A Guide to Local SEO: Tips for Improving Your Ranking
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So you built this fantastic website, the images are showing off your best, and the words are hitting those buzzwords that will have people clicking that action button that you perfect in the middle of the page. Now you are waiting for the organic traffic to visit, yet no one is visiting.
So why is that? What are you missing to attract people to your well-built website, and what is this search engine optimization you have seen talked about?
Like anything newly built, building up a clientele will always take time, but how you get those first sales will come down to how you put yourself out there. When it comes to a website, optimizing your business for local SEO is, or should be, at the top of your to-do list.
You have to be seen to get noticed, and no better place for a website to be seen is on a search engine like google. These incredible SEO marketing tools can help you rank higher in local search engine results, translating into attracting new users (organic traffic) to your business, whether to take them to your website or your physical location.
In this comprehensive guide, we'll take a deep dive into this strategy and provide actionable tips to improve your local position and drive more business through your doors.
So let's grab that coffee, sit back, and get started with a guide on SEO and how to help your websites reach new customers.
What Is A Local SEO Strategy?
Let us take a restaurant owner just set up in beautiful Kitsilano, Vancouver. The location is furnished, the staff employed, and now you are looking to attract local customers to try out your food.
You have the website, but now you will start implementing an SEO strategy, where you will want to improve your online visibility to attract more local customers.
In this method, your local SEO strategy is like the bat signal, also known in the fictional world as the Global Positioning System (GPS). You are helping direct potential customers to find your restaurant more efficiently. Because without it, then how do people find you? Not only that, but pick you among countless other businesses looking for more customers.
Just as a GPS provides directions and helps people navigate to their destination, local SEO involves optimizing a website with relevant content that will appear higher in search engines for local searches, such as "restaurant near me" or "restaurants in [city name]."
The end goal of a local SEO strategy is to increase the visibility of a business in local search results, leading to increased traffic to the website, more foot traffic to the physical location and ultimately, more revenue.
No matter how big or small you are, all businesses need local SEO. A successful strategy is going to include key elements, such as
Google My Business
Consistent Business Information
Local Keyword Research
On-Page Optimization
Citations & Backlinks
Reviews & Reputation Management
Local Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Schema Mark Ups
Online Business Directories
These tactics aim to increase a business's visibility in search engine results, making it easier for nearby customers to find and engage with the business. Also, remember, these tactics are not a one-done deal; they are an ongoing process and require a consistent effort to maintain a good ranking.
Optimize for Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a free online tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including search and map results.
Optimizing your business's GMB listing is crucial in any regional SEO plan. It can significantly improve your visibility in search engine results and drive more business traffic.
Here are some tips for optimizing your GMB listing:
Claim and verify your business: The first step is to claim and verify your GMB listing. This involves creating an account on GMB, adding your business information, and verifying that you own the business.
Provide accurate and detailed information: Make sure all your business information is accurate and up-to-date, including your business name, address, phone number, and website. Additionally, provide detailed and accurate descriptions of your business, services, or products.
Add photos and videos: Also consider including high-quality photos and videos of your business, products, or services to give customers a better idea of what to expect when they arrive at your location.
Encourage customer reviews: Encourage your customers to leave reviews on your GMB listing. Positive reviews can enhance your business's reputation and boost your visibility in search engine results. Also, asking for reviews for your business takes little effort.
Respond to reviews: Responding to positive and negative customer reviews is crucial in building a positive online reputation and increasing customer engagement.
Monitor and update regularly: Keep an eye on your GMB listing and update it regularly with new and relevant information, such as new products, services, or events.
Stay Local, Create Local Content
Creating content that can help search engines understand where you are within a specific geographical area will help potential customers to find and engage with a local business or organization.
One of the key strategies is creating local content, which refers to content specifically tailored to your local area and highlights your business's unique value proposition and information about your business to customers and helps improve your ranking.
