How do you optimise for local search?
Small businesses need to embrace local search in order to push themselves forward, reaching their local audience, and driving traffic to their website and brick and mortar store. Optimising for local search is a great opportunity that should not be missed.
Local SEO requires the same time, patience, and dedication you would need with regular SEO, but with a few additional strategies you can use to boost appearance in local search engine results pages (SERPs).
Set up a Google My Business account if you haven't done so already. You will want to check on Google to see if your business already has a listing, if it does be sure to claim it. You must then proceed to complete all the information in detail, ensuring it is one hundred percent accurate. Add your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) information, along with high quality images, you can also add videos.
In the description field, use your primary keywords. It is also worthwhile setting up similar accounts with Yahoo Local and Bing Local. When you claim your Google My Business listing, you can rank higher in Google Maps and local search results.
When writing the titles of your content on your website, include city names. This should also be included in your About Us and Contact Us sections. Remember to add your business hours, contact information, and directions.
Reviews are a powerful online tool and you should grab them to help you improve your ranking in local search engine results pages (SERPs). Encourage reviews from happy customers, ask for feedback on social media, and get reviews with promotional offers.
Social media is now playing an important role in SEO, helping you engage with your audience and build long term relationships. Be sure to clean up your social media account, ensuring the information you provide is accurate, matching the information you added to your Google My Business listing. Use high quality images and add high quality and valuable content that encourages sharing.
If your business covers a number of different locations, then you will want to create a landing page for each location, optimising each page with the appropriate location keywords.
If you are a store that sells certain products to a local community, contact other companies in a similar or the same industry as you and encourage them to backlink back to your website. Your direct competitor isn't going to help you, but you can acquire links from other similar related businesses. Of course, acquiring backlinks organically is best and this is achieved by creating high quality, unique, and valuable content that makes other sites want to share what you have to say, boosting website traffic.
There are numerous online directories that you can get citations in, giving you solid links to boost ranking for local searches. Take the time to list in each directory, always ensuring you provide accurate information that matches the information you used when setting up your Google My Business listing.
More people are using mobile devices to search for local products and services. Many search while already on the move, searching while in one shop to find other businesses selling the same or similar products or services. With the increase in smart phone and tablet use, it's important to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Not to mention Google now has their mobile-first indexing, which means the search engine giant uses your mobile website to crawl and index your website pages.
Small businesses, especially, will benefit from ranking in local search results, providing you with an even playing field, when it comes to reaching your target audience. Use the tips above to optimise for local search, and if you don't have the time, consider using Genie Crawl, an experienced digital marketing boutique agency with the resources to help you tap into local search results with confidence.
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