Why is local SEO important?
The internet is a global medium, but most businesses serve local markets. That means that even if you’re selling to people in other countries, you want to be found locally. That’s where local SEO comes in. Local SEO helps businesses that don’t have a global presence rank for local keywords in their local area.By local, I mean SEO optimized for the specific keywords available in a given location. In the words of Neil Patel, founder of CrazyEgg, “Local SEO is about optimizing your website for a specific keyword.”
He continues, “If you are having SEO issues that prevent you from ranking for the keyword you want, local SEO may be something you can invest time into improving.”
I like to focus on optimizing for 1 keyword, though there are other strategies that can benefit your local marketing efforts. To perform a keyword research and optimization (K&O) audit, you first need to figure out the keywords relevant to your business.
This process helps uncover the competitive keywords (keywords that are often the most searched for) for your industry and location. For example, if your business sells gardening equipment, you’d want to know keywords related to landscape architecture, landscape design, and landscape architecture.
Next comes the K&O audit. In order to perform a keyword research audit and optimize for those keywords, you’ll need to know how to find them. To figure this out, you’ll have to dive into the back end of Google Search and look at the query volume and organic traffic. You can do this by visiting your local Google search settings, or by using a tool like SEMRush.
It may seem rather straightforward to find your keyword keywords, but keep in mind that the keyword level maximum allowed is 6 global keywords, plus 2 local-only namespaces. If your business has 4 locations, you may be out of luck if you only focus on global keywords.
For example, landing pages dedicated to gardening tools have a much better chance of ranking when they focus on global keywords, such as landscape architecture and landscape architecture.
How do you get started with local SEO?
The first step to getting started in local SEO is to make sure you have a Google My Business listing. If you’re already an established business, then congratulations, you’re already halfway there. If you’re just starting out, head over to Google.Google My Business is an excellent way for you to build your local SEO strategy. Alongside Google Analytics, it gives you a lot of valuable information about your local search presence and advertising reach. The more local businesses you list in M boon, the better.
In addition to showing your potential customers what your business is offering, listing their listings helps increase your visibility in Google Search results and spark more customer visits to you. Your local SEO campaign can potentially boost your conversions by up to 71% by adding organic traffic.
It’s also a good first step to gain expert insight into Google’s search algorithms. This includes understanding how they position your business in results and detection of bad SEO practices like duplicate content and excessive keyword usage. It’ll also give you some valuable insights into current search trends, how competitive they are and why, as well as a better idea of what the algorithm value is in your industry.
To get started on a listing, go to your Google My Business page and click on the ‘Add a business’ icon. By adding a business, you automatically enter links to your social media profiles in order to communicate with your online audience. From here, you can also add website URLs and review copies.
For those unfamiliar with Google My Business, it’s a feature that allows you to list up to three businesses as if they were a single entity on one account. You don’t necessarily need to provide URLs for each section of your website. It’s a great way for existing online businesses to bolster their online presence.
What are the most effective strategies for local SEO?
There are many local SEO strategies but the most effective are optimizing your local business listings and optimizing your website for mobile. Optimizing your local business listings is the most important because the most people use search engines to find businesses in their area.It’s also a key part of growing your potential customers online. Showcase your quality, unique photos, and highlight your happy customers in a helpful way to build your presence on the world wide web. Using the “address” field in your GMB profiles allows you to get a better understanding of where your customer is located if there is no phone number.
Next you need to optimize your website for mobile because the overwhelming majority of your potential customers will be using mobile devices to access your company’s website. This applies not only to different types of marketing campaigns such as search engine optimization and social media marketing, but also getting your website SEO friendly.When it comes to business location, factors that can make a big difference are traffic and the type of customers you attract. Your customers’ needs are different from what your competitors are providing so it’s important to make sure you’re offering the optimal experience for people looking for you in different parts of the US and the world.
Homepages: competitive advantage
Focusing on your home page is crucial if you want to have a competitive advantage in local search. On your home page, don’t just talk about your service or products — reference other local companies and services that you offer. It’s mostly a good practice to reference virtual businesses as well, like recommended communities like Moz Local for doing this.
It can be tempting to put all of your citations on a single page instead of making each listing work like a puzzle — a good screen shot is shown at the end of this article.However, it’s good to have a few listings on a few pages to spread out your impact across the web.
