Is your website’s traffic starting to drop? Are you having a hard time competing with the local competition? Are your keywords bringing in irrelevant traffic from outside your service area?
It’s probably because you’re not working on local SEO.
Just like regular SEO, local SEO is crucial to a small business's growth. If you’re not focusing on local SEO, either separately or as part of your SEO strategy, then you’re seriously missing out on all that traffic right there in your hometown.
So, if you’re looking to grow your small business, take a look at these 8 things you can do to improve your local SEO strategy.
A Bit About Local SEO For Small Businesses
Local SEO is one of the 4 types of SEO that can be used to boost rankings for localized keywords, which are the same as regular keywords, but often include the town or city name or “near me.”
This is crucial for small businesses with a certain service area, focusing on a specific region or area rather than nationwide, like regular SEO. But even if you aren’t a local business, you should still include local SEO in your strategy.
The goal is the same as regular SEO: optimize to rank as high as possible on in the SERPs or Search Engine Result Pages. However, local SEO has different ranking factors. Instead of focusing on relevance and authority, local SEO focuses on relevance, location, and prominence.
Why Local SEO Is So Important For Small Businesses
No matter where or how you operate your business, if you want to target a local area, you need local SEO.
Almost half of all Google searches are for local products and services. And 76% of those searchers end up visiting a local business website or brick-and-mortar business the same day.
And without a strong local SEO strategy, you’re looking out on all of that traffic. But through better local search rankings, your website can bring you more traffic, leads, and ultimately, sales.
8 Local SEO Strategies To Improve Your Small Business's Search Engine Rankings
To improve your local SEO rankings, you need strategies that focus on the most important ranking factors, like topical relevance, backlinks and domain authority, and keyword usage.
List Your Location On Every Page Of Your Website
Search engines use the location of whoever's looking for your product/service through geolocation (for mobile devices) or IP address (for desktops and laptops) to give a searcher the closest relevant results for their search.
So, make sure you’re using your business's location on every page of your website. Depending on your services or actual location, you may be able to have a broader area, but it's always best to use your town name and grow from there.
Be Consistent With Your NAPs
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. Clearly, you'll want to let your clients know how to contact you, so you should list your NAP everywhere that you possibly can, including:
The footer of all website pages
Your contact page
All review sites (Yelp, HomeAdvisor, etc) and business listings
Social media page
When you list your details on various websites, make sure that your NAPs are the same, like precisely the same. This means that if you’re phone number is listed on your website like (123)-456-7890, it shouldn’t be 123-456-7890 or 1234567890 anywhere else, like on your citations/listings and social media pages.
Make An Optimized Google Business Profile
Google My Business is absolutely essential for a successful local SEO strategy. It's a listing right on Google that you can use as a place for your contact info (NAPs) citation, and a place for reviews. If you haven't already, sign up for an account and fill in all the necessary details about your business. It's totally free, and you can do it in minutes.
Use localized keywords to target a more geo-specific audience, but only where it makes sense. For instance, you can’t use it in the title unless your town name is in your business name. Also, make sure all your information is correct and corresponds with the contact information on your website and everywhere else.
Get Good Online Reviews For Your Small Business
Reviews are good for business in terms of social proof and because they prove to search engines that your products or services are trusted.
Encourage your clients to leave a star rating or Google review. You can do this through an email campaign or request form on your payment page.
Build Local Backlinks
A backlink is a link on a website that points back to your website. Even in general SEO, good backlinks are a big deal, but in local SEO, they’re absolutely crucial in building online prominence that you need to rank high.
However, they are much more valuable if your links are from other local businesses, even more so if they’re in the same industry. Start building local links with other small businesses in your area.
Use Local Keywords To Optimize For Local Search
When writing content on your website or blogging for your business, make sure you're using local keywords. When you use local keywords, you’re much more likely to rank high, especially in a bigger industry. For example, instead of a general keyword like “pet shop”, look for a more geo-targeted keyword like “pet shop in London” or even more specifically, “petshop in central London.”
Use these localized keywords when creating alt tags for your images, title tags, and URL slugs, as well. Remember to make sure the keywords are in your content naturally, not forced or “stuffed.” Search engines AND readers will notice and will be turned off by it.
Create Lots Of Listings & Citations
Citations are online references to your business that usually include your NAP. Sometimes, they can also link to your website, making them great for regular and local SEO.
You can list your business on Yelp, Google My Business, and third-party referral apps; they're all noted as citations. This goes a long way in establishing domain authority.
Need More Help Growing Your Small Business With Local SEO? Let's Chat!
Local SEO often goes unnoticed because website owners often conclude that regular SEO and local SEO are the same. However, there are totally different ranking factors, like the ones we've talked about today.
Once you've optimized your website for local searches, you'll see the results. By analyzing your data over the next little while, you should see more and more of your customers coming from local areas. If not, then you'll need to keep adjusting until you do.
Remember that ranking number one won't happen in a day, and honing your local SEO strategy will require a lot of tweaking. Keep analyzing and adjusting until you figure out what works for your business. And, if you need some professional help to rank high in local searches, check out my local SEO portfolio, and let's have a chat!
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