Introduction
Local SEO is essential to your digital marketing strategy if you’re a retailer or service provider. 85% of consumers search for local businesses online. If you want to capture that market share and drive more traffic to your site or store, then here are the top ways to improve your local SEO:
The Importance of Local SEO for Your Business
Local SEO is an integral part of digital marketing for local businesses. Local SEO helps you get more traffic to your website, which can help you rank higher on Google and get more customers. It also builds brand awareness for your business in the community.
Local SEO has become even more crucial as Google continues its push towards mobile-first indexing, which means that sites with a responsive design will be given preference over those without one when they appear in search results. If you need clarification on what responsive web design means or how it applies to your business, read this article first: https://[YOUR BRAND]/blog/get-started-with-responsive-web-design/.
Local SEO can be tricky, but it’s not impossible. In this article, I will cover:
Getting More Citations
Citations are like references. They’re the places where people can find you online and learn more about your business, including its name, address, phone number, and website URL.
Getting more citations is essential to local SEO because it helps Google understand that your business exists in a particular location (not just cyberspace). Having enough sources can help push you up in rankings so that people will see your site when they search for specific keywords related to what you offer or do–like “best pizza restaurant” or “doctors near me.”
There are many ways to get citations, but one of the most effective is creating a Google My Business page for each location. You can do this on your computer or with the My Business app in just a few minutes. Once you’ve set up your account and confirmed your business address, you can include pictures, operating hours, and other relevant information to increase your online visibility.
Improving Your Content Strategy
Regarding content strategy, there are two main goals: writing for your audience and writing for the search engines. While these may seem like opposing forces, they can work together quite well if you approach them correctly.
Your goal when creating content is to make sure that it’s valuable and relevant for your target audience–and then make sure that Google knows about it! To do this effectively with both users and search engines (or “websites” as we call them now), you need some basic guidelines:
- Use keywords in titles and headers
- Include images or videos whenever possible (but don’t go overboard)
- Make sure all links lead back to your website
Write for your audience first. You want to make sure that people can find what they’re looking for, and if you try to write for both humans and search engines simultaneously, you may need clarification! Consider who might be interested in what you say, then write accordingly. For example, suppose you’re writing a blog post about how to lose weight through dieting alone (without exercise). In that case, it will probably get a few clicks from people already working out regularly and trying to drop some pounds.
Using the Right Keywords
Keywords are words that people search for online. They’re used in SEO (search engine optimization), improving your website’s visibility on search engines.
Using keywords in your content and meta tags can help you get more traffic from Google searches, but there are other ways to use them. You can also use them in URLs, title tags, and heading tags on each site page–and even within images!
There are a lot of benefits to using keywords in your content. Search engines use them to improve the relevancy of their results, which can help get more traffic to your site. But there are also other reasons why you might want to use them:
Optimizing Your Site for Mobile Users
- Use responsive design.
- Write mobile-friendly content.
- Make sure your website loads quickly on mobile devices.
- Consider using a mobile app or landing page to further optimize for local searches and other strategies such as geotargeting (which allows you to serve different content based on the user’s location) and location extensions (which display contact information specific to the search query).
-Consider local SEO. Local SEO is a great way to increase your website’s visibility in search results. Operating a business with physical locations, such as restaurants or retail stores, can be precious.
Your business’s website should be optimized for local search. You can do this by including the name of your city or town and the character of specific neighborhoods in the metadata for each page on your website (for example, in h1 and h2 headings).
Boosting Visibility Through Google My Business Listings and Google Reviews
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to manage your local business listing on Google. It’s essential for any business that wants to be found on Google, as it can help boost visibility in search results for relevant queries. To get started with this tool, visit https://www.google.com/business/. From there, you’ll be able to add or edit information about your company and get more reviews from customers who have interacted with it (such as through Yelp).
Google Reviews
Reviews are an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy because they build trust between consumers and brands while helping businesses increase brand awareness–two crucial things when trying to win over new customers!
Reviews can also help you increase your ranking in search results, boosting local businesses that want to be found on Google. The more positive reviews your business has, the better!
These are some easy ways to improve your local SEO
- Use the right keywords. The first step to local SEO is ensuring that your site is optimized for the most relevant keywords to your business.
- Improve your content strategy. Local businesses often need more resources available, which means they have to work harder at creating engaging content than more prominent brands do if they want their sites ranked highly by search engines like Google and Bing (the latter being less popular in international markets). At least once per month, take time away from managing day-to-day operations so that you can focus on writing blog posts or creating videos explicitly related to helping potential customers find what they’re looking for online–and then promote those pieces heavily through social media channels like Facebook or Twitter!
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. Google has said it will start penalizing websites not optimized for mobile devices by July 2015, and local businesses should take this warning seriously. If you have an older website that has not been updated in years, then now is the time to invest in a professional redesign.
Conclusion
Local SEO is all about helping your customers find you. It’s a great way to connect with potential customers in your area and build trust before they even make an appointment for services or products. With these strategies in mind, you can improve your website’s visibility on Google Maps so that more people will find it when searching nearby businesses.