Remember, search engines rely on signals such as local content and local search queries and their click-through rates to provide the most relevant local results to the user. So consider these points when building your pages:
Find Local Keywords: Identify customers' keywords and phrases to search for businesses like yours. Include these keywords in your content to help it rank higher in search engine results.
Showcase Your Local Expertise: Create content highlighting your local area knowledge. This can include relevant local news and events and information about your business's involvement in the community. Create content that goes beyond what your business sells.
Highlight Customer Success Stories: Share stories of happy customers and how your business has helped them. This can build trust and establish your business as a valuable resource in the local community.
Develop Local Guides and Directories: Create guides and directories that showcase local enterprises and attractions. This helps establish your business as a trusted authority in the local community.
Use Multimedia Content: Incorporate images and videos in your content to make it more engaging and shareable, especially local images that can be relatable.
Research Local Keywords for Your Business
Keyword research is crucial. By researching the keywords your potential customers use in their search queries, you can optimize your website and content to rank better in search results.
Local keywords are usually more specific and targeted than general keywords, meaning they may have lower search volume but higher intent.
You can attract more qualified leads and customers to your website by identifying the right local keywords for your business. Keyword research can help you better understand your target audience, discover new opportunities, and improve your online presence.
Strategies to Get Local Links
Get Listed on Local Directories: Listing your business on local directories like Yelp, GMBs, and Bing Places can help customers find you and give you valuable links to your website.
Utilize Social Media Profiles: Building a solid social media presence and linking to your website from your social profiles can help drive traffic and acquire valuable backlinks.
Create Localized Content: Creating localized content that showcases your business's expertise and highlights your unique value proposition can also help acquire valuable backlinks. This can include city guides, event coverage, and other content specific to your local area.
Partner with others: Building relationships with local businesses in your community can lead to valuable link-building opportunities. For example, when cross-promoting each other's businesses on social media and websites, you can include links to each other's websites.
Join Local Business Organizations: Joining a local business organization, like a Chamber of Commerce or a business association, can also help you acquire valuable backlinks. These organizations' websites often allow their members to create profiles or directories with website links.
Optimize Your Website for Local SEO
Your website is where people and crawl bots are going to come to get an idea of what your business is about. So making it clear for both is vital and critical to any successful regional or local SEO plan.
The best practices involve strategically incorporating location-specific keywords into your website content, including title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and alt tags on images.
Going from top to bottom of your website's structure should be optimized to include a clear, concise description of your business and its location in the footer and throughout the website.
And it's also vital to ensure that your website is mobile-responsive and easy to navigate, which is a crucial ranking factor for local SEO. Remember, our smartphones provide us with just as much information as our desktops, so making your website mobile-friendly will increase your chances of getting found by customers in your area.
Build Backlinks & Citations for Local SEO
Building backlinks and citations for local SEO is an important strategy to help improve your ranking. In a future blog, I can dig deeper into what they and backlinks are and help explain why they are essential.
But for now, a backlink or citations are simply links from one website to another. The best way people would explain this is by saying it is like giving an endorsement from another website, a "we have confidence in this site" type thing.
Backlinks: are important for search engines as they help determine the credibility and authority of a website. High-quality backlinks coming into your website will give an excellent impression to the like of Google, who will bump a site up due to believing it is a trustworthy and valuable website for people to see.
Citations: are listings of your business's name, address, phone number, and other information on various online directories and websites. Having accurate and up-to-date citations can help boost your business's credibility and increase your visibility to potential customers.
A Customer Review Is A Boost For You and SEO
Your business is improving, customers are coming and loving the service, and you're making an effort to encourage customers to share their experience with a review; kudos to you!
A customer review can not only provide you with valuable feedback to help improve your business, but it also has a significant impact on your business's visibility in search engine results. Whether the review is on Yelp, Google Business or even Facebook, it can help build trust with potential customers while helping to improve your search rankings.
A positive review can signal to search engines that your business is reputable and trustworthy, which can help increase your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Remember to encourage customers to leave reviews after using your products or services; it can sometimes feel uncomfortable. Still, it can help improve your profile and eventually help attract more customers to your business.
