Whether you’re a local restaurant or a real estate agent, optimizing your website for local search results is crucial. Fortunately, there are a lot of things you can do to get your business noticed by search engines and potential customers in your local area and Local Search.
Using hyperlocal keywords in your content and local business listings will help you rank higher for searches made by people in your area. Also, be sure to use your NAP (name, address, phone number) consistently across your website and on all relevant directories.
Keywords
Local SEO is a way to optimize your website so that it shows up in Google Local Search by people who are looking for a specific business near them. This is especially important because, as the Social Media Today study notes, 97% of people who use search engines look for local businesses online.
To help with local search, you need to optimize your keywords in a variety of ways. Start by performing keyword research to identify the keywords that are most relevant to your business and its location.
Then, focus on creating and optimizing content for those keywords. This can include blog posts, infographics, and videos — just make sure to include relevant and valuable information for your target audience.
You can also find out what keywords are already driving traffic to your site by using a tool like Semrush. It will give you an idea of the Local Search volume and the competition for these keywords.
Including your address, phone number, and business hours on your website is an essential step in optimizing for local search. Ensure that these are consistent across all of your listings — on your website, in directories, and elsewhere. This can boost your ranking in local searches and send a signal to Google that you are active and trustworthy.
Another local SEO best practice is to build landing pages for each of your locations. Each page should have its own title, meta description, and optimized content.
While you’re working on these pages, be sure to add links that point to them from your other pages. This can be done through backlinks or other strategies, such as submitting your business to local directories.
You should also be sure that your website is mobile-responsive and loads quickly. Having a slow site can turn your visitors away.
If you’re not sure how your website is doing with regard to SEO, an audit can help. Speed, mobile responsiveness, and security are some of the most important elements to look at. It’s also a good idea to check out your website errors and broken links. This will allow you to find any issues that may be holding your website back from search engine success.
On-Page Optimization
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing a web page to improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves optimizing your website’s content to be more relevant to users and search engines. It also includes improving the user experience on your site.
Google has a complex algorithm that ranks websites according to the relevance of the content they contain to queries. The algorithm is constantly evolving, so you’ll want to ensure you are up to speed with the latest best practices for on-page SEO.
The basics of on-page SEO involve ensuring your website’s content is optimized for specific keywords and phrases. This includes adding keywords to your page’s title tag, body copy, and heading tags. You should also make sure that the language you use is easy to read and understand. Using active voice can help your content stand out from competitors and generate more clicks.
Another aspect of on-page optimization is optimizing your website’s speed. A website that takes a long to load can turn off visitors, and this is something Google considers as part of its evaluation of a page’s quality. You can speed up your website by reducing the number of images and JavaScript files on your website, as well as by incorporating caching and compression techniques into your design.
There are also some other on-page factors that will help you improve your rankings for local search results, including using keywords in your meta descriptions and title tags. These will ensure that your business appears when people search for the keywords you are targeting, and this can lead to more sales for your business.
On-page local SEO is a big part of SEO, and it’s important for businesses to get this right if they want to rank higher in local search results. Local search is an increasingly popular method of searching for products and services, and it’s vital that you optimize your website for this type of traffic.
Backlinks
Backlinks are a major factor in SEO, and they’re especially important for local businesses. They help search engines understand the importance of your website and can boost your ranking for specific keywords.
When search engines see that a site has many relevant backlinks from high-quality websites, they reward it by increasing its authority. This is based on the PageRank algorithm, which measures how authoritative each webpage is.
If you’re running a local business, you should focus on getting relevant backlinks from sites based in your area. These can be city guides, local blogs, and other resources that are related to your industry.
You can also use local search terms in your content to improve your rankings. This is particularly important for mobile, where voice searches can be a huge factor.
Google also rewards businesses that offer services within a specific area by including their address or phone number in their Google My Business listing, which is one of the most prominent signals for ranking in local search results. It’s also a good idea to link to your Google My Business profile from other websites, such as social media pages.
The consistency of NAP citations (name, address, and phone number) is another key ranking factor. This is because Google wants to be sure it shows relevant and reliable search results. If your NAP information varies from website to website, it can be a sign that you’re not providing a consistent experience for users.
It’s also important to monitor your backlinks regularly. You can do this with tools like RankActive, which helps you identify and disavow links that aren’t beneficial to your website.
As with other types of links, the best backlinks are those that are aimed at providing value to readers. This means that the links you get should be from quality sources that are relevant to your website and offer useful information.
You can also look for opportunities to get in touch with other local businesses and organizations, such as local charities or sports clubs. These can be a great way to build relationships and get your brand in front of new customers.
Google My Business
Whether you’re a small business owner or a large company with many locations, local search is an essential part of your overall SEO strategy. Google’s search engine uses signals such as your Google My Business account, social profiles, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to users who are searching for specific businesses near them.
A strong Google My Business profile is the best way to ensure that your business can be found when people search for your products or services in your local area. You can optimize this profile by adding accurate information, including your address, hours of operation, photos and links to your website.
You can also use your business profile to connect with potential customers by answering their questions or providing updates. This helps to build a relationship with your customers and shows that you care about their needs and concerns.
Another important component of a successful local business SEO campaign reviews from happy customers. These reviews can boost your local search ranking and increase your online visibility, which can result in more traffic to your website.
As a rule of thumb, you should have a separate page for every service or product that your business offers, and it is best to include these pages in your site’s navigation. This will help to make each page more specific and optimized for search engines.
The more pages you have, the more opportunities your website has to show up in local searches. This will allow you to rank for more specific keywords, thereby maximizing your chances of reaching the right audience.
In addition, you should optimize your Google My Business profile by making sure that you have a verified business address. You can do this by submitting a postcard with a verification code to Google. Once your business is verified, you can access your Google Business Profile and edit the information.
Google My Business also features Posts and Questions & Answers, which are incredibly useful for local business SEO. In this webinar, Greg will share how these features work, how to use them, and tips for optimization based on testing with hundreds of clients.
