For a local business, it is important to optimize your on-page and off-page SEO strategies with local SEO techniques. On average, around 30% of the search engine users who search for local businesses, end up buying the products and services within the same day. Business competition in the local scenario is quite high, and if you don’t optimize your local SEO, you will be missing out on a lot of opportunities. Listed in this blog are 7 local SEO steps that you can follow to optimize your website.
Local Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in SERPs for a local audience. It is important to do local search engine optimization if you want your business to be discovered. Here are seven SEO strategies that you can use to help your business rank higher for local search engine listings.
1. Set up google my business page
Out of all the local SEO steps, this is probably the most important. The very first thing that you should do is set up a Google My Business page. This will create a google listing for your business, which will appear when someone searches for relevant keywords. The local businesses will appear at the top of the search results. They will be marked on a map, with more detailed listings below the map. Another benefit of creating a Google My Business page or of creating a Google listing is that you can get backlinks from Google. Click here to read more about How To Attract Customers To Your Business by using Google Map and other tactics.
Steps to create a google my business page:
- Log into google my business
- Claim your listing
- Sign up and verify your business
- Get rid of duplicate/incorrect listings
- Add a company logo, photographs, and information from the home section of the dashboard
2. Create local content
If you have multiple branches, localize your content for each branch. Add phone numbers and address, opening and closing times, etc. for each branch. If you hold local events, highlight those, as it will promote your business and those events at the same time.
3. List on third-party listing sites
Other than listing your website on google places, list your website on other credible, high quality listing sites. Doing this helps to enhance your online presence and gets more queries and higher rankings. This provides backlinks and creates NAP (name, address, phone number) citations, which are a key ranking factor for local businesses.
To understand more about listings, submissions, etc, read our Beginners Manual to Learn SEO from the beginning.
4. Encourage customers to leave reviews
Listings with better reviews rank higher in SERP’s because search engines focus on providing valuable content to search user queries. People also prefer to contact to businesses which have high ratings and positive reviews. Businesses should always try to encourage their satisfied customers to write reviews about them. This helps in improving the credibility of the business. Read our next blog to understand the Need For Digital Marketing In Today’s World and know how customers rely on digital platforms to assess information about products/ services.
5. Get credible links
High quality and credible links have a major impact on local search engine listings. Business owners and marketers should make use of these opportunities to create links from other organizations. This can be achieved by hosting presentations at a local university, teaming up with other organizations, writing guest blogs, posting online articles, etc. Click here to Understand The Importance of External Links and How They Are Generated.
6. Improve internal linking
Many local business websites have a poor internal linking structure. They usually link most of their webpages to the Home or Contact Us pages. Always add only those internal links of articles or blogs (in your content), which are relevant to the topic. A website’s rank can increase drastically once the internal linking structure is improved. Right/Proper linking structure makes it easier for crawlers to crawl and index webpages better. Read our next blog to Understand the Importance of Internal Links and How They Are Helpful To Boost SEO.
7. Be mobile friendly
Most of the people search for local businesses on the go, which means they use their mobile phones to conduct a search to get relevant information. Thus, making your website mobile-friendly is essential for the success of your website. A mobile-friendly website ranks higher because search engines also prefer mobile-friendly websites.
By using Google’s free Mobile Friendly Testing Tool, you can check if your website is search engine friendly or not. To make your webpage mobile friendly, it is suggested to create a responsive web design and optimize page speed. Follow our guide to Understand How To Optimize and Increase The Visibility Of Mobile Apps to attract more customers.
Local SEO is a part of Normal Off-Page and On-Page SEO. By creating a Google My Business page, NAP citations, third-party listings, good reviews, good internal link structures, mobile friendly website, local content, and credible local links, not only we will be able to attain very good rankings but it will also allow customers to find our local business.
