It is estimated that more than half of Google searches are done with “local intent.” This suggests that when they search for something, one out of two users in Google genuinely search for local goods or services.
Local-intention searches are the door to the shop; within 24 hours of their search, 76 percent of shoppers using a local search engine will visit a business, and 28 percent of those searches result in a purchase.
There can be either explicit or implicit intent for local searches.
A search with an explicit local intent is defined by a user who specifies the area from which a search engine wants to retrieve results. “Hair Salon Near Me” and “Plant Nursery in Mumbai” are examples of this.
Alternatively, a search engine is smart enough to determine when you are looking for a local result. With the help of their algorithm, it presents you the most relevant and useful results as nearby businesses.
How Does Local SEO Impact Your Business?
If you own a small business, optimizing your business’ local SEO can be extremely worthwhile. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of local SEO:
Local SEO helps potential customers discover your business. A lot of local searches originate from non-locals who are searching for a business like yours, and with local SEO done right, your business can capture that audience.
Local SEO provides potential customers the information that they want, when they want it. For example, if your restaurant has free WiFi or is pet-friendly, displaying that information as part of your local SEO will attract customers who are looking for just that.
Even if your business does not have a website, local SEO helps your business stand out in local searches, and helps drive more traffic through online leads.
It is found that 61% of people who performed a local search ended up calling the business. Local search optimization provides potential customers the power to take this action, and this in turn provides your business with a qualified lead that you can convert.
Local SEO helps drive people’s decisions in favor of your business. The more data they have about your business, the more trustworthy you are in their eyes. This lays a strong foundation upon which you can build a mutually beneficial customer relationship.
Why Optimization for Local SEO is Important?
Over the years, SEO has improved significantly, and poor practices such as keyword stuffing, meta tag stuffing, and link buying is now opposed. It has become difficult for users to hack their way and rank well in searches without offering rich, reliable and appropriate content after Google began rolling out its Panda and Penguin updates.
And the value of local SEO has increased since the “Pigeon” update in 2014, leading many entrepreneurs to concentrate on their strategy after years without taking a local tangent to their inbound marketing campaign into account.
How to do Local SEO Optimization?
Effective local SEO involves an effort to optimize and improve your profiles and websites for local searches. There is no shortcut, sadly. Local SEO, however, is quite straightforward and uncomplicated.
It is highly recommended to stick with us and go through these tips for better local search visibility to ensure you’re optimized for Local SEO.
Website Optimization
Your website is among the most valuable sets of digital collateral, as well as one of the key elements of a successful local marketing campaign. From you to your audience, it is an important communication tool. It will continue to be a location visited by consumers regardless of what replaces customer quest and social media behavior trends over a period of time.
It’s the place to learn more knowledge and interact with your business. This indicates it is a perfect place to start your local marketing campaigns. Let’s discover the most important factor for website optimization.
Choosing the Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords is crucial and to figure out the best collection of local SEO keywords, here’s a three-step method that’s pretty easy to do.
- Choosing Industry Based Keywords – The aim here is to define keywords that decide the most common keywords that searchers tend to use to find your business. The main objective is to search out the high-level words and terms used by customers to describe what you and/or your industry deliver. Come up with what you can enter on Google to find a business. Brainstorm and build a list of approximately 10-50 key phrases for this.
- Think of Modifiers – The next step of searching for local SEO keywords is to remember modifiers that customers will look for while searching for keywords from the industry. There are phrases where customers use the products and/or services that you provide to come across.
These modifiers may include words that convey quality (e.g.,” best), “words that describe a specific event (e.g.,” wedding), “words that identify a particular form of product or service (e.g.,” roses), “or words that typically set companies aside (e.g.,” delivery on the same day).
- Describe Your Geographic Location – The final step in defining local SEO keywords is to consider the keywords that include your geographic position. Remember the different places you serve and where potential clients come from. Include those areas, districts, counties, townships and place names in the content on your website and blog posts if you provide products or travel for services.
Buyers are looking for services near where they are, not for businesses that are far away and serve their area. When choosing local geographic keywords, you always remember where the target audience exists or operates.
Optimize Most Important Pages on Your Website
To improve local search visibility, optimize the main pages on the website by correctly using the primary keyword and location on each important page. Such factors consist of:
- Title
- URL
- Meta description
- Primary keyword (ideally in the first paragraph of content )
- Headings (if suited)
Each new blog post is a brand new indexed page for your website when considering the content. A new page where the location based keywords, along with a new opportunity to be discovered in the Search Results Pages (SERPs). You can optimize the content for search engines if you construct a piece of content by using high-volume keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and even body.
If you are having trouble creating Geo-targeted content, offer some thought to emphasizing client testimonials or even case studies.
Create Pages for Specific Location on Your Website
Build a website for every single location for those that have several business locations.
How would you evaluate your location in Phoenix to appear in the search results if it is on the same page as your locations in Chicago and Tampa? Obviously. It won’t. It will probably take a little more effort, but it will certainly give them a lot more space to know their territory and when called upon to be discovered.
Places with different locations offer your NAP to customers, store operating hours, various store details, info of parking / transit, deals, happy customer reviews, and much more.
Use Schema Markup to optimize your website for local SEO
To further customize the website for local SEO, use the local business schema or structured data markup for each and every web page. Without this, it is next impossible to join the well-known Google Local Pack.
Local schema is an additional script that you can use in your website pages to make it much easier for search engines to understand your identity, what you’d do, exactly where you’re located and how you could be linked to users who are interested in your type of products or services.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
In many cases, local searchers are mostly mobile users. The most popular way customers access your website is to find reviews, find directions to your place, and search for contact info. Make it easier to make your website mobile-friendly for your users and potential customers.
