With the increasing number of websites, ranking on SERPs has become essential to stay in the audience’s view. This is where SEO steps in. SEO techniques help improve the visibility and ranking of a website. Local SEO does the same thing, but it is restricted to a specific geographical location.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice or process of improving the website quality to increase quality traffic and get better visibility on search engines. SEO gives value to quality and relevant content. Likewise, local search engine optimization is a division of SEO that focuses on optimizing a website for local search results.
Local SEO gives people living in specific geographic locations information about local businesses, products or services quickly and easily. It is intended for the people who run a shop, business, service, etc., in a specific area, such as restaurants, plumbers, doctors, lawyers, etc. Suppose a local baker is operating a bakery in a certain area without local customers approaching it. In such a case, the business may not achieve its marketing goals. So, local SEO is the best solution for this problem in which you attract customers to your shop. In this blog, we will discuss what local SEO is, its importance and what strategies to follow to improve it.
Why is Local SEO important?
According to a report published in 2017, 35% of all search traffic is local. This is huge and cannot be ignored; otherwise, your business could be losing out on a significant amount of relevant traffic. Local businesses need specific customers from their immediate area, so such business websites are optimized to appear in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for people looking for products and services in their area. Local SEO helps build brand awareness, increase website visibility for local audiences, and boost conversions. It is essential for smaller businesses as it makes business more competitive, attracts visitors and newcomers to the store. Websites optimized for mobile devices make your business visible to more people as all information is available at their fingertips. Hence, it’s easy for customers to explore your business and contact you. Some other points that show the importance of local SEO cannot be missed are discussed below:
- Increase traffic of local users – So far, we’ve learned that through local SEO, we can expand our local customer base. When anyone enters a local keyword or search term that we have optimized for our website, the results will show our service with all details like the distance of our shop, contact information, ratings & reviews, images, etc. Research shows that 50% of local searches on the phone result in visits within a day.
- Promotion at no cost – Advertisement is essential for any brand, whether it is local or global. Here SEO service provides you a free method to promote your business without any limit and on low investment. Just list your services or products with all the details and go live on the web.
- Get feedback from customers – Positive feedback from customers is a blessing for any brand as it will increase authenticity. So, if you have a good service and you encourage your customers to provide you with postive feedback and good ratings, it will help establish your business’s legitimacy.
Strategies to improve Local SEO
There are multiple factors that affect search engine optimization. SEO is an ongoing process, so you have to work on local SEO even if you rank on top of Google search results. Please be clear that local SEO is different from general SEO as local SEO prioritizes appearing on SERPs in a specific location, whereas general SEO focuses on ranking in searches across the country.
Local SEO requires a strategic marketing approach to appear on the top of SERPs. The practice of local SEO includes optimizing the business website for local search queries, writing great content, on-page and off-page optimization, local listing and link building, all with focused, localized intent. Let’s walk through some local SEO strategies and how you can use them to improve your Local SEO –
- Optimize website for mobile devices – According to a study, one of three smartphone searches was conducted just before arriving at a store. Smartphones are common, as people use them more frequently than other electronic devices. So, optimizing your website for mobile devices proves to be a good decision. It increases user engagement meaning, visitors spend more time on your website; this is beneficial as it attracts local customers and your business starts growing.
User experience is also important to make them revisit your website whenever a search query related to your product or services is made. Also, you can run a Google Mobile-Friendly test to check the compatibility of your website with mobile devices.
- Use local keywords – Keywords are an essential part of SEO. Using relevant and local keywords that match your business helps your website rank in SERPs. Before conducting local keyword research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, be clear about your services and which type of customers you want to target. And secondly, do some research on what people want from the type business you are running. This will help you generate keyword ideas.
Google your business and check the results in the map pack and organic results to understand the local intent. Make a list of local keywords and use it in your URL structure, heading, meta description, title and on-page content.
- Setup Google My Business account for success – Google My Business is a free tool by Google to optimize and promote your business profile. When properly optimized, it showcases your business.GMB makes it easy for consumers to discover, learn about, and contact your business.
