided in listing directories is where search engines get that information.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing pull information about your business from directories. Your business’s NAP information needs to be correct in these directories before the search engines can get it right.