Local SEO Tips: 5 Quick Ways To Improve Your Local SEO Visibility
Local search is one of the biggest drivers of traffic online with 80% of users using local searches to find relevant information. Whether you have one store or hundreds of stores, appearing for local search can help to drive both footfall and sales. It is very important that you should always look to optimise for
Local SEO terms to stay current with your potential customers in your local area as well as surrounding areas. When you’re trying to optimise your website for the national search you may forget that most searches, especially on smartphones, will come with increasingly more local results. Targeting local areas means you’re only competing against other local businesses rather than bigger brands nationwide. Optimising for Local Search can be simple keyword changes, information updates or more in-depth changes to your online presence. We’ve put together our top 5 quick tips to improve your local SEO strategy:
1. Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is arguably the most important tool you will use for local search. The free device provided by Google allows businesses and organisations to manage their online presence including Google Search and Google Maps, don’t forget Bing also provides the same service so it’s equally important to have a listing created on Bing as well as Googe. Simply claim your business listing (or create one for new businesses) then you will be prompted to complete all areas of your listening including opening times, service areas, adding high-quality images, and a description. Take a look at our own Google My Business listing to give you an idea of what it would look like once verified and online.
2. Make Sure Your Local Listings Are All Correct
One of the most important ranking signals that Google tracks are the consistency of your W-NAP (Website – Name, Address, Phone number.) across the web. To have a positive local ranking you need to ensure that your website URL, Business name, and details are found in directories, local listings, and other websites exactly how they are found on your contact details. If you change your address or find that a site is listing your URL with HTTP rather than HTTPS you’ll want to update that. Your first port of call will be to check the current largest directories that are out there such as Yell, Yahoo, Yelp, and any others you can easily find. While you can reasonably leave some of the smaller directories and sites with incorrect information without too much worry that it’ll negatively affect your visibility, a wrong phone number or contact URL may see you lose out on those important sales. An easy way to find incorrect information is to search for old contact details and investigate the results.
3. On-Page Local SEO
When you’re optimising for content on other parts of the web, it’s important to ensure your own site is tailored for local search. To improve your chances of appearing in local searches we recommend two on-page optimisation tips.
Add Individual Location Pages
If your business has numerous locations (or even just two) it’s important to have a unique location “landing” page for each, which displays the name, address, postcode and any additional information about the local area, for example in our
website design industry we have a landing pages for
website design Coventry as well as
website design Birmingham, a landing page is basically a page that you’d like the end user to visit with the relevant information for them that they would look to read. To give these all a good structure, we’ve linked them from our
locations we cover page which also shows the different industries we cover too.
Add Local Keywords To Your Metadata
Good meta titles should include your brand name and location and an excellent description should include your brand name, location, relevant keywords, and a summary of page content. Also, incorporate local search phrases into Alt tags and page titles. Don’t forget that the location you are based in might not be the ideal term to rank for. Choosing the right keyword is vital, if you live between areas, you might be wrong to use a little search for the town or highly competitive city location that is too far from you. You can search for similar local businesses or competitors that are locally based to you so you can see whether you should optimise for a local town, city, or even county for the best results.
4. Get Review From Customers
Online reviews are a powerful tool for increasing trust from both Google and consumers at the same time! Getting positive reviews tells another user that your business is worth using and in turn, Google will turn that signal into positive. The simplest way to get a review is to ask your customers to provide online feedback by providing them a link to leave a review online once they’ve purchased a product or had a service completed by you, just a simple email like this can help your business trust online. Whether you get a positive or negative reviews online, it’s always important to reply with your own response as a business owner. A bad experience can be due to a simple misunderstanding or an event that can be easily fixed with a comment or two which can potentially even lead up to an updated review. Responding to your reviews show that you care about their thoughts and you’re willing to improve.
5. Optimise Your Social Media Profiles
Social media plays a huge part in local search and taking just a few minutes to optimise your profiles will mean great results. Facebook has one of the largest presence and impact on local search so it’s important to optimise your business for the platform. Ensure that your Facebook Page is listed as a local business and that way, people can check into your location. This will create a buzz and popularity around your business by promoting it to the user’s friends. It is also key to verify your profile which will connect the website to the page. An official social profile encourages customers to visit the page. From here you can implement social shares (such as comments, posts, and discussions) across your platforms which will indicate to Google that people are interested in your business products or services that you offer. Dominating the local search rankings can really help your business grow online, resulting in a strong local customer base. Following these five steps is just the start of your local SEO strategy, if you want to go further or you’re unsure about the best SEO practices,
get in touch with us at Bemunchie Online and we can help get you and your website in the right direction. If you require a
website design service along with online marketing services then call us and we’d be happy to help with this also.
