Local SEO is for all Business Sizes
It’s common for small businesses to feel like digital marketing are only tenable for brands with big budgets, but local competition is toasting up online. Yes, SEO can be a wee bit challenging for small businesses as they have to compete for the same audience’s traction against reputed brands that often have more authority, brand’s trust, and customer affinity.
SEO trends are continuously on the move towards users’ search behaviour, and that means you need to stay at the top of the development.
According to the Go-Gulf Custom Development team, 46 percent of all Google searches are inquiring about local information, while 97 percent of users searched online to find a local business.
Suffice to say, if your business doesn’t have an online presence and isn’t optimised for local search, you are definitely missing out on more than 75% of your potential customers.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the set of practices of optimising your website for a specific local audience. If you operate a local business, like a dental clinic, law firm, or restaurant, you want your web pages to rank higher for relevant search queries performed by a nearby audience.
As opposed to the national SEO, local doesn’t focus on ranking in search engine results across the country, but it prioritises higher visibility on SERP in a specific region. Going local, you primarily rely on marketing your services and products to local leads and consumers.
It’s common knowledge that Google search results are highly personalised based on your devices and geographical location. If you’re in Dallas and searching for “acne scars treatment,” you’ll see different blue links than if you were in Florida and searched for the same.
Since the number of users looking for local businesses online is more than looking out in the offline world, your visibility on search engines during such a time will help you get noticed right away.
Local SEO is Less Competitive
Globally, there are more than 1.8 billion websites with a tie enough to have them rank right at the front of SERP, rendering your website just like a penny in a bowl of a hundred pennies.
Narrowing down on identified crannies using locality has been a common practice because there’s an entirely separate level of competition. With maps, Local 3-Pack results, and the likes, search engines are more inclined towards the local sphere than global to deliver better results.
First things first, instead of just hopping to the national or global scale, get an easy dive into the local sphere initially so that you can be more conspicuous overall.
To make things simpler, here are 8 tried and tested tips and tricks that can help you navigate your online business through the realms of local SEO.
1. Nail Your Title and Description Tags
Title and Description meta tags are HTML attributes that symbolise a summary of a web page. This information that appears on search engine result pages is crucial for SEO, usability, click-through rates, and social sharing.
Composed of an emboldened title (between 50-60 characters) and a longer description (between 50-160 characters), this data can be added to your site using plugins like Yoast (although most good CMS systems will already have an option to add metadata).
Metadata matters for two key reasons:
- It is the first thing many people will see when browsing for a product or service. If you want users to click your link instead of a competitor, it needs to be clear, professional and persuasive.
- It’s a great spot to add keywords that will help ensure your website shows up in search.
To write proper meta tags:
- Eliminate any unnecessary words and don’t overspill on character counts (this will create an ellipsis that looks unprofessional and cuts off your strong, persuasive statement).
- Include the name of your city, county, town, village or predominant area of operation.
- Include your business name in the title.
- Focus on one keyword – don’t over-stuff your metadata with terms. Place your focus keyword as early as possible in your title or description.
- Stand out from the crowd with a snappy description featuring more unusual, fun language, incorporating numbers or asking a direct question.
2. Make the Most Out of Google My Business
This is a crucial step for any local business that wants to be found online. Setting up your listing is free and relatively straightforward, involving a verification process, a few hoops to jump through and some information to fill out. This will make your business much more visible to local searchers, plus make your information more easily accessible.
The first step of how you can take advantage of local businesses and the power of Google local is to simply claim your business. The benefits to doing so are vast, such as potentially better map rankings, making it easier for your audience to find you and allowing Google to provide the most accurate data on your business.
3. Citations and Local Business Listing
While you’re setting up your Google My Business listing, you may also want to register with other main directories such as:
- Bing Places for Business
- Yelp
- Foursquare
- Better Business Bureau
- YellowPages
- AngiesList
- Manta
- ShowmeLocal etc.
The NAP data (business name, local number, address, and website address) posted on search directories needs to be consistent, relevant and fresh to be effective. Any flaws present in the information must be removed so that visitors can find your website effortlessly. For instance, if a business has grown its customer base or relocated at any given point in time, this change has to be cited, or else inaccurate business details can lead to frustrated visitors and possibly lost leads.
Though online mentions of a business can still boost web ranking to some extent, search engines still assess local presence more than general traffic. Apart from easy sources, the ranking algorithm also weighs solid citation that your business commands credibility in its immediate community. This is where mentions from indigenous sources like backlinks, reviews and citations emerge.
4. Localisation Signals through Website Content
If you have multiple storefronts for your brick and mortar store, then don’t shy away from location pages. These provide your website customers with promotions, visiting hours, transit and parking information, testimonials, and so much more. Make sure you have a great About Us page.
When online users search for local products or services, they often include location in their search terms. Therefore, for a local business to be conspicuous, they will have to consistently publish content where they can organically include service names and location. Businesses also mention names of specific boulevards in the region or even nicknames of those particular areas.
In a nutshell, businesses need to make huge investments in analysing search intent and broadening their content hub with the right content optimisation tool. With a unique content hub, however, not only are you in full control of how content is published and curated, but you can also trace reading patterns and analyse what kind of content draws a bigger crowd.
Don’t Forget the Potential of Visuals
Visual content is one of the most instantaneous ways to build up your SEO. Adding localised visual content that is appropriate to your site can quickly help with your local SERPs. The key is that the visuals must be relevant.
5. Nurture reviews
Reviews are the lifeblood of online businesses. In a world where we’re marketed to seemingly every 20 seconds, it’s what our peers have to say about businesses that really counts. To start generating positive online reviews, consider offering vouchers or other incentives to customers who take the time to have their say about your business online.
Facebook and Google are key spots for reviews, so focus your attention on cultivating plenty of good feedback via these channels. If you want to get more serious, handy tools like Hootsuite will alert you whenever your business is mentioned via social media, so you can keep close tabs on what’s being said.
6. Support Other Local Businesses
Networking with other businesses is inherent to building your authority, especially if you want to have links to your site from the same geographic websites. You could sponsor an event for a local high school, contribute to a local charity, or write a blog to help a cause you believe in.
The more of a local exposure you hold online, the more your local rankings will go up.
7. Facebook Page and other Social Media Profiles
Organising your business by categories and location on Facebook, visitors can quickly scroll through a list of all local services based on their needs. This page comes complete with the business’ name, phone number, address, hours of operation and rating.
Online users anticipate a speedy reply from brands on social media, so be sure to leave an acknowledgement or right point of contact if you won’t be reinforcing the subject.
Given this advice, Social signals and reviews cause an impact on SEO.
8. Mark-up Structured Data for Local SEO
Consider the competitive and saturated state of the SERP for local search queries, and you’ll figure out how structured data mark-up helps your local business gain an edge over the competition.
When users search for a specific type of services, Google may show them a rich snippet or a carousel of businesses related to their search.
With a local business Schema code, you can notify Google about your business hours, various departments within the same business, reviews, video, site navigation, and more.
Wrapping Up
Here’s a quick recap of all the lessons from this article:
- Proper your metadata based on targeted keywords and service locations.
- Everything, including meta-information, visual graphics, website content and structured data mark-up is important and needs equal attention.
- Don’t forget to capture social signals.
- Discover and execute networking with local organisations.
- Concentrate on a content strategy for your website.
- Claim and optimisation GMB listing by picking the correct categories, adding pictures, responding to reviews, regular updates and so forth.
Contributed by Shyam Bhardwaj.
