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( votes)Imagine that you are running a business. In order to make it a success, the most important thing is to catch the attention of customers! That’s right. The more engagement you get, the more your business will grow. Similar to that, in the digital world as a website owner, a good SEO technique helps you to increase the visibility of your website in the search results and will bring more traffic to your website.
Optimizing your local SEO means managing the website traffic and strategizing the way to attract more audience. The strategy helps to identify trends and opportunities that will help you in the growth of your business. To come up with an effective SEO strategy, examining the changes in the market as per the customer needs, and putting your efforts towards more engaging and unique solutions is essential.
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence to engage with a larger audience in order to increase traffic from relevant local searches. Google has an estimated 87% market share (in the US, at least) using Google to search for local businesses. It is the best way to market your local business online to promote your products and services to local customers.
1. Create a Webpage For Every Product, Service, & Location
You should provide your customers with quality content on each of your pages of the website. It should highlight the features of every product and service that is being provided. The foremost important thing is to have a clear idea of what you offer. You can use common names for your products and services because it will become easier for a visitor to gather information about your business.
Your descriptions are an essential part of your product/service page. It should be brief and concise and should provide the information efficiently. Organize your products and services in a representative manner. If you also have multiple locations, create a page for each location.
2. Use Schema
Local business schema helps you get identified easily by search engines. It is a type of structured data markup code. The use of local business assists you to optimize your website for local SEO and helps you discover your website faster on google.
Moreover, it helps Google better understand better who you are, what you do, where you are, and how relevant you could be for the people who will be searching for your products and services locally. It focuses mainly on the details of each product or service. Product schema is used to present product information in a more structured way in SERP. Service schema helps search engines understand what kind of services your business is focused on a high basis.
3. Proper Homepage Optimization
Your homepage creates a first impression. It is an essential page that often gets the most attention, and it highlights the purpose of a website that helps to understand what the website offers. State the information in such a manner that it becomes easy to understand these elements easily. Find those words/phrases that your audience is searching for to find your product or services.
Some points that are important to note:
- The homepage should primarily focus on addressing its target audience in the easiest and most engaging way.
- Catch the attention of customers by adding features that make the navigation smooth.
- Make the page SEO-friendly by adding one unique keyword that describes your business.
- Do not add unnecessary distractions and focus on providing the essential features that are relevant to their interests.
- Add social media references to build communication and place it where the user can easily find them.
- Use headlines and bullet points to make the content more readable.
- Use internal links that provide more information and help in guiding through the website.
4. Optimize Your Meta Data
Metadata means data about data. Meta tags are optional page descriptors found in the <head> of the HTML code of your website. They tell the browser and the audience what your page contains. A good description of your data can give you an edge over others and can help you crawl up to better click-through results. Some of the meta tags that one should be aware of are:
- Title tags
- Meta description tags
- Meta keyword tags
- Robot meta tags, etc.
Meta description helps in improving the CTR (Click Through Rate) of a page on Google, which then positively impacts the ability of a page to rank.
5. Create Google My Business Page
Google My Business, According to Google, is “a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.” Now consider an example where a consumer searches for “stationeries near me” into their google maps, and your shop appears next to your competitors.
But now, imagine you missing all of this business just because you didn’t register your company on google my business. It’s not about how lucky the companies showing up on google are when consumer searches for them, rather it’s about being smart and updated. Hence, getting your business registered over Google my business definitely helps in optimizing your website.
6. Add Accurate NAP on Your Site
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. Make sure that your NAP is correct – both on your website and on other sites throughout the web. NAP is essential for businesses that wish to be ranked well in the local organic search results because search engines like Google take the data into account to find which companies to show for geo-targeted searches. When an SEO refers to citations, it stands for a group of individual business listings on various sites. Having your business listed in trusted online directories sends signals to Google to improve their degree of validity that your business exists.
An example of a citation would be a designer boutique naming your shop as a good place to stitch designer clothes in your locality. There are two types of citation: unstructured and structured. The difference between unstructured and structured citation lies behind one main factor. A structured citation is your business information on a business listing directory, while unstructured citation on any other site that’s not specifically a business listing directory.
7. Take Advantage of Online Directories
Adding your business to various online directories is one of the most effective ways to build your online visibility and improve your search engine rankings. The list of online business directories and classify them under several categories.
The listing helps the consumers to find what they are looking for. It helps businesses stand out in search engine rankings and increases business’s chances of growing by showing the closest results in case of a general keyword. Online directories also help consumers to post reviews online, and that attracts more audiences.
Enhancing your presence on these directories means your business information will be accessible to a wide audience of local searchers.
8. Implementation of SEO Practices
SEO best practices are a series of tasks designed to help in improving the ranking of the website. Some common search engine optimization best practices are on-site optimization, keyword research, and building backlinks to a site. Link building is essential because it is a major factor in how Google ranks web pages.
Some best SEO best practices include:
- Make sure your pages load fast
- Use your target keyword in title tags, heading, URL
- Use a short and descriptive URL
- Avoiding duplicate content
- Create content that is relevant for that keyword phrase
9. Use Social Media For Local SEO
Social media has taken digitization to some other level. It has increased the reach of business organizations to consumers in various parts of the world. A few years back, it would have made no difference to your business whether or not you have a Facebook or Instagram business page.
But now with the social media trend, you can’t afford, not having such business pages on social media platforms. Having such pages helps search engines to point to your location and helps improve local SEO rankings. Nothing can get better if you devise a proper social media strategy for your business to manage its content for consumers residing in different locations.
10. Encourage Your Customer for Reviews
Reviews show that consumers trust in business, and it is an essential factor in ranking. It helps customers to share their experiences. The valuable feedback from users, which comes in the form of online reviews allows the consumer to gather data and find out what or who other people have had the best experiences with.
It also replies to customers, bridges the gap as well as builds trust between the two parties. When the customer replies to a review, your response will appear below the review of customers on Google Search and Maps under the label, ‘Response from the owner’.
