Timothy Carter

Keyword research has always been the foundation of SEO, and while that hasn’t changed, search engines are constantly altering the impact of each ranking factor, including keywords. This is why proper keyword research is imperative.  When search engines first launched, all you needed were clusters of keywords relevant to local businesses and visitors would find you easily. Over the years, online competition has grown and there are now millions of websites, forcing search engine algorithms to evolve and serve results based on more than just keywords. Today, getting seen in the search engines requires various elements like helpful, relevant content, quality backlinks, and earned authority in your niche. Still, local keywords remain a fundamental basis of search engine optimization (SEO), especially since some 40%+ of searches are local. If you haven’t dialed in your local SEO keyword research, now is a great time to start. Local keyword research drives the following benefits Generate more sales and qualified leads Get more fast purchases when people see your positive business reviews in the search results Rank higher in search results served to local users Generate more targeted traffic to your website Capture mobile leads easier If you want sales, you need clicks. To get clicks, you need visibility, which comes from good SEO. Ideally, you want your website to show up on page one or two of the search results for a given query. According to the data, the first result on page one gets an average click-through rate (CTR) of 27.6%, while the first result on page two generates a 15.8% CTR. If you want a chunk of that traffic, solid local keyword research will help you get there. Why you need local keyword research Most people new to SEO perform the process backwards – they come up with a list of local keywords they think they want to rank for and then spend all their time, money, and effort trying to rank for those phrases. This method is hit or miss because it doesn’t help to rank for competitive keywords unless people are searching for them. You can get first-page results for a lot of phrases, but if nobody’s searching for them, you will remain invisible. Local keyword research will tell you what keywords and phrases your local target market is using to find the products and services they need related to your business. Sometimes people in a geographic area use specific, local keywords that you won’t realize are important until you start researching. Proper research ensures you won’t waste your time trying to rank for local keywords that won’t increase your revenue. Why local SEO is different Before going too much further into keyword research, it’s important to understand why local SEO isn’t just an extension of standard/national SEO so local keyword research makes more sense. Local SEO works the same at a basic level, but it’s much more powerful. In fact, businesses with a local presence have an easier time getting traffic from search engines than businesses that only sell services and products online without any identifiable locale. If you run a local business, keyword research will help you generate traffic despite any national competitors you may have. While it’s true that it’s impossible to rank for certain highly competitive local keywords without a million-dollar budget, local SEO changes the game by drastically narrowing down your market and competition, which increases your ability to reach your local market. For example, you may not be able to rank generally for the search term “get a cheap website,” but with local SEO you can rank for this term when people from your area search for similar phrases. There might be four million cheap web developers competing nationally, but in your specific city, there may only be a handful and that’s who you’ll be competing against. You might still compete with national competitors who have locations in your general area, like chains, but when you optimize your website specifically for local SEO, you’ll reach locals who are specifically looking for your services. Your total reach will be smaller, and that’s a good thing because local leads are highly targeted and more likely to buy your products or services. They already want what you have to offer. Local SEO targets people specifically in your geographic area and considers the following as ranking factors: A user’s location Your star rating on Google Maps The content/sentiment of your Google reviews Local keywords from your Google reviews Your optimized Google Business profile The presence of your business’ name, address, and phone number across all listings that matches the information on your website If you struggle to rank for phrases in general or you aren’t reaching your desired market, local SEO is a better way to reach your local market. Local SEO reduces your competition With local SEO, you aren’t competing against everyone in the same industry. For instance, say you run a restaurant in San Francisco, CA and there’s a similar local restaurant in Houston, TX. You aren’t going to compete against that business when people are searching for phrases like “best steak and seafood near me.” Outside of local searches, you may never rank for a phrase like “best steak and seafood,” but you don’t have to – in fact, that shouldn’t even be your goal. Ranking nationally for having the best steak and seafood won’t fill your dining room with hungry guests – ranking locally will. There are numerous factors that will help you rank, but it all begins with your keyword selections. You have to get these right to get results. How to perform effective local keyword research Now that we’ve established the importance of local SEO, it’s time to dive into some research strategies and tips. There are two main ways to conduct local keyword research: free and paid. Paid research requires a monthly or yearly subscription keyword research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Keyword Magic, or SECockpit. Some come with free trials and it’s worth checking them out. You can