“Need help optimizing your website? Connect with Synclarity, we specialize in providing local / national / international website optimization services for any type of business, be it large, medium or small businesses.”
Boost Your Local SEO with Google My Business.
It is straightforward to work with Google My Business; you just need to create an account and verify or claim your business. Once you put all your data in, you will receive a real-life postcard from Google at the address you have specified. The only proof that you are the owner of the company shown in the address is this postcard. You can fill in all the important details until verified, and find out how your listing works.
Image source – https://mrfp.io/
To establish rankings for businesses, Google My Company uses several variables. The three most important ones are:
- Relevance – defines how well the user search intent matches your business..
- Distance – is a well-known ranking consideration for local businesses. When you’ve found your company in Mumbai, you can’t rank in a local search (dentist in New Delhi).
- Prominence – which is all about the activity around your listing; this may be the number of ratings and reviews, activities, local content, etc.
Optimize your Google My Business listing
To optimize your GMB, here are the basic steps to take:
- Claim your Google My Business profile with your actual business name
- Enter the exact name of your business. Don’t add or adjust keywords in any way.
- Select as precise a category as possible. If your products / services differ by location, make sure to pay attention.
- Specify your physical address in full. Your NAP should fit the details.
- Specify your local telephone number. Do not use numbers or tracking numbers that are toll-free.
- Choose the option if you have a service-area business. Google will not show your address, but will use the miles you give for the area.
- Add a comprehensive business overview and include essential keywords to describe your company.
- Add pictures of your business’s interior and exterior. This is not the best use of Royalty Free Images. Go for true, unique images, which Google and your users, establish trust.
- Bear in mind that different locations should have their own listings. Enter your website’s URL. If you set up several locations, connect each GMB page to that location’s page.
- Add additional detail, such as pricing and operating hours. Think about the holidays! Review your opening hours!
Your GMB profile has to be 100%. So, provide as much detail as you can.
The more you fill out the profile of your GMB, the better. If you are showing love to Google, it rewards you.
Building Citations to Improve Local Presence
The goals of local SEO citations are equivalent to backlinks to your website. When determining the rankings for local search results, search engines use citation analysis, the same as they use backlink analysis when considering the rankings in organic search results.
It is important for you to realize that not every situation is created equal, when considering citations for local SEO rankings. In their citation analysis, Google will discuss different variables, such as:
- The relevance of the citation listed for your business
- The authority of the source citation.
- The total number of citations for your business that you have.
- NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) relevance in your citations.
It is important that you verify the relevance and authority of the websites where your NAP is published when building a citation portfolio. If you are not familiar with building citations, you might be able to make common errors. So, whether you’re a business owner or an SEO specialist, here are some of the best methods to adopt to achieve the optimal citation building results:
Gather a List of Your Business Info
Start the listing process by inputting a citation’s key element. To gather a list of your business details, begin with a blank Excel sheet or Word document.
- Information of N.A.P. (Name, business, phone number).
- URL of your website.
- A short and long description about your business and products / services.
- Category of your Business.
- Image URLs.
- Social Media business profile URLs.
Make use of this as a source when you create citations for maximum accuracy on any occasion.
Get Your Business Listed Under Relevant Categories
To help boost your citation rankings in the search results, it is beneficial to list your business under relevant categories. Your citation source ‘s importance depends on your company’s location and category.
For instance, if you are an “Estate Planning Attorney” or “Insurance Attorney” in Los Angeles, a website directory created for a lawyer in Los Angeles could contain the most suitable citations (NAP’s) for your business. It may be difficult to get hyper local directories like this, so it will require some analysis to dig them up.
However, it is certainly worth adding the effort and time, primarily because highly important citation sources can provide a substantial boost to your local rankings.
Refresh Old Citations and Remove Duplicate Listings
You must first scan the web for current business citations before moving into the citation building work. Google’s search for your company name is one easy way to find these listings. To reduce the manual citation effort, an expert way is to use search operators N.A.P.
If a citation of incorrect details (mistyped company name, old company address, wrong phone number, etc.) is found, then you must claim and change the listing. Place an email or fill in a contact form to report the duplicate listing if you find several citations in a similar directory. Deleting duplicates successfully can definitely reinforce your online presence and will raise referral traffic.
Local Link Building.
When we start creating backlinks, the normal process is that we expect highly authoritative domains to connect back to our websites, and we just want as many of these as possible.
Image Source – Canva
But it may not always be necessary for a small or medium-sized local business to do this.
If you want to create backlinks for a local florist, understanding what you’re looking for when creating those links is important for you.
How to Create Local Link Building
Here is a list of a few ideas about various strategies that you can use to create back links via local link building. Work with these strategies to develop an activity workflow and create an excellent daily, weekly or monthly assignment for local link-building.
- Apply your business for local awards – In a number of business areas, there are a lot of agencies and media firms host awards. For awards specific to your category, browse the online world and apply to join them.
- Check for local influencers – Find local bloggers who have a few followers, but are in your local area. Talk to them, and suggest an exchange of content. One case is, by guest posts or requesting an online review, you can do this.
- Post about your favorite brands in a similar industry – pick a few smaller businesses in related fields (although not more competitive with yours) and list them on your blog in a write-up. Notify them by email that you have listed them, and simply ask for a backlink or a social mention in exchange.
- Develop a local resource page on your website – Build a local resource page that offers, downtown directories, chamber of commerce information about what to do in a locality and so on. Notify other business owners who have discussed in the guide and request a backlink or a social mention
Search engine optimization is the best way to ensure that someone who is researching services like yours notices you. With the use of local SEO techniques it guarantees your presence to everyone researching in your geographical location. By following the above strategies, you will surely improve your business presence on SERP better than 99 percent of your competitors and would certainly benefit.
We are always here to help if you have any concerns or need assistance in order to enhance your online presence.
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