Are you looking forward to improving your search ranking locally? You need a local search strategy. Local SEO is pivotal for small businesses that operate on a regional level. While national SEO focuses primarily on search ranking across the country, local SEO prioritizes appearing in a specific geographical location on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This strategy to rank high on SERPs helps in marketing your brand, products, or services to local customers.
Did you know that 97% of people learn about a local company more online than anywhere else?
Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about increasing the search visibility of your businesses. In this way, your brand will show up whenever a customer performs a search related to your products or services locally. These may include brick or mortar businesses with physical locations, including nail salons, grocery stores, repair shops, or service area businesses like house cleaning companies.
9 Steps to Optimize Your Website:
It’s essential to improve your website for local search results to generate more website traffic, leads, or conversions. Here are a few ways you can optimize your website for local search results:
1) Make Google My Business Page
A Google My Business listing is more crucial than social media or other directory sites for local businesses. Google My Business gives you a strong competitive advantage to manage your online presence and draw customers searching for your products/services on Google search and maps.
Furthermore, Google My Business may also show information about your business, including location, phone number, photos of products or services, and call-to-action buttons. That’s not it; you can also boost the visibility of your Google My Business page by regularly optimizing and updating it with reviews, posts, FAQs, etc.
2) Optimize Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
Meta descriptions and title tags play an essential role in the first impression of your web page on potential customers and are great ways to help search engines understand what your page is about.
The title tag appears to be at the top of a webpage and is the first thing Google sees to classify what your page is all about. Therefore, it’s essential to include your primary target keyword in the title tag and limit it to not more than 60 characters—for example, SEO Services & SEO Consulting | XYZ CORP.
A meta description is a back-end component that is not visible on the front-end of a webpage. However, it appears underneath the meta title tag on the search result page. It’s best to limit the meta description to 320 characters.
3) Create Mobile-friendly Website
Nowadays, people spend more time on their mobile devices or tablets searching for local businesses, making mobile optimization crucial. It’s best to optimize your website design, structure, page speed, etc., to make sure you’re not turning mobile visitors away. Here are a few things you can do:
- Make sure your website loads quickly on mobile devices
- Avoid using Flash or pop-ups
- Optimize titles and meta descriptions for mobile
- Create a responsive website design
- Use images and information carefully
4) Use Local Keywords
It’s best to use keywords relevant to local customers to improve your search ranking locally. Optimizing your website will be easier once you know the keywords you’re ranking for. You can use several tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMrush to filter keyword searches based on your location to know the popular search terms for your region.
In this way, you can create a list of locally relevant keywords that you need to target. These keywords will help you make appearances in your website’s meta content, copy, URLs, etc.
5) Add Business Address
It’s crucial to add your business address to your website to help Google understand your location. In this way, search engines link your business to a specific area or region. If you have one physical place, add your address to your website footer and contact page. However, it’s best to create separate, optimized pages for every location if you have multi-location businesses.
You can also add location-based structured data to your site as it makes it easier for search engines to identify your business’s location.
6) Create Business Profiles on Directories and Well-Known Citations
One of the best ways to improve your website locally is by building business citations. An online reference to your business’s name, contact, and address is called a citation. Apart from Google’s My Business listing, you can also benefit from online directories like Yelp, MapQuest, Facebook, Trip Advisor, Yellow Pages, etc., to boost your local SEO.
It’s best to create business profiles on well-known directories and citations. Here’s what your business listing must include:
- Business name, address, and contact number on all directories
- Backlink to your site
- Description of your business or products/services
7) Update NAP Citation
NAP indicates Name, Address, and Phone number. It would be best to pay attention to how your business’s NAP is listed on different citations or your website and make sure that it is listed the same everywhere. Whenever you build a business citation, it shows search engines that your brand is trustworthy and reputable.
However, all of the work can become unsuccessful if your citations aren’t consistent everywhere. Therefore, it’s crucial to pay attention to your NAP consistency. Make sure that your business name, address, and phone number are the same on every web page and citation; otherwise, it’ll affect your search visibility.
8) Build High-Quality Backlinks
The number of links signaling to your site tells search engines that your website is influential and trustworthy. The more high-quality links your website contains, the more essential it will seem to search engines. It’s crucial to get as many links as possible to boost your local SEO. However, link quality is also essential. Here’s how you can get high-quality backlinks:
- Create good-quality content like blogs or articles on your website so that others can link to your site
- Adopt influencer marketing strategies
- Guest blog on different reputable websites
9) Focus on Reviews
Another way to improve your ranking on search engines is by getting good reviews from your customers. This is one of the things that Google considers in determining your website as trustworthy and reliable. Therefore, by getting your customers to write good reviews for your business, you can optimize your website and encourage local customers to buy from you.
The Bottom Line:
The best way for small and multi-location business to improve their search ranking is to optimize their website to local search results. Therefore, by following these nine steps mentioned above, you’ll increase visibility, search ranking, sales, and website traffic.