Optimizing your site for local SEO based on your business’s location can help your business appear in local directories, Google Maps, and climb the ranks in traditional searches. Most of these strategies are based around your business’s specific location. For example, one step of the process is ensuring that your name and address are appearing accurately and consistently across the web, and one ongoing strategy is to use your city and state in the context of your written content. This presents a major problem for businesses with multiple locations: how do you locally optimize your site and your Google Business Profile (GBP)? Fortunately, locally optimizing your online presence for multi-location businesses is simpler than you might think. I’ve outlined the process of optimizing local search in multiple locations with these easy steps: 1. Consolidate Everything in One Domain It may be tempting to split your locations up into multiple domains, and some businesses have tried this as an ongoing strategy. On one hand, it makes logical sense—if each location is different, why not try to rank on each site individually? However, in practice, this segmented strategy is ineffective. Google’s search bots and individual users may be confused when they see multiple domains for what appears to be one master brand. Even if you need separate information, like different menus, using a single root domain to consolidate all that information still gives you the chance to present those in a segmented format. Using one domain gathers all the authority you would have built in your individual presences and places it into one master hub. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to split your domain authority; for example, if you have five locations, each location would only get 20 percent of its potential visibility if you split them into separate domains. 2. Create Specific Pages for Each Location Even though you’ve consolidated all your locations under one domain, it’s important to differentiate between your locations. Otherwise, Google won’t know that you have multiple locations and your users might have a hard time figuring out the nearest one to them. The best way to do this is to create a separate city pages for each of your locations, usually listed in the navigation under “Locations” or something similar. Create a page title that includes each city or neighborhood (as relevant), and write a full body of content that elaborates on the unique features of each location. Be sure to also include the address and phone number of each location on these individual pages. This will clearly demonstrate to Google how your locations are set up, and how they all relate to your master brand. It’s also important to list all of your locations on your “Contact” page, with the address and phone number for each reiterated. 3. Check Your External Listings and Correct Any Errors In the post-Pigeon era, having your contact information clearly segmented for your locations on your site—even when it’s on multiple pages—simply isn’t enough. Google looks to external sources to organize and verify its indexed information, and any inconsistencies on offsite listings of your locations could result in a decrease in your domain authority and rank. To remedy this, you’ll have to check every local SEO listing or directory site you can find to ensure your information is accurate—and update it if necessary. Common places include Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and TripAdvisor, but you’ll want to look for others, just to be sure. Some directories function differently than others, but as a general rule, you should have a separate entry for each of your locations. If you’re having trouble finding these directories, or want to double check to make sure you’ve hit them all, there are a number of local citation tools (e.g. Moz, Google Search Console, Ahrefs and others) that can help you automate the work. 4. Localize Your Content by Writing Locally for Each Location Ensure your content is relevant to each location by including references to local landmarks, events, and community information. This will help you connect with local audiences and improve your rankings. This can be tricky, especially if you’re consolidating everything into one master blog, but it’s important to include content based around each of your individual locations. That means featuring the city or neighborhood of the location in the title and body of each relevant piece. If you’re having trouble generating topic ideas, look to each location’s recent events. Have they celebrated an anniversary? Have they made new hires? Have they hit a new landmark achievement? Obviously, your content marketing campaign can’t solely focus on your office, but posting these kinds of topics occasionally can seriously help your local ranks when you have multiple locations. 5. Have Each Location Cultivate and Manage Online Reviews Reviews are critically important for local businesses—the more you have and the more positive they are, the higher you’re going to rank. And, since each of your locations is going to be listed separately on review sites, it’s up to your individual locations to actively cultivate and manage those online reviews. Make sure each of your employees know to encourage your customers to post reviews about their experience. Then, designate a contact at each of your locations to take point on actively monitoring and responding to those reviews. Commenting on positive reviews is a show of customer appreciation, while proactively responding to negative reviews (which will come up from time to time) can help mitigate the situation and show you’re willing to step in and make things right. Like with any optimization strategy, the setup phase is important but it’s the ongoing work that will make or break your campaign. Make sure you implement a plan that allows for each of your locations to actively encourage and respond to online reviews, and keep your content strategy as present and relevant as possible. Over time, each of your individual locations will rise through local-specific local searches, and the authority of your master domain will skyrocket as your individual locations all feed into it. 6. Localize Your Link Building Earn backlinks from

