Skip to content
AdminMar 12, 2021 5:59:00 AM5 min read

How to Rank Local SEO

Think about this for a minute. Your potential customer is seated comfortably on the couch in their apartment and figures out, “it’s time to get some lunch delivered.” The first thing they’ll do is Google “food deliveries near me.” 

If you’re a local restaurant that does food delivery, you want to be at the top of the list that your customer sees on Google. Appearing on the second page of a search engine won’t help your business much. For customers, they must find your location quickly. 

It’ll help them avoid the inconveniences of having to compare similar companies because search engine algorithms already trust you. When you’re ranking on local SEO, local customers searching for products and services related to yours will be able to find you easily. Here are some of our vital tips for ensuring that you rank on local SEO. 

1. Get Rid of Multiple Listings

The first step of ranking local SEO is usually creating a Google My Business Profile. However, before you even do this, it’s vital to ensure that you don’t already own one. Many times, business owners create a Business Profile only to forget about it and create another one. 

Another scenario that’s typical for Google My Business Profiles is different people in your company could have created profiles without each others’ knowledge. This will affect your ranking because Google hates duplicity. You should provide a single profile that is up to date to prevent issues such as these happening. 

If you’d like to check whether you’ve got more than one profile, you can do this by using the Moz Local tool. 

2. Create Your Profile

Once you’ve established that you don’t have another profile, go ahead and create a Google My Business Profile. Ensure that you have all the relevant information such as NAP (Name Address, Phone) and that it’s up to date and accurate. The information about your business that appears on the Google page isn’t put up there by search engines. 

You have to put it up so that search engines can rank it. Note that you won’t have to pay to create a Google My Business Page. It’s free. Once you’ve created your profile, ensure that you verify it as the owner of the business. Otherwise, other people will be able to make edits as they wish on your Google Profile. 

3. Set Up Essential Categories

Setting up categories on your Google My Business Profile isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be. However, you have to ensure that you’re only filling out the relevant ones; otherwise, you’ll violate Google’s terms. If you’re unsure over which categories you should add, the best thing to do is to search business in your field that ranks and follow what they’ve done. 

Add the same categories that they’ve added, and you’re good to go. If you don’t add the relevant categories to your business profile, you won’t do much for your local SEO, and it’ll be harder for Google to rank you. 

4. Confirm Your Website Information

Is all your contact information listed on your Website information? Are they listed in text form or as an image? If your contact is an image, change it into text form. You need Google to scan your information. 

Ensure that the contact information on your Website is the same as your Google My Business Profile page. If your NAPs aren’t the same, it’ll affect your rankings negatively, as Google sees it as inaccurate information that you’ve provided. The information on your profile and your Website should be the same. 

5. Ensure NAPs are Consistent 

It’s not enough that the information on your profile and your website contact page are all the same. If you have other pages such as business directories like Yelp with your contact information, your NAPs must appear the same on all pages. If you’re unsure about your profile matching online directories, the Moz local search tool will significantly help. 

6. Get Those Customer Reviews

It takes a lot of effort from your customers to leave your Google My Business Profile reviews. However much it makes it’s essential that you have genuine reviews as these will help you to build trust and credibility, a vital aspect that Google doesn’t overlook. 

As much as it may be a labor-intensive process, it’ll pay off in the end as you build trust not only with Google but with future potential customers. Send an email to your customers with a link to your Google My Business Profile. 

It’s the easiest and most effective way of asking them to review your services or products. Getting reviews is a slow, painful process, but you have to trust that it’ll pay off in the end. 

7. Check Your Commands

A citation is defined as the mention of your business NAP on a different website. This includes online directories. If your Website doesn’t have any listings on directories that are essential, you’re losing out on Google rankings. Take every opportunity you get to add your information to directories. 

8. Create Relevant, High-Quality Content

There’s no point in trying to rank local SEO; then, you go ahead to create content that’s not relevant to your local customers. The material on your Website is vital to ensuring you provide real solutions or news and other information your local customers want to see. 

Content is critical to help you generate traffic, and Google knows websites that produce a lot more content are valuable. The content on all your key web pages shouldn’t be less than 500 words. If you have low-quality content, you’ll only be chasing your customers from your site.

Conclusion

In addition to the tips we’ve given you above, some of the things you can do to rank local SEO include getting active on social media, getting high-quality backlinks from authority sites to your Website, and getting mobile optimization of your Website. 

Nowadays, wherever they are, people want to get the services and products they prefer as quickly as possible. We hope that you’ll adopt the tips that we’ve provided to ensure that you rank your local SEO. 

RELATED ARTICLES