It’s important to bring traffic to the website with the help of search engine optimization.
There are many ways in which SEO can be implemented on websites.
One of them is Local SEO.
Local search engine optimization is very beneficial if you want your website to be ranked on the search engines results page at a specific location.
Location can be anything like country, city, state, etc.
In this article, I will explain to you what local SEO is and how you can implement it on your website.
So without wasting time let’s start this article.
What Is Local SEO?
The method of optimizing your website for a particular local location is known as local SEO.
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of increasing the exposure of local companies to search engines, primarily those with physical locations.
Businesses can increase organic traffic from searches made by consumers in neighboring locations by adopting local SEO best practices.
If you operate a local company, such as a store, restaurant, or agency, you need your web pages to rank for a particular search query made by a local audience.
Local search engines rely on signals including local content, social profile pages, links, and quotes to provide the most relevant local results to the user.
When it comes to optimizing your local business’s website, it’s all about making sure people can find you both online and offline.
Businesses can use local SEO to promote their goods and services to local prospects and the consumers who seek them.
Even though you may not be getting any visits to your building right now, you are targeting a demographic that lives in the same area as yours.
As a result, you should improve your web presence in that area.
You can perform some of this on your website, but there’s more!
How Does Local SEO Work?
When you optimize for local searches, you are focused on telling Google – through various signals – that your company is based in a certain location and wants to be discovered by local consumers.
These days, the general rule is that if you have a good address in an area/city, it’s easy enough to customize.
This enables you to use store locators on your website to develop local landing pages and help customers locate your business.
Having the right local business schema markup on your website is one of the most important things you can do to show Google that you are a local company and the areas you serve.
It may sound relatively sophisticated, but our Local SEO plugin can take care of everything for you.
You’ll just need to provide some data about your company, and our plugin will generate the schema markup for you.
In addition to technically optimizing your website for local searches, it’s also a good idea to provide content tailored to a local audience.
However, ranking for local searches involves much more than website optimization.
You should first set up a Google My Business account and fill in all the required information.
Additionally, it can be beneficial to try to obtain industry-relevant and local relationships.
Citations, word-of-mouth, and print brochures all contribute to local SEO, much like a local social media plan.
If you want to learn more about these topics, we suggest David Mihm’s series on Local SEO.
Their introduction to ranking your local business is a great place to start.
Local SEO Checklist.
Here is the list of what you need to do to implement local search engine optimization on your website:
1. Optimize Your Website For Google My Business.
Google My Company has become the pinnacle of local search because Google likes to provide content that it can trust and verify.
Google My Business is a tool to help your business meet Google’s needs.
Do the following to make sure you’re ready for Google My Business:
- Make a Google My Business page and validate it.
- In your Google Account, use Google Post.
- Encourage your consumers to leave reviews online.
- Respond to reviews honestly and clearly, including your location.
If Google can verify that your company is legit, the search engine can award you a coveted sidebar position in Google Local Search.
It is not only for SEO.
Due to expected consumer buying behavior in 2022 and the turmoil in company operations, you can make it easier for potential consumers to find you by reviewing and updating your contact information and hours of operation.
2. Post To Google My Business And Connect On Social Media.
For the first time ever, Google is giving more importance to the content that is shared on social media.
Sharing your Google My Business profile on social media is a great way to integrate search and social together.
3. Make Sure Your Name, Address, And Phone Number Are Consistently On The Internet.
You have to make it easy for people to find you and for search engines to find you.
To do this set up your NAP (name, address, and phone number) (with area code).
It should be placed on your site as crawlable HTML content.
Avoid making the common mistake of only placing the nap inside a photo.
Unlike HTML text, images cannot be indexed by search engines.
This is the most commonplace for a NAP to appear on a website.
4. Make Internet Directories And Citations More Effective.
These four map data aggregators supply a substantial amount of map data for US firms such as Apple, Yelp, Bing, Google, Trip Advisor, and other US firms:
- Express Update
- Neustar Localeze
- Foursquare
- Factual
Check that your citations are consistent and complete across these four data aggregators to ensure factual consistency.
Misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite numbers, or the wrong phone number can all cause trouble.
If Google can’t figure out what information about your company is accurate, it may not show up in search results at all.
Also, be sure to remove any duplicate listings you come across.
Bonus points if you insist on your community’s Chamber of Commerce membership, which will earn you an external inbound link.
5. Conduct A Local Search Engine Optimization Assessment.
It’s tempting to put your foot on the brakes once you’ve mastered the essentials.
On the other hand, SEO is a continuous and seamless process.
Instead of stopping there or just making changes and seeing what matters, it’s a good idea to do a full audit to determine where your website is headed and what needs to be improved to meet your objectives.
