Any SEO expert will tell you that SEO is one of the most important digital marketing strategies to maximize your business exposure. Why? It helps draw qualified traffic to your business website. Qualified traffic is more likely to convert than other kinds of traffic, such as those sourced from social media and email marketing. However, there is a new qualified traffic generation strategy that is making waves in the SEO world called Local SEO.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO has a lot in common with general SEO, it’s just that it focuses on helping your business website to rank high on local search results. Ideally, it helps you promote your products and services to local potential and existing customers in real time, at the exact moment customers search for a product or service, to be exact. If well implemented, local SEO can help you outrank established online businesses and grow your brand quickly. Here are the most effective ways to optimize your website for local SEC,
1. Optimize your website for Google My Business
An optimized Google My Business listing is the bedrock of a successful local SEO strategy because it helps you get the basics of local SEO right. Google My Business can effectively help your online business to appear in Google maps, as well as in local listings. Also, it enables customers to write Google reviews. Reviews are essential to the success of any business. Google My Business also allows you to use Google posts to showcase your products, promote your events and outline special offers. It also gives you detailed insights about your business, such as your local listing performance.
2.Include location pages on your business website
If you’r running an online business, you’re likely to have one or multiple physical stores. If that’s true, you need to create location pages for your business website. With location pages, prospective customers can see your business name, phone number, address, unique physical store descriptions (hours of operation, transit, and parking information), reviews and testimonials from happy customers, and promotions, all of which can help them in their buying journey.
3. Optimize your content
Your website content includes text, images, videos, Title Tags, URL, Headers, Content and Meta Description. Content is very important for local SEO these days. In fact, it’s a Google ranking factor these days. Therefore, creating quality content all the time helps you to rank high on local search results. And whenever you create new content for your website, make sure to optimize it for local SEO. The most effective technique to optimize your content for local SEO include inserting high-value keywords in your title, URL, header, body and Meta Description.
4. Adjust your internal linking structure
While external links are important for your general SEO efforts, internal links will help boost your local SEO tremendously. For example, they will help with website navigation, ranking power, page authority among your web pages, and website hierarchy.
5. Create content for local users
Some years ago, content creators focused on writing for search engines to achieve higher rankings quickly. But the recent Google’s algorithm updates have forced them to write for users. While creating content in just about any niche will help you harness customers worldwide, writing about local news can help you rank high in local search results.
For example, if your business offers security services, create content that helps locals navigate the daily security challenges in their area.
6. Create a mobile-friendly website from scratch
SEO experts recommend that you take mobile searchers into account when implementing your local SEO strategies. That’s because more people are searching for products and services with their mobile devices than ever. Therefore, if your website is not mobile-friendly, your local rankings will suffer and you will lose a ton of prospective customers and potential sales. And statistics show that more customers research the products or services they intend to buy online before they head to the brick-and-motors stores to buy them. So, ensure to hire a web designer who knows how to create a mobile-friendly website from scratch.
7. Create social media signals
Social media is a great platform to get traffic to your site, considering that there are over 2.6 billion social media users today. And social media is where the majority of the world population likes to hang out So, you must have a Facebook business page, and Twitter and Instagram account for your business. Make sure that your social media pages have links pointing to your website to enable prospective customers to know about your local business.
8. Put more emphasis on reviews
Reviews are very important for your local SEO efforts. They can help increase your sales threefold. Face it, customers are more likely to buy a product or service if they read positive reviews from customers who have actually bought and used it. Therefore, encourage customers to leave reviews after buying and using your products or services. Better still you can create a section on your website for user-generated content. User-generated content is content (text, images, videos) generated and posted on a website by customers who have actually used your product or service. This kind of content brings social proof and it can help power your band to the next level. Reviews can also help you improve on your product and service because some customers will write negative reviews and point out aspects of your products or service that they didn’t like.
9. Be on top of Google’s local SEO updates
Google updates its local SEO metrics periodically. For instance, Google’s updates Google My Business frequently. Case in point, Google rolled out ACI; Short Names to enable businesses create short, custom URLs that can enable them to access their profile easily on Google. If you don’t stay up to data with Google local algorithm changes, you will lag behind when it comes to local rankings.
Well, implementing these local SEO strategies can be daunting and overwhelming, especially if you are not skilled enough to do it. However, that shouldn’t worry you because there are many SEO experts out there who can help you implement these techniques at really reasonable prices. Start your journey to the top of your local SEO search results by implementing these local SEO tips today.
Author Bio
The Local SEO content is written by SEO Expert – Sandeep Mehta who has done locally optimization of many websites. Through local keywords, many small businesses are helpful to generate lead and traffic as well. He mostly targets local keywords firstly and then national & international. SEO Expert: https://www.sandeepmehta.co.in/