You have a mass tort case. You have the expertise. You have the knowledge. You even have the target demographics. But if you’re going to be successful, you need to find a way to make your law firm visible and attract more leads with the potential to become clients. Obviously, there are many marketing and advertising strategies that can help you do this. If you have enough money to spend, you can easily reach millions of people and build a steady flow of inbound leads. The problem is, not all mass tort marketing strategies are equally effective. And if you’re not careful, you could end up spending more money than you make from your efforts. One of the best solutions is practicing SEO for mass tort lawyers. But what exactly is SEO for mass tort lawyers? And how do you practice it? What Is SEO for Mass Tort Lawyers? Mass tort SEO (search engine optimization) is a series of strategies and tactics designed to increase the rankings of your website pages in search engines like Google. Put in enough effort, and your website will become the top-ranked site for keyword searches that are highly relevant to your audience and your law firm. Already, you can begin to see why this is valuable. If your website outranks the websites of your competitors, people searching for information related to your mass tort will come to you first. Given the modern reality in which most people search for a topic before they take action on it, this is even more valuable. The Benefits of Mass Tort SEO Mass tort SEO holds several benefits for the lawyers and law firms who practice it:       Search visibility (and brand visibility). The first and potentially most obvious benefit is greater search visibility, and along with it, greater brand visibility. People conducting searches related to the mass tort are likely looking for information or are curious about the subject. Either way, if they see your brand name first, they’ll be much more likely to remember it. Conversely, if people literally can’t find you in search engines, they may not associate you with the tort at all.       Organic inbound traffic. Most SEO practitioners treat organic traffic as their highest objective priority. Organic traffic is the amount of traffic generated from organic searches; ranking higher in search engines means more people will see your website and click through to visit your web pages. At a high enough scale, this can generate thousands – or even tens of thousands of new visitors every month. Even better, these visitors should be highly relevant to your law firm SEO, since you already know they were searching for terms relevant to the mass tort.       Peripheral sources of traffic. Organic traffic is the main priority of most mass tort SEO campaigns, but many of the tactics you practice for SEO will have the incidental benefit of generating peripheral forms of traffic. For example, link building is a critical aspect of SEO; it passes authority, allowing your website to rank higher, but it also introduces a path to more referral traffic generation.       Specialized destination pages. Practicing SEO gives you an opportunity to create specialized destination pages, including blog posts, white papers, case studies, and general landing pages, tailored to your target demographics. This allows you to funnel people in highly specialized streams to highly relevant pages, so you can better market to them once you capture their traffic.       Persuasive onsite content and CTAs. People who visit your website after discovering it in search engines will likely want to read your content. This presents an excellent opportunity to persuade your audience and get them to act the way you want. Accordingly, your onsite content should be fitted with calls to action (CTAs) designed to motivate readers to take a specific action (like filling out a form with their contact information or scheduling a time for a consultation). Technically, conversion optimization is a concept distinct from SEO, but because they’re mutually beneficial and reciprocally supportive, it’s wise to speak of them as if they’re part of the same overall strategy. SEO is also incredibly beneficial for mass tort lawyers because it’s cost effective. These are just some of the reasons why it’s so cost effective, especially when compared to other marketing and advertising strategies:       Low barriers to entry. There’s practically no barrier to entry for SEO. If you have a website and you know what you’re doing, you can get started right away – with no partnerships, connections, or existing assets strictly necessary. Learning SEO isn’t especially difficult, especially with the abundance of educational materials now available online, and if you do need support, a qualified SEO agency can easily help you. Hiring professionals is more expensive than doing it yourself, but paying for professional SEO services is still cheaper than most traditional advertising campaigns.       Competitive opportunities. SEO is also highly cost effective because it gives you the opportunity to mitigate or eliminate competitive pressure. Because you’ll be targeting highly specialized keywords and phrases, you can immediately cut your competition to the absolute minimum. If you do have competitors in this narrow space, you can usually supersede them with better content and a more thoughtful strategy.       Permanent resource development. The resources you create for mass tort SEO are going to be permanent, or nearly so. The blog posts you write for SEO are going to continue providing information to people and converting people for years to come. The links you build can keep generating traffic indefinitely. Whatever landing pages and persuasive materials you create will continue providing value to your brand as long as you keep using them.       Hands-off intake. SEO is an inbound marketing strategy, and one of the brightest appeals of inbound marketing is that intake is mostly hands-off. Instead of spending time, effort, and energy on every

