Why Your Local SEO is Missing the Mark (And How You Can Fix It)
Local SEO is a necessity for locally-based businesses rather than national and international level. National SEO refers to focuses on ranking in searches across the nation but the local SEO is only aimed at prioritizing appearances on SERPs in a definite location as if it may be a city or a local region or area. The strategy is used to market products, brands as well as services to local leads as well as customers.
SEO optimization of Local business leads to gain more traffic on the website, generating leads and conversions since the strategy is similar to that national SEO but it targets the customer in a locality. This is a kind of strategy that is helpful to grow your local business and give hard competition to the national brands that are popularizing their business across the country. By emphasizing local SEO things to do, the local businesses get an advantage of emerging as a bigger brand by optimizing the keywords and try to get a brand image instead of the value proposition to attract more traffic.
By avoiding Local SEO, your business is losing a lot of significant count of traffic that can provide a huge success to these locally-based businesses. Here are some of the ways through which the local SEO can be a cherry on the cake. Let us begin.
Optimize GMS account
To begin with, you need to claim an account for your business on GMB known as Google My Business. This is free cost and helps your business to stay on search engines and your business will appear on Google Maps. Your business can also list on the sidebar of Google Search if Google finds it legitimate. To optimize GMS, make sure that you have verified the listing, provide accurate and latest information, add on the logo, hours of working, payment methods, motivate customers to give a review, images, and creation of content.
Regular Review from happy consumers
To optimize presence over Google My Business, encourage your customers to give reviews about the products and services of your business. At the same token, it also helps other potential customers to know about the services and how they deal with the customers. To encourage customers, ask them for reviews after the sale, send an email of purchase to write a review and give a response to present response professionally by thanking good reviewers and handle other grievances.
Voice Search Optimization
There is a rapid increase in voice search in the coming years and so it is vital to optimize how people put questions when speaking into devices and the way they type for search. More long-tail words are used by the customers when they use voice search service in comparison with the regular search. That is why you need to fit the content SEO as per the conversational tone of a person when they speak for search. Optimizing of voice is quite crucial as they search for something when they need some specific information. For instance, they can ask Alexa to convert tablespoons to cups if they are baking.
Content-based on local events or news
There is nothing better than creating some content that covers the local issues and speaks about it to grab the attention of your customers on a local basis. You can use some strategies such as writing blogs about local stories or activities, creating videos locally, set up a web page for a specific location with top-notch content.
Website Optimization for Mobile
With the advancements in the world of digitalization, people find it easy to access different websites with the help of mobile devices rather than other gadgets. Thus, the website of local business needs to be mobile-friendly and also optimization of the site for SEO purposes become imperative. You make sure the website loads in seconds on mobile devices, use bigger fonts, use pictures and ensure great UI and UX.
Work on local keywords
Keywords must be similar to local customers and it makes sense as the business is based on localities. You can use the Keyword Planner of Google to refine your keyword searches and create a list of locally used keywords. Along with the local keywords, also include famous locations as well as hotspots of your location.
Use location-specific Pages
It is a must to have location pages if your business is situated in more than one location. Such location pages require store hours, NAP, individualized descriptions, testimonials, promotions, availability of parking spaces and Google Maps associated with each location page.
Use Online Business Directories
You can take help from online business directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, MapQuest and Yellow Pages. Some others are also available as all the details of the local businesses are added in these sites and it boosts the local SEO. The following basics of company listing include correct NAP, a backlinks and a thorough description.
