If you have just started a business or simply want to take your digital marketing more seriously, now is the best time to start developing your local SEO strategy. Local SEO tips are the best way to bring yourself into local search and gain traction in your area. As doing well in broader SEO is good, but it can take much longer to achieve success and the results may not always be that relevant to your bottom line.
Local SEO, on the other hand, could potentially bring in traffic and commerce which is much more valuable to you on a direct level.
So, with that, here are the best ways to rank in local SEO tips on the web today.
1 – Localise Content
To be truly successful when it comes to local SEO, you need to make sure that the content on your website is tailored to the area. If you are based in London then having lots of Manchester news titles will make little sense. So, make sure that all of the content you serve is either relevant across multiple locations or it is specific to the location you are targeting.
2 – Google My Business
You need to make sure that you have a fully completed Google My Business profile set up for your location. It’s fairly easy to set up an account via the login. Once you do all you need to do is fill out your information, add pictures and other specifics about your business to make it as enticing as possible.
Google will want to verify your address, but so long as your business is at a legitimate address this shouldn’t be a problem. You will be sent a postcard with a verification code in due course. Once you have entered this, your Google My Business account is all set up! And with that, people should be able to find your business that much easier.
3 – Optimise for Reviews
Being review-friendly is not only good for when people are comparing your services/prices, but it can also be good for SEO too. Most customers are happier to give your business custom if it has positive reviews
Reviews from an SEO perspective are also valuable as they signal to Google the quality of your business. Little or bad reviews are a clear bad sign, whereas a number of good reviews are obviously the reverse. Having specific Google reviews, also, can be extra helpful as Google uses these as one of their first indicators of review quality.
4 – Be Mobile-Ready
Google’s mobile-first index launched in 2018 and, ever since, it has been incredibly important to ensure that your site is optimised for mobile. This means serving content faster, making sure clickable elements aren’t too close together and ultimately serving it in the best way for mobile users to enjoy. This should improve the bounce rate and other user statistics, meaning that it will be much more likely that Google will value the page more for mobile.
Being mobile-ready isn’t only important for SEO, it is vital for your online presence as a whole. But it can be extremely valuable for both.
5 – Target Local Keywords
This is an important step in any SEO campaign, but even more so when it comes to local. As targeting these local keywords is the most optimal way for you to effectively attract the traffic that you are aiming for.
Keyword research should be done in regards to your area and the product/services that you provide. Some of these keywords may be quite a low volume, but that is normal on average as local searches do tend to generate less interest. But, for the purposes of these local SEO campaigns, this reduction in interest is actually quite valuable – for keywords such as “app development London”, for example. As it means less competition and a higher likelihood of success in ranking for them.
6 – Location Pages
If you are targeting multiple local locations then one good idea can be to create individual landing pages for your targets. This way, you will be able to optimise and target each pay for your specific location.
So, if you are looking to target multiple localities or locations, be sure to create individual landing pages for each. As this will be the most effective way to gain this traffic. Especially if optimising your home page for multiple locations is not ideal.
7 – Voice Search
Do you ever Google for something using your phone assistant? Or, better yet, do you have a smart home device that you use daily to answer random queries? If so, then you may want to optimise your own SEO strategy to match these new vocalised searches. Yes, even at a local level.
8 – Create Local Citations
One of the final, but still important, things that you can do in order to help your site rank better locally is to create citations. They can help to increase the general awareness of your business, on the whole. But Google also uses these as an indicator of your business and how much online presence you have as a whole. For that reason, building some of these citations manually for local SEO tips is important.
Final Thoughts
Optimising at a local level is a valuable strategy when it comes to potentially fast SEO gains. Especially if you are only a small business, just starting out. Creating first, initial, campaigns at this lower level can be the perfect step to take.
However, as with any SEO tactic, expecting results overnight is a mistake. Achieving the results you desire takes time and, importantly, it isn’t something that should be rushed. So, for consistent, long-lasting, local SEO results this is definitely the best avenue to take moving forward.
Also Read: 5 Ways to Use Embedded Tweets that Helps Your Business