The following items may be included in a local SEO audit:
- Google My Business Audit: Where does your Google My Business appear in search results?
- Is all the information correct?
- According to Google Search Console, is your site crawlable?
- Is there something wrong with this and it would complicate the indexing?
- On-Page SEO Audit: Does your website include all the on-page SEO features that help you rank?
- Are all company quotes in the most popular business directories accurate and up to date?
- Competitors Analysis – How does your website compare to your competitors?
- Is there anything that needs to be done?
- In terms of inbound links, content, design, and placement, how do you compare?
- What is the performance status of your website?
6. Improve The Structure Of Your Internal Connections.
Internal links can definitely help your local SEO.
While external connections to your site are desirable (as I will describe shortly), changing your internal linking structure can also help you improve your SEO results.
What is the importance of internal linking?
It performs the following functions:
- Helps in website navigation
- Helps in website hierarchy and information architecture.
- Disturbed page authority and ranking power of pages.
If you’re not sure where to start with improving your internal linking structure, check out Kissmetrics’ The Seven Commandments of Internal Linking for Top-Notch SEO.
7. Make Sure The URL, Title Tag, Header, Meta Description, And Content Are Optimized.
Each new blog post is a new indexed page for your site, a new page on which to target the geographic search term, and a new chance for the content (SERPs) to be discovered in the search engine result pages.
When creating a piece of content, you should include high-volume keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and body to optimize it for search engines.
If you’re having trouble coming up with geo-targeted content, consider displaying client success stories and case studies.
8. Develop Separate Pages For Each Section Of Your Website.
If you have multiple physical locations, you should create a location page.
On Your Location pages, customers can see your name, address, phone number, store hours, specific business details, parking/transit information, discounts, and customer comments.
It is also important that you do not repeat content across multiple location pages.
Create a geographically detailed About Us page for single-location enterprises.
If you include a Google Map on your website’s location page, you’ll receive a number of extra points.
9. Create Information That Is Specific To Your Area.
Google is getting smarter, which means content providers can now write for people instead of search algorithms.
In many cases, narrowing your focus and writing about local and industry news is more important than broadening your horizons to reach a certain audience.
Promote local industry meetings, news, staff, and other instructional information on your blog to establish yourself as a local expert in your field.
Consider top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your company offers.
For example, if you are a local security firm, and you want to recruit new companies into the area, build a useful resource to help them become familiar with your community.
A city-wide events calendar or a list of local service providers can both be helpful to your personality and provide highly relevant on-page local signals.
10. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly.
Local search and mobile search are inextricably linked (61 percent of all Google searches are done on mobile).
People will use your site to check reviews in a mobile context, get directions to your location, and find contact information, among other things.
The number of smartphone searches for “Near Me” increased by 250 percent in the first half of 2018. (think with google).
To make it easier for your customers and prospects, make your website mobile-friendly.
11. Get Relevant And Authoritative Inbound Links.
Inbound links are a great way to improve your local SEO because each one shows Google that you are a reputable business, and they can also help you build your domain authority.
To get backlinks, you can do the following:
- Partnership or sponsorship.
- Guest Blog Posts.
You can pay money to buy relevant backlinks.
Start with your network, which can include the Chamber of Commerce, BID, licensing bureaus, trade groups, resellers, suppliers, and/or manufacturers, as well as other affiliates.
Consider sponsoring a webinar or meeting, organizing a community event, advocating for a local cause, and developing contacts with influencers.
Also, get in the habit of reaching out to partners and see if they want to add you to their partner directory.
Being a guest blogger can also help you get links.
Talk to and about other individuals in your business (in a good way, of course!) and serve as a resource for the community.
If you actively participate in community discussions, you will see increased inbound links, social media growth, and increased media attention.
12. Join Your Community.
The more you engage in your community, the more digital promotion you will get.
You can do this by collaborating on a campaign with a charity, hosting a volunteer day at your company, sponsoring an event (even an online one), or being visible in local media as an authority in your industry is all ways to earn press, brand awareness, and inbound links.
Given this, for example, because edu links are the best for domain authority, why not get some by highlighting scholarships in your field?
It should be industry-relevant, provide proper pointers to your website (given backlinks from colleges), as well as make you feel amazing!
Moz has created a comprehensive guide to success in scholarship outreach.
Conclusion.
So there you have it.
A complete guide to local SEO
Local SEO plays a very important role in a higher ranking in the search engine results page for a particular location.
It’s important to understand how to use it effectively for your business, and this article is a great place to start.
I hope you enjoyed this article and if you did, please share it on social media.
If you have any questions about local SEO, please share them in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
