Local SEO is one of the essential things for small businesses that operate their business on a regional scale, as opposed to business who operates on a national level. While the business that is on a national level focus on rankings over Search engines across the country. Local SEO prioritizes appearing in local searches over SERP in a very specific region. The Local SEO strategy is best when it comes to marketing your brand or products in the neighborhood using an SEO agency Bath, or an SEO agency wherever you are local, to help.
Optimizing your Local SEO by working closely with a company that offers search engine optimization fort lauderdale way (or wherever you are based) means more traffic to your website, more leads, and more footfall to your business place by your potential customers. As per the ReviewTrackers’ study around 35% of search, traffic comes from local citations and without the optimized local SEO, your business is simply missing that much amount of traffic.
Further, 35% of all search traffic is local according to an estimate in a 2017 ReviewTrackers study. Without local SEO, your business could be losing out on a significant amount of traffic.
Here is How To Increase Your Local Ranking Today.
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Table of Contents
Optimize Google My Business Account:
To Get started on local searches, firstly you need to claim your Google My Business. Google My Business Will let you simply establish your presence over local search engines free of cost. Once your business is present over Google My Business it will start appearing on Google Maps. Not only that your business will appear on search results but google saying that this business is legitimate could also increase your business value as well.
In order to optimize your Google My Business, ensure that:
- Verify your Business listing.
- Provide accurate information.
- Include your logo, operation hours, payment methods, your product or service, and a lot of images.
- Ask your customers to review your business over google.
- Respond to all your customer reviews even the negative ones as well.
- Post content on your account with Google Posts.
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Ask for Reviews from Happy Customers:
Asking your customers to give you reviews for your business will not just help you optimize your Google My Business Presence. But it will also build trust and encourage more customers to buy from you. Brightlocals’s Local consumer Survey also revealed that 85% of new customers take the decision based on online reviews of a business.
Here is how to encourage customers to leave reviews:
- Ask for a review in person you close a sale.
- Send a post-sale email asking them to write a review.
- Always Respond to existing reviews in a professional way.
- Always address complaints in negative reviews.
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Voice Search Optimization:
Voice search is growing rapidly and will be a major search method in the future. So, in local SEO, now it’s vital to optimize for voice search.
Basically, your customers use long-tail keywords when they do voice searches as compared to the regular search. Because of this reason, you’ll need to adjust your local SEO to fit more into the conversational tone. For example. always use the common question starters like (Who, what, when, why and how).
We have a detailed article on How To Rank For Voice Search.
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Create Content on Local Stories or Events:
There’s nothing like authority content that speaks directly about the local issue to get the attention of your local customers.
Strategies include:
Writing up a blog post around local stories.
Creating videos about local events that you support.
Set up location-specific webpages on your website with local content.
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Home up on Local Keywords
The keywords that you are using should be relevant to local customers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Google has its own keyword planner that lets you filter out the keywords based on the location. So that you can get an idea of what are the terms that people are searching for in your region. This lets you create a list of local keywords to target. Once you have these keywords, make sure you put them into your website’s meta content and URLs.
Also, make sure that you mention the region-specific hotspots in your content. Let’s say if you are a local restaurant serving dinner to the people of downtown Seattle, put in references on your website.
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Use Location Pages:
Location pages are one of the most things when it comes to Local SEO. The pages need to have the following things present on your location page.
- Business Hours.
- NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number).
- User Testimonials.
- Google Maps is attached to the page.
If your business is only in one location, creating an “About Us” page that simply focuses on the local information is essential. Let’s say if you are running a local grocery store, Your “About Us” page is the perfect spot to mention your store’s involvement in supplying groceries to people in your town or city.
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Take Advantage of Online Business Directories
There are multiple business directories websites like Yelp, Foursquare, MapQuest and Yellow Pages. Not only these directories will get your business name and phone number out there, but they’ll also boost your Local SEO.
When listing your company on these directories, including the followings.
- Accurate business name, address, and phone number across all the directories.
- A backlink to your website.
- A brief description of your business.
