You can adopt different strategies in your on-site content optimization and off-site content promotion endeavors. Here’s each step with an example.
Local SEO is all about optimizing your website for search engines and people in a specific geographical area. For example, if you own a restaurant in Miami, Florida and you want to attract more customers to your restaurant, you can use local SEO to get more people to visit your website and learn more.
In this article, we’ll look at eight steps to improve your local SEO strategy to grow your business and better connect with local customers.
Set Your Google Maps Listing
Google My Business is a free service from Google that helps you manage your company’s presence on Google Search and Google Maps. It also allows you to update your business information, respond to reviews, on-screen directions, and more.
It also provides useful information to people searching for your products or services. If your business is not included in the Google My Business directory, your customers won’t be able to find you and your products/services.
So the first thing to consider when planning your business strategy is to claim your Google My Business listing. It’s free and takes just a few minutes to set up. To claim your Google My Business listing, go to https:www.google.com/business/ and click on “Get on Google” and follow the steps to claim your listing.
Optimize Your Title Tags and Description
Tags Optimizing your title tags and description tags are important for your local SEO strategy. Why? Because search engines use these tags to index and show information on web pages in the organic search results.
So it’s important to put relevant keywords in your title tag and description tag for better local SEO. For example, if your restaurant specializes in breakfast, your title tag and description tag should include breakfast-related keywords like “breakfast menu” and “breakfast near me” to get results when people search for breakfast-related keywords online.
Optimize Your Local Content & Local Schema Data
Schema data helps search engines give users better search results by providing more information about a website or business in the search results. It improves local SEO by helping search engines index business information like business hours, phone number, address, and website URL.
For local SEO, adding a business schema to your website is one of the best ways for search engines to know what your business is all about. You can add a business schema to a page of your website using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. It’s a good idea to follow this schema markup checklist to make sure you’re adding all the necessary information to your schema markup.
You also need to add structured data markup for your phone number and your address on your website to let search engines know what your business is about and show this information in the search results when people search for your business or your website’s URL in Google Maps.
You can find instructions for adding a schema markup for your phone number and your address on Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
Optimize Your Content for Local Search
You can use local SEO to drive traffic to your website by creating content that is optimized for local search. This involves creating content that’s focused on your audience and that answers their questions related to a specific location. For example, you can create a page on your website that’s focused on a specific location: Los Angeles, California.
The content on your page can include local-specific keywords related to your business that people in Los Angeles are likely to use to find your products or services. You can also create content that includes local pictures and other design elements like local videos to attract local customers from this area.
Optimize Your Content for Mobile Search
Optimizing your content for mobile users is also important for your local business SEO strategy because mobile traffic is surging and more people are looking for local businesses online using their phones and tablets.
Optimizing your content for mobile devices involves creating mobile-friendly web pages that allow users to easily read and use your web page and view all the content on your web page without zooming or scrolling horizontally to view the content.
Optimize Your Content for Voice
Search Optimizing your content for voice search is also important because most people use voice search to find local businesses online.
Creating content that’s optimized for voice search involves creating content that answers the questions that users are likely to ask about your business on voice search platforms like Google Assistant on Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
For example, if you own a restaurant that specializes in breakfast, people may search for your restaurant using voice commands like “Food near me”, “Breakfast restaurants near me” or “Breakfast restaurants in Los Angeles” to find breakfast restaurants in their area.
So your content should include these local keywords in page titles and on web pages to get more traffic from local customers who use voice search to find businesses in their area.
Add Local Citation Details to Citations
To improve your local business rankings, add extra details about your business to citations for your business. Citations are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on third-party websites online including directories and websites where your business is listed but you don’t own or control the website.
Adding these details to citations helps search engines like Google match the details from your website with those unique details from different websites online and use these citations as a ranking factor to rank your web pages and website.
Adding these details to citations for your local business is also a good way to connect your business website with local business directories and listings for your keyword phrases when people search for them online. This is important because search engines tend to give weight to local business directories when ranking a website for a specific keyword phrase.
Here are some important examples where you can add details to citations for your local SEO strategy:
- A website with details about your business: On your website, you can add details like your opening hours, business address, phone number, and business description.
- A Website with business directory listings for your business: On business directories where your business is listed, you can add details like your opening hours, business address, and phone number.
- Online business directories where your business is listed: On third-party business directories where your business is listed online, you can add details like your business address, phone number, and website URL.
Conclusion
Local SEO is crucial for businesses. Local SEO optimizes a website so that it appears higher in Google’s local search results. If your website appears higher in local search results, more customers will find out about your business. Local SEO generally involves optimizing your website for local keywords and claiming your business’ local listings.
Many businesses ignore local SEO and don’t get many leads as a result. However, customers often prefer local businesses over non-local businesses. For example, Chicago residents often prefer buying items from local businesses rather than non-local businesses. Furthermore, local businesses often provide better customer service than non-local businesses because they care about their reputation in the community.
The algorithms are constantly changing and it’s challenging to keep up with the latest trends and practices. Overall, businesses should invest in local SEO if they want to get more customers. It’s important to remember that optimizing for local SEO isn’t easy but it’s simple. With some effort and time, it’s possible to get good results in your local SEO efforts.