Natural quality backlinks are a major factor in calculating a domain’s overall authority, which in turn influences its rankings for various keywords. Semantic search–including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing–help to determine whether a link was acquired naturally or unnaturally. Unnatural backlinks earn penalties from Google (both manual and algorithmic) and harm domain authority and trust. While natural backlinks help you grow your rankings and overall web traffic. To get around this, many search marketers simply adjusted their link building tactics to make their links appear to be more natural, rather than relying on the proper cultivation of purely natural links. Let’s dig in! Natural Backlinks vs. Unnatural Backlinks Google’s ability to detect natural links is more advanced than ever, and with some Google employees insisting that link building for SEO should be avoided altogether, it pays to know the real differences between unnatural and natural links and why you should be working to build backlinks naturally. It’s only one of the reasons we encourage all of our clients to perform a backlink audit as part of our holistic and regular SEO audit services. When comparing your backlink profile, we’ll be discussing a number of critical components to ensure your links are natural. In doing so, you will be better able to find the “website equivalent” of the following: The Strict Definition of a Natural Backlink In the truest sense of the definition, and the one Google uses as the basis for its algorithm development, natural links are ones that you had no part in creating. Some neutral third party decided that your domain was worth linking to, so they posted a link somewhere to prove a point or offer a resource. Unnatural links, on the other hand, are any links that you put into place yourself. That means even your most carefully-placed, intelligently created, authoritatively sourced links are considered unnatural if you placed them with the intention of increasing your rank. That being said, Google still isn’t all-knowing (though it gets a little closer every day). Its algorithm can only use certain indicators to judge whether or not a link is natural, and as long as your link passes those tests, you won’t be penalized. Learning these indicators can help you understand what types of links are considered natural, and how to structure your own links so they appear to be natural in Google’s eyes throughout the course of your link building campaign. Types of Backlink Sources First, Google takes a look at the type of source being used to host the link. If the link is pointing to a domain in an industry wholly unrelated to that of the source, it will be considered unnatural. As a result, keeping your links to only the most relevant sources of your industry or business is a wise strategy. On a related note, higher authority sources tend to pass more authority than lower authority sources, so getting a link featured on a major publisher or .edu site is much more natural and much more powerful than stuffing one into an article directory. Natural Anchor Text There was a time when anchoring your links with keywords or words related to your industry was a good idea. That time has passed. If Google notices too many of your links using the same keyword or keyword phrase, it will become wise to your tactics and judge your links to be unnatural. Instead, try to anchor your links with words that actually describe what your page has to offer, or better yet, let your link sit naturally in a bed of text. We recommend tools like SEOJet for helping to gauge proper anchor text variability among differing pages of your website. For instance, the anchor text variation for your homepage will look much different than the anchor text variation of internal service pages and blog posts: mepage should look much different than your services pages and your blog posts: versus Source Diversity Google also looks for patterns in how and where you’re posting links. Essentially, it can tell if a particular series of links have been placed by the hands of a single individual or company. For example, if all your links are confined to only two or three different sources, Google will conclude that you’re either spamming the links or you’ve engaged in some kind of mutual link scheme with those other sources. Either way, your links will appear unnatural—so make sure you’re using a wide variety of different sources. One of the main methods for tracking link diversity is by using third-party link building tools like Moz or Ahrefs. For instance, take a look at the Domain Authority (DA) diversity of a client who came to us wanting to build more backlinks from high authority websites: Contrast this with a popular industry SEO blog: Granted, the data is a bit skewed as our client had not yet reached scale. As the scale of one’s sitelinks expands, the backlink profile should begin to appear and more “natural.” But link builders need to be aware of where they are procuring their links and at what scale. Link Destination If all the links pointing back to your domain point to the same page, Google will deem them to be unnatural. For example, if you use your homepage as your primary URL when posting external links, eventually Google will pick up on your habits and penalize you. Instead, use a variety of different link destinations, getting to the deepest pages of your site whenever possible. Link Context The contextual placement of your link also matters. For example, if you post a link by itself with no explanation as the only comment on an external blog, your link will definitely appear unnatural. If, however, you introduce your link with a thoughtful explanation of why it’s helpful in response to another member’s comment, your link will appear to be natural—even more, it will be natural. Work to frame your links in a real, natural context

