Local SEO is crucial for your small business to be found in the local region. Do you know that Local SEO is much more than good content? Local search rankings includes several factors that improve brand presence regionally.
Generally, people use mobiles to find required services and products near them with mobile. Recently, there has been a surge in mobile users due to advancements in technology. It is the reason behind the increased importance of the Google local pack.
The local pack is something the search results that appear on Google. It is the set of three results appearing on the Google search console. Further, more and more businesses are putting their profiles online.
Local SEO for small businesses has become necessary to bring more traffic, lead conversions, and improved rankings. So, here is the list of most important local SEO parameters that affect your online rankings-
Google My Business Listings
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GMB listing is the foremost factor that determines your online local influence. It may be unfamiliar, but people use it to locate local companies. Whenever users need to reach a destination, GMB listing is the best partner. Follow these steps to improve your local rankings:
- Make your GMB page: If you haven’t made your GMB page, create it. Go to Google My Business, and sign in.
- Choose your category: Second thing that comes is your category. Select manage my business profile and add the relevant category to it.
- Photos: Photos help illustrate your work and attract more customers.
Online Directories and Listings
You can’t ignore the impact that citations have on your local search ranking. There are categories wise listings available on the internet—for example, restaurants, professional services like doctors, architects, and others.
You can catch the opportunity to be more visible in local results by putting your details into
- Yellow Pages
- FourSquare
- HubSpot
As a matter of fact, you can leave your impression on other search engines listings like Bing places. DuckDuckGo refers to Apple maps for providing the location of your office.
Reviews on the internet
Are you paying attention to your online reviews? There are several review-related websites as well. You can ask your customers to put reviews on these sites. These websites are:
- Yelp
- Google customer reviews
- Glassdoor
- Customer Reports
- Tripadvisor
- BBB and others.
Now, review management is essential for increasing your credibility and trust amongst the customers. You can follow these tips to boost your local rankings:
- Response: Response matters a lot; let it be on positive or on negative reviews. Leave a thanking remark on good reviews. Indeed, Google ranks websites higher on SERPs with several positive reviews.
- Unfavorable reviews: Try to address any grievances, issues, and queries on negative reviews. It may seem to be a small act. But, Google and customers consider you as a caring and considerate company.
Social Signals
Social media is quite prominent amongst people of all age groups. People use one or the other social media platform. For example, LinkedIn is famous for professional links, finding jobs, and building networks.
You can mention your profile in the social media listings like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. More people will be able to find you through social media. It helps in building local collaborations and partnerships.
Strategize your social media activities for boosting your Local SEO.
- You can pin your “About Us” page on the website.
- Design posts for covering location-related details.
- Participate in local social media events or write for them.
NAP Audit
One thing that governs your local rankings is consistency on all platforms. A mistake in one of the listings can mislead your customers or search engines. Therefore, it is necessary to confirm the NAP audit.
Now, what is NAP:
- Name of the company
- Your current address.
- Phone number.
Also, you can contact SEO specialist to conduct an audit and fix any local optimization issues.
Mobile-friendly website
A mobile-friendly website is the best way to boost your local rankings and tap potential customers. It will assist clients in accessing your website and find more information about you. You can achieve it by:
- Responsive Website: The website must fit itself as per the screen size. Let it be a tablet, smartphone, or iPhone. In this way, customers need not zoom, pinch or scroll to access your contents.
- Loading Speed: Well, it is a vital aspect to enhance the user experience. You can increase the loading speed by compressing images, verifying the server, or using AMP pages.
Local Content, keywords, and landmarks
What type of content are you providing on your website? Local content will attract local customers.
How to create localized content?
- Assess customer behavior: It is necessary to take care of local customer preferences and behavior. There could be local festivals, cultural events specific to the region. You can use this information to design tailor-made content for your local customers.
- Local Keywords: You can use local keywords, slang, or language related to the target region.
- Landmarks: Further, the thing that raises your ranking in the local region is using place-specific landmarks. With this, any customer looking for service around him can contact you.
Other than that, you can optimize your meta description, heading tags, and URLs for being featured in local results.
Behavioral Signals
Google considers proximity to your place. How many local customers are clicking on your website? Higher the number of clients accessing your site, the search engines will list your website in a higher position.
Backlink Profile
Backlinks count the same as in general SEO with a bit of variation. In this, how many local websites are linking back to your site? Indeed, the quality of inbound links takes your local rankings to altogether different levels.
Next, you can target LSI keywords anchor text. It determines incoming links from all the relevant sections in your industry.
Schema markup
Nowadays, zero-click results are increasing due to rich information on SERPs. So, you can add schema markup to your website to invite desired leads to your website.
Conclusion
In the final words, we can say that if you want your small business to shine in local market, then search engine optimization is a must. It will bring more clients and business around your place. Local search rankings are a different ball game than general SEO. These are the essential points:
- How many customers are coming to your website near your location?
- Google prefers consistent data from all internet profiles.
- It is vital to respond to both negative and positive reviews.
- Have you optimized your website for location keywords?
So, which one of the factors do you need improvement on? And how are you planning to implement it?
