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AdminApr 2, 2021 7:38:00 AM5 min read

How to do Local SEO

Local SEO is an effective way of reaching your online customers and ensuring that traffic to your physical business address and website increases. It is an essential tool that small businesses whose operations are regional can use to rank in a specific location. Local SEO is a method of marketing your brand or your business to local customers. 

When you optimize your local SEO, you can increase leads to your website, traffic, and ensure that you have more conversions because the method is fine-tuned explicitly for your local clientele. Essentially, it also helps you to compete successfully against more prominent brands that have significant budgets for their marketing campaigns. 

When you routinely do local SEO, it enables you to reap brand recognition and increase in traffic. When a customer gets online to search for a product or service, most of the time, they need to get it locally, within their vicinity. If you don’t do local SEO, you will lose such customers. 

Please read our guide below on how to do local SEO to ensure it positively impacts your business. 

1. Google My Business

Creating a Google My Business account is the first step to ensuring that Google algorithms can find you. It is an excellent way of ensuring that your business gains visibility on local search results. Your business profile on Google should have the same information as your Google My Business account. 

The information that you list, such as your addresses, should also match the address on your website. This information is used on different Google results such as Google Maps, or local search results. It is best to ensure that you add on information that’s up-to-date and accurate and that you’ve confirmed ownership of your business to ensure your profile is well optimized on Google. 

2. Invest in Local Content

When doing local SEO, content that authoritatively speaks on local matters will help you to gather a following of local customers. Local content includes creating blog posts about events, news, or stories that have happened locally. 

If you happen to have a local business in different locations, you can have location-specific webpages that cater to the content needs of the different areas. This strategy will help you amass traffic to your website, but it’ll also ensure that you rank for different regions. 

3. Mobile Optimization

It’s no secret that a lot of customers use their phones when looking for products or services. Wherever you look, there’s bound to be someone on their mobile phone. Unlike desktops, you can carry your mobile phone anywhere you wish and use it in almost all scenarios. 

As a result, you should optimize your traffic for mobile usage. Mobile visits to websites are growing exponentially, and you, therefore, have to ensure that your site isn’t one of those that are left behind during the mobile revolution. 

When optimizing your site for mobile, use fonts that are easy to read, significant, and that quickly load your site. Also, it’s a great idea to use a few images for mobile optimization. 

4. Utilize Relevant Keywords

The importance of using relevant local keywords cannot be stressed enough. The keywords should not only be local but pertinent to your local customers. Once you’ve filtered keywords to find the best search terms your customers will likely use, ensure that you’ve also incorporated them into different aspects of your site such as the URLs, Meta, and copy. 

Also, ensure that you refer to hotspots or landmarks such as buildings or streets. For instance, if your business is a Laundromat, be specific about the area. 

5. Use Online Business Directories

If you have no idea what a business directory is, think along the lines of the Yellow Pages, Yelp, or Foursquare. Getting your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) will enhance your local SEO and help you with visibility issues. 

When getting your business profile into a directory, ensure that all the information you list concerning your business is accurate and matches the information on your website and other directories. It would be best if you also had a backlink to your site and a well-done break-down about your business.

6. Every Product or Service Should Have Their Webpage

As much as this is a daunting task because all of the content creation work involved, in the end, it’ll all be worth it. Don’t squeeze all your products into one page and call it a day. You want search engines to categorize your site as an authority, and all that fluff is sure to lower your rankings. 

7. Don’t Forget to Backlink.

Backlinks provide an effective local SEO strategy for any business or website. Backlinks are links that signal to your site. However, when opting for backlinks, not just any content will do, you have to ensure your site has content that others will want to link to. Another way of getting backlinks to your website is through guest-blogging on authority sites or popular sites. 

8. Have an “About Us” Page

This is also known as a location page. They are especially necessary if you have different locations for your business. Again, don’t copy-paste the content on each location page. Make sure that each location page has unique content. 

If you only have one location for your business, an “about us page” is enough. Don’t skimp on the info, though, mention the services you offer and even some of your clients if they’ll allow it. 

Location or “about us” pages should have essential information about your business, such as your opening and closing hours, reviews, accurate NAPs, parking information as applicable, and a Google Map of your business. For different locations, each page/location should have its own Google Maps. 

Conclusion

In this day and age, a business should not ignore the fundamentals or advantages of doing local SEO. Even though SEO doesn’t stay the same, you must strive o remain at the top of the food chain. Implement the local SEO strategies that we’ve provided and your business will improve on rankings, conversions, and traffic.

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