You’re a SaaS company (or a startup on an SEO budget) and you’ve either decided to start a managed SEO campaign, or yours is in trouble and you need to whip it back into shape. You know all about the onsite portion of SEO — improving your SEO with the proper technical structure, ongoing content strategy, and meta data—but you’re struggling to find your place when it comes to offsite strategies. This guide is also broken down into a few main sections, so feel free to skip to the ones you feel are most relevant to your needs: Unique challenges, to elaborate on the main obstacles and priorities a SaaS company should focus on Guest posting and manual link building, to cover best practices for a manual link building services Link cultivation, to explain the mechanisms of earning links naturally through content Ongoing considerations, to maximize the long-term returns of your campaign Necessary Evil of Link Building for SaaS: Pros, Cons and Risks Offsite SEO is a culmination of all the ranking factors Google and other search engines consider that aren’t directly on your site. Because these aren’t on your site, they’re more difficult to control, but they also offer more credibility, as these factors serve as third-party indicators to your domain’s authoritative strength. Take a look at Moz’s breakdown of ranking factor clusters (which is an approximation, but still relevant): (Image Source: Moz) Link building features alone account for a cumulative 40 percent of total rank potential, compared to only 15 percent for on-page keyword and content features. Along with social metrics, offsite SEO accounts for 47 percent of your total propensity to rank—meaning if you ignore offsite SEO, you’ll be sacrificing 47 percent of your search visibility potential (more on that later). After hitting a critical threshold of 20 percent investment, there’s a major turn in the growth of monthly revenue. This is because SaaS companies are dependent on visibility to new customers in order to make new sales. Since most SaaS companies operate exclusively online, the only options for increased visibility are advertising and organic improvements, the former of which is ridiculously expensive at higher volumes, and the latter of which is most successfully executed with a content and SEO strategy. SEO also offers compounding returns, compared to advertising, which offers reasonable, yet linear growth patterns. Long story short? SEO is the best tool you have to sustain long-term revenue growth. Off-site SEO is a complex web of habits and exchanges more akin to relationship management than construction. Battling SaaS churn with link building and content marketing But offsite SEO is about more than just increasing your visibility and organic traffic in search engines. If done correctly, you’ll increase referral traffic from whichever sources you build links on, your brand reputation will improve, and you’ll earn more customer loyalty as a result. As a SaaS company, customer loyalty is vital if you want to stay alive. Take a look at this customer churn graph: (Image Source: Totango) The fastest-growing SaaS companies are the ones with the highest rates of customer retention, and offsite SEO link building can help you achieve them in addition to all its other benefits. Link Building for SaaS Companies: Unique Challenges Hopefully, you now see why offsite SEO and link building is so critical for SaaS companies. I’ll get to the “how” in a minute, but first, I want to address some key, unique challenges that SaaS companies face while pursuing a content marketing strategy. Differentiation. The SaaS model has potential for huge revenue growth, but because this is common knowledge, the market’s been flooded with competitors in recent years. If you want to be featured as a thought leader, you need a solid way to differentiate yourself. If your niche is especially competitive, this can be hard to find; think about how to angle your brand to a specific demographic, or what information you can gather that no one else can. User trust. You can gain ranks pretty easily with a consistent offsite content strategy, but users’ impressions of your brand are an independent concern; just because you successfully earned a link doesn’t mean you’ll generate additional user trust with its placement. Finding a way to build and improve this trust is essential if you want to attract more loyal customers; this generally requires an even greater focus on the quality and value of your content. Building authority from scratch. All SaaS companies are relatively young, since it’s a relatively new concept. Building authority is easy when you have lots of history and data to support your brand: If you’re starting from scratch, however, you’ll find it’s notoriously difficult to get your foot in the door anywhere. The most critical period for offsite SEO development is your first few months—you’ll see the lowest returns on your investment, but you have to keep going if you want to scale. Scaling to new sources. After your early momentum starts to subside, you’re going to find it difficult to keep scaling upward. SaaS companies have a huge potential for future returns, especially compared to SaaP companies: (Image Source: Cloud Strategies) However, to sustain this exponential growth model, you also need to exponentially scale your offsite strategy. This is certainly possible, but it requires a steady increase in your time, effort, and quality. Keep these challenges in the back of your mind as you read the next few sections and start planning your strategic approach. Understanding and compensating for these weaknesses is critical if you want to be effective. Guest posting & link building for SaaS Guest posting and link building should constitute the bulk of your ongoing strategy, as it’s the most reliable way to build a reputation and guarantee high-profile links. In this strategy, you’ll be producing high-quality content that other sites host for their users. Many of these posts will contain links that point back to your domain, which in turn pass authority to your site to support your ranking efforts. These

