If you are a small business owner not utilizing local SEO, you may need to rethink your marketing strategies.
Up to 46 percent of online searches in Google are looking for local products and services – that’s four out of five consumers. That means that if your business is not prepared for local search engine optimization, you are missing out on a lot of potential business. If you are still thinking, “what is local SEO,” today’s post is for you.
Reach Your Target Customers with Effective Local Search Engine Optimization Techniques.
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Local SEO Helps Businesses Stay Relevant
What is local SEO? It helps business owners promote their offerings to a local client pool. To collect data for local search, search engines like Google use signals such as social media profiles, local content, links, and citations to give users relevant search results.
Thriving in Local SEO
As a small local business owner, your main goal is to succeed in local search. To achieve this feat, there are three things you need to do:
- Sign up for a free Google My Business account and optimize it.
- Enhance your website’s on-page SEO.
- Improve your online reputation.
While all this may sound complicated and overwhelming, it is not feasible. With perseverance, patience, and the right SEO professionals to offer you guidance, you’ll stop wondering what is local SEO and start thriving in it.
Google My Business
Google wants to provide relevant and useful content to all its users. Naturally, Google developed a system where it can verify information from business owners first before presenting it to users. This is where Google My Business enters.
The first thing you have to do is sign up for a free Google My Business Account.
Next, you will want to verify your Google My Business page.
Another step in optimizing your Google My Business account is to encourage your customers to post their positive feedbacks.
On-Page SEO
To get your website SEO-friendly, you have to consider the following steps. A professional SEO agency can help you do this successfully.
Internal Links
Improving all the internal links within your website will grow your search rankings.
Internal links make your website navigation organized, which ultimately gives a positive user experience.
If you are not sure where to start with fixing your site’s internal linking, there is a plethora of information available online.
To ensure that you are doing it properly, and not further damaging your site, work with an experienced SEO agency.
Meta Description, Title Tags, and URL
There’s no shame in admitting that you are not 100% familiar with those terms. After all, you are running a business.
What you will need to understand is those factors are vital in making sure your website’s SEO performance is top-notch.
Local Content
Google highly encourages business owners to provide content useful to their site visitors – not just to search engines. For local SEO, make sure you are writing about stories and news of local interest – that, in turn, will attract your local target audience.
Mobile-Responsive
You can indeed do almost everything on your smartphone now. Want to know what nine out of ten mobile device owners are mostly doing? Searching for local products and services from their phone.
When a user finds your website online, you want to make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
This way, they’ll get the information they need quicker, increasing the chances of them purchasing from you.
The Rest of the Internet
Aside from making sure your Google My Business page and website are optimized, the next thing to ensure is that you’re doing great across all scopes of the internet. No big deal – if you know what to do. Here are the basics:
Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) Consistency
Your goal is to make sure users wouldn’t have a hard time finding information about your business. Make sure your NAP is set up accordingly throughout your site.
Online Directories
When it comes to online directories such as Yelp, Trip Advisor, etc., consistency is vital. Confirm that all your information is consistent and up-to-date.
If you find any discrepancies – no matter how big or small, whether it’s a misspelling, missing suite number, incorrect abbreviations, etc. – make sure to have them corrected as soon as possible.
Also, if you see any duplicate listings for your business, work on removing it right away. If Google finds any incorrect or duplicate accounts for you, you may get heavily penalized, which could negatively affect your business.