If you have a small business that functions in a regional instead of a national market, then you should consider local SEO seriously. Well, while global SEO focuses primarily on ranking the site in searches across the world, with local SEO, you will make your website appear on the top of the SERPs for a specific location. The strategy depends on marketing your products, services, and brand to local customers and leads.
As per some market studies, more than 35 percent of total website traffic comes from local searches. So, if you are not doing local SEO for your website, then you may lose a significant amount of traffic. How to get it done? Well, this is a time taking process, and some may find it challenging. However, you can use these easy to apply local search engine optimization strategies. Have a look.
Create a Google My Business account
As per the experts, optimizing your business’s Google listing can be an effective method to gain better visibility for local searchers. However, for that, you need to set up your Google My Business account by putting in all the required details. In order to optimize the profile, you can do the following things:
- Make an account and verify the online business ownership.
- Add updated and accurate information.
- Include images, your brand logo, operation hours, products and services, and more.
- Respond to customer reviews.
- Motivate the customers to review your brand, products, or services online.
- Regularly publish relevant posts through the dashboard.
Add keywords in multiple listings
Making your brand or business visible through different local listings is crucial for your local SEO. For that, you can insert the local keywords into some unique and relevant descriptions across different listings and ensure that your photos are current. Don’t forget to add the business category. Once you have compiled the list, go on and promote it.
Get high quality and new links
The quality and quantity of the backlinks that direct to your site can have a great impact on the local search engine ranking. Consider giving a presentation to the students of a local university, leading a discussion at local business meetings, or publishing articles online to get high-quality links. When your site has more links, it will increase the site’s authority. This, in turn, will boost up your local search ranking.
You can create content based on local events or news stories
Why should you write and post on local news stories or events? Well, these are some of the most effective ways to attract local customers’ attention. Here are some tips to create quality content that can help you a lot.
- Create an interesting video on local causes or charities that your brand supports. ‘
- Write high-quality blog posts about local events, activities, and news stories.
- Set up location-specific webpages on the site and use high-quality and relevant local content.
Make your website mobile-friendly
It has been proved that the shift to mobile is happening much faster than expected. People are now using their smartphones to search for the products and services they are looking for. So, you need to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly and can offer a better experience to the customers. Besides, you need to make sure that it loads faster, around less than three seconds. To make the content easy to read, you can use bigger fonts.
What’s more? Use stunning UI for perfect UX. Well, for this, you can always take the help of a professional SEO company.
Use online business directories
Speaking about online business directories, there are generally websites like Yellow Pages, Foursquare, Yelp, and more. The options are more. You should list your business name, phone number, and address into these online business directors to enjoy better online visibility and to increase your local SEO. You must add your business name, complete address, contact number, a perfect description of the business, and a backlink to your official website.
Use Google AdWords keyword planner
This free tool can help you in finding local SEO keywords for your business or website. You can use the local keywords with the highest search volume for better ranking. You can also find the most searched terms that the local audiences use using this tool.
In order to enjoy perfect growth in the market, instead of focusing on the global audiences, you should first focus on the local audience. Then, gradually, you can expand your reach. Try out these methods now and witness the desired results.