It also allows you to provide details and photos of your business, including location, services, and products. It is beneficial for any new or established business to use Google business listing by creating an account on it. This should be as simple as creating, claiming and verifying. Here are some simple steps to create Google My Business account:
-
- Sign in to Google business profile manager; if you already have a Google account, you are automatically logged into profile manager.
- Add your business, enter the name of your business and select the category.
- Enter your location, add the address of your business and position a marker for the location on a map.
- Provide your contact information fill in your website URL and business phone number that helps customers to reach you.
- Verify your business enter the physical address of your business for the verification process.
- Add more details to your profile, add business hours, description, photos, etc., to look your profile complete and attractive.
- Try to get positive audience reviews – Ratings & reviews from customers are an essential part of the website now. They are also vital for local businesses and online retailers as people need reassurance and confirmation that their actions are right and reviews are social proof of it. Also, reviews impact local SEO as it certifies whether your service is good or bad. So, make a strong push to get reviews from customers and if it’s five stars, it’s even better. The main emphasis here should always be either thanking them for a five-star review or trying to smooth things right in case of a bad review.
- Focus on your website content – It is essential to understand what people are looking for. There is a marketing buzzword “content is the king,” so always keep in mind that unique content is most important because if you have duplicate content from page to page, Google will penalize your website and may result in a lower website ranking. While you can use canonical tags to tackle such issues, fresh content allows including high-traffic and relevant keywords in the content.
Actually, the whole story depends on your website’s content authenticity, relevance and quality. Google’s crawler is constantly crawling millions of websites and it knows the content of all the indexed sites. So, anyhow you have to create content that is not similar to others, including the quality and knowledge that you deliver to your customers. You must use desired keyword phrases relevant to your business with unique and fresh content. Here are the places where you can use your keyword to maximize your optimization:
-
- Use your target keywords in the heading.
- Sprinkle your secondary keywords in sub-headings and content body.
- Upload a video on youtube with your keyword embedded in your page with the title.
- Write a compelling title & meta description using local keyword phrases that match your business.
- Optimize the image tags by including target keywords.
Write an ‘about us’ section on your website so that customers don’t have any problem understanding what your site wants to deliver. Add a footer menu as it is essential that anyone can get all the links and vital services of your site in one place. Also, add a map to your page to make it easy to locate your business, add a contact number, etc., to your site. It would help anyone clear queries about your business by making direct contact with you and will increase website authenticity.
- Local listing – Local listing or directory listing is crucial for local SEO. It features your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). The goal of the local listing is to make your business more accurate and searchable online. Businesses that have full and correct information listed with relevant images have better SEO and are taken as credible and authoritative across the internet. It is seen as a good part of local SEO strategy.
- Focus on link building – Link building is one of the most prominent factors that affect the ranking of your website. The vision of link building is to drive traffic or increase users to the website. If you are running a local business like a restaurant, appliance repair, etc., at a specific location, try to get links from relevant blogs in the niche. It increases the local traffic and website authenticity. Also, you can build links through various social media platforms, etc.
Closing thoughts
Local SEO is a part of SEO that promotes local businesses and services. It is a strategic and targeted approach that is achieved through various listings and research. Two things are essential to make the business successful online or offline: first, the quality of service you provide to your customers and second, unique content that is one of a kind. Always try to answer the questions that customers want to know in your business. This can be easily found in “people also ask” on Google search result pages. Also, update information across your website Google business listing regularly that shows you are active in your business.
Also, Google’s algorithm changes from time to time because Google wants to give its audience the most relevant content full of quality, so keep an eye on it and try to improve your local SEO. You can outsource a company that does these tasks for you like Google business listing, creating and managing Google My Business account, directory listing, SEO marketing, making local SEO strategy, SEO services, etc. You need to update your website with the SEO trends in the field of local SEO to stay ahead of your competitors.
References
Leave A Comment