In most scenarios, preparing your business for a move to a new location is a sign of success. Maybe you’ve outgrown your old location, maybe you’re moving to a swankier place, or maybe you’re heading downtown to be closer to your clients. Whatever the case, moving is an exciting time for local businesses much in the same way it is for individuals—it’s a new opportunity and the beginning of a new era. Unfortunately, moving your business has a few downsides. Even if you spend the days and weeks leading up to the move updating your clients and partners about the change, there’s still one major hiccup that can damage your business as a result of switching business addresses: your local SEO could suffer. If you’re proactive and dutiful, you can avoid the worst and make the transition to your new business locations without any major interruptions in the progress of your local SEO campaign. This article will show you how to get it done. The Problem With Moving Usually, when we talk about seeing a ranking drop or a decrease in domain authority, it’s because Google is mad at you. Posting spammy links or bad content is a violation of Google’s official policies, and doing so will make them penalize you. Moving to a new location isn’t going to make Google mad—but at the same time, if you handle it improperly, it can cause your rankings to plummet. Here’s the root of the problem: your NAP. “NAP” is shorthand for name, address, and phone number—the three critical pieces of information Google uses to categorize and understand your business. Because this information is vital to producing accurate, reliable local search results, Google takes it very seriously. But rather than relying on local businesses to present this information on their own, Google tries to fact-check by aggregating information from all over the web. It might take the NAP information on your site and compare it against your NAP as it exists on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and a thousand other third-party local directories. If it finds that your NAP is inconsistent, it serves as a blow against you, and two things might happen—your domain authority might drop, and your address might populate incorrectly for any relevant inbound queries. Neither is good for your search visibility. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix to this. Google’s aggregation of data makes its search results far more accurate, but it also means it takes a longer time for your information to update throughout the web. If you update your NAP information on your own site, it might take months or even years for those independent local directories to catch on and update their databases, and even more time for Google’s data refreshes to catch up to the change. In the meantime, you’ll be losing tons of potential visibility and traffic. How to Prepare for the Change Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do in advance of your move. You can’t write a letter to Google explaining the address transition or schedule your address change the way you can with the United States Postal Service. Plus, changing your business address too early can be just as problematic as changing your address too late. Instead, all you can do is proactively prepare for the transition period and be ready to take action the minute your address officially changes. Making the Switch When you finally make the move to your new physical location, you’ll have to take several steps to ensure your new local business listings data is incorporated throughout the web as thoroughly, as accurately, and of course, as quickly as possible. Your Website First and foremost, update your website—and update it everywhere. It’s the first place Google checks when evaluating your NAP information. Include your full information in the footer, with a phone number in the header, and be sure all your internal pages—especially a business page—are updated as well. If you have any location-specific internal pages, make a note to update them with the new location. Social Media Profiles Next, you’ll want to update your social media profiles. These are easy to miss, especially if you don’t regularly audit your content and social profile information as part of an on-going SEO audit process. Make it a point to not only update your basic profile information on every platform you use, but also to post an announcement to your audience addressing the change. Local Directories and Databases This is the tough part. There are literally thousands of different local directories and databases that have your information on file, and they’re all perused by Google’s search crawlers as a potential source of valuable information. If you want to be thorough, you’ll need to update as many of them as possible. There are services out there that will clean up your local profile for free—for a few hundred dollars, they’ll track down every instance of your business’s information on the web, and they’ll manually update it to reflect your current location. For the time-strapped business with a bit of extra money to spare, this service is definitely worth it. Otherwise, you can manually track down these instances and update them one by one. Generally, you can find them by searching for your own business name. Then, you can claim your Google my Business profile and update your information in the back end of the system, or write to the webmaster to inform them of the change. If you’re doing this, it will be impossible to update every single instance of your business on the web—for now, stick to the major players like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and UrbanSpoon. No matter what approach you use in updating your address throughout the web or how quickly you act after the initial move takes place, remember that the transition is going to take some time. You could spend a few weeks or even a few months with your address in a transition state, but as long as you act quickly and thoroughly, you should have no trouble minimizing the SEO fallout