Social Media Content Marketing
No matter the business or the person, we can all accept that social media content is a great way to gain visibility. Leveraging your social media is a technique that can not only help wow your potential customers but can help in gaining more visibility in search engine results.
Whether it is Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, social media platforms are effective tools for increasing brand awareness and engaging with potential customers in your local area. Creating and maintaining an active social media presence can increase your business's visibility and drive traffic to your website.
Get Your Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code added to a website's HTML to communicate better with search engines. It provides additional information about the content on a website, making it easier for search engines to understand and index that content.
For local entities, schema markup can be particularly useful. By incorporating specific schema markup for local entities into a website, businesses can provide search engines with more local information about their location, hours, reviews, and other important details. This can help improve their website's visibility in search engine results and drive more traffic.
Some examples of schema markup for local entities include:
Local Business Markup: This markup provides general information about the business, such as its name, address, and phone number.
Business Reviews Markup: This markup adds reviews and ratings for the business directly to the search engine results page.
Events Markup: This markup can provide information about upcoming events or promotions at the business.
Contact Markup: This markup makes it easier for customers to contact the business directly from the search engine results page.
Take Advantage of Online Business Directories
In today's digital age, directories are becoming more and more popular. These directories are essentially online databases that list information about local enterprises, including their name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and more. As a result, they have become an important tool for search engine optimization (SEO).
Here's how to take advantage of directories :
Claim Your Listing: Find the most popular directories in your area and claim your listing. This will allow you to update your business's information, including your website link and social media profiles.
Make Sure Your Information is Consistent: It's important to ensure that your business's information (such as name, address, and phone number) is consistent across all online directories.
Optimize Your Listing: Apart from basic information, many online directories allow businesses to add extra details such as images, descriptions, and categories. Take advantage of these options to optimize your listing and make it more attractive to potential customers.
Encourage Reviews: Online directories such as Yelp and GMB allow customers to leave reviews of your business. Encouraging customers to leave positive reviews can boost your business's credibility and visibility.
Monitor and Update Your Listing: Keeping your business information up-to-date is crucial for SEO. Regularly check your listings for accuracy and make any necessary updates.
Try These Local SEO Tools
If you were looking for links to tools that can help you with your goal of getting ranked on google, here I share six to consider:
Google My Business (GMB) - As mentioned earlier, GMB is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google by providing them with a Google business profile. By claiming and optimizing your GMB listing, you can improve your SEO, attract more customers in your area, and increase your online visibility.
Moz Local - Moz Local is a local listing management tool that allows you to manage your business information across multiple online directories in a single platform.
Ahrefs - Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool (on-page SEO and off-page SEO) that can help you with keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor research. By uncovering valuable insights about your competition, you can create a better local SEO plan and gain a competitive edge.
BrightLocal - BrightLocal is a tool that offers local citation-building services, review management, and search SERP position tracking.
Whitespark - Whitespark is a tool that offers local citation-building services, local SERP position tracking, and review management.
SEMrush - SEMrush is a tool that helps businesses' SERP position higher in search engine results by providing local keyword research, local SERP position tracking, local listings audit and management, and on-page optimization recommendations
Conclusion
So there we have it; hopefully, you better understand how optimizing your website for local SEO can be a powerful way to boost your online visibility and attract more customers.
By incorporating the SEO tips discussed in this article, including conducting keyword research, creating localized content, building citations, and getting customer reviews, businesses can improve their search engine ranking and make it easier for potential customers in their area to find them online.
Also, do not forget these are ongoing and will need consistent effort to maintain a good ranking as you are competing with others trying to get to the top. Stay up-to-date on the latest local SEO strategies and trends, and keep correcting content to show the search engines who you are.
Lastly, if you need that big quick boost, you can also invest in Google Ads. This method will allow you to target specific geographic locations and reach potential customers quicker, but here you will be bidding on keywords that, if you pay right, will see you at the top of a search result.