An increasing number of consumers are finding and researching about businesses online. It is only after this due diligence that they contact a business.
Due to the same, you cannot afford to ignore local SEO any longer.
If you want to scale up your business or outsmart your competition in 2021, you have to focus on local SEO strategy. To help you with the same, I have compiled a list of 21 local SEO tips that work.
With a carefully curated list of local SEO tips, you can optimize your website and make it appealing, which will increase the number of queries and customers you get.
1. Do not ignore your GMB listing
GMB stands for Google My Business. It is a portal for Local businesses by Google.
Once you verify your business, you can gain control of the profile that appears when someone searches your business name on Google.
You can input information like:
- Business hours
- Address
- Phone number
- Photos
- Description and so on
Instead of ignoring this feature, you have to verify your business as soon as possible and populate your listing. It will certainly help you rank better, gain more visibility, and get more organic visitors.
2. Get links from niche local business directories
Most businesses just focus on Yelp when it comes to local business directories. Well, there are quite a few niche-based local business directories as well. You have to populate your profiles on those local directories as well.
These include:
- Angieslist for home remodeling
- OpenTable for restaurants and hospitality
- Foursquare for restaurants and hospitality
- Tripadvisor for travel
These are just a few examples. Depending on the industry, there might be a few other niche-based local business directories that you can take advantage of as well.
You can gain the best backlinks for local SEO from these directories, which will help you rank higher and gain more visibility.
3. Integrate a map interface on your site
Whenever a person searches for a local business, Google takes into account the proximity of the business while displaying the search results. The best way to offer the same information to Google is to integrate a map interface on your website.
It has a dual advantage. Not only, you make the location information more peculiar, but also you help your customers reach your business.
For the same, there is a store locator solution on offer by Google maps. It allows you to easily integrate that map on your website.
It might be a small step, but it has definite benefits for visibility and higher rankings and happens to be one of the Local SEO best practices.
More on how to do it: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/adding-a-google-map
4. Update your NAP as and when required
NAP in business stands for name, address, and phone number. Google wants to provide the most latest information to its visitors. If there is any inconsistency across these fields, Google might not rank that business higher.
You have to ensure that this information is accurate across your business listing, website, social media profiles, and so on.
In case of any change in any of this information, you have to update it as soon as possible. While this might be a small ranking factor, it will undoubtedly help you stand out from your competition and rank higher.
5. Utilize schema markup
Schema markups help you in displaying various information about your business in the search results themselves. You can get markups for:
- Location
- Distance
- Review rating
- And so on
Not only that, Google uses this information to rank your website higher. By using schema, you can indeed boost your rankings by a few positions. The additional information and the search results can increase the CTR, which will get you more visitors.
All in all, ignore schema at your own risk.
More on Local Schema Markup: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/local-business
6. Get more customer reviews
The more populated your business profile on Google is, the better your business will rank. Since reviews form an integral part of your Google business profile, the more reviews you have, the better your local ranking will be.
You need to ensure that you provide excellent customer service to your customers so that your average review rating increases. The higher the number of reviews and review ratings, the better it is for your organic ranking.
There are a few tips that you need to follow to get more reviews:
- Encouraging your customers to leave you a review by reminding them after the purchase.
- Providing them with an incentive on a future purchase for an honest review.
- Sharing with them your Google business listing and requesting them to review it.
These few tips will help you gain more customer reviews.
As for negative reviews, you have to address every one of them. Instead of getting upset with the customer, it is good to understand their problem and solve them. Once you do so, not only will the customers increase but also your average Google review score.
Thus, to rank better locally, it is necessary to get more reviews.
7. Citations always work
Citations are your business listing with NAP. These are normally found across websites that aggregate business data.
The more citations you get for your business, the better it will be for your organic ranking.
A couple of websites that provide paid citation building service you can use for citations include:
- SEMRush
- BrightLocal
- Yext
- Moz Local
- Whitespark
If you consistently want to increase your local rankings, you need to get new citations on a regular basis. It is the most underrated tip when it comes to local SEO.
8. Make your website fast and responsive
Whether you are trying to rank local or global, Google uses mobile 1st indexing these days. This means it takes into account how your website works on mobile devices while ranking it.
Due to the same, it is necessary to have a responsive website. A responsive website can change its layout according to the device from which you are surfing it. Therefore, responsive websites generally have better rankings than non-responsive ones.
Not only that, Google takes into account the loading speed of your website. Ideally, it should load in under 2 seconds. Google does not prefer displaying websites that take a long time to load in the search engines.
Once again, when you make your website fast, it will receive a bump in rankings.
Thus, by making your website fast and responsive, you can indeed gain more traffic and visibility.
Check your website’s Google score here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
9. Integrate GPS Location Targeting
The more accurate information customers get from your website, the longer they will remain on your website. That will certainly reduce the bounce rate.
In search engine rankings, Google prefers to rank websites with lower bounce rates.
By activating GPS location targeting on your website, you can display the most relevant information to your visitors. Once you do so, the bounce rate will decrease, and your rankings will increase.
It is another way in which you can increase your rankings on Google.
10. Do not ignore site title and meta description
Most local business owners do not modify anything on their website once delivered by the web designer. Following this practice can be a huge mistake.
By adding correct titles and meta descriptions to your website, you can inform Google regarding the exact type of service you offer. Doing so will help you rank naturally for longer tail keywords.
Ranking for longer tail keywords will provide you with a trickle of traffic and inquiries.
If you want to gain a few customers every month without much effort and improve your rankings, adding an appropriate site title and meta description is a must.
11. Get local links
Google takes into account the relevancy of backlinks while ranking your website. If your business is in New York and you’re getting backlinks from a local business in Cape Town, the value of such links reduces drastically.
Instead of getting such links, it is a better idea to get local links. You have to harvest your local contacts and relationships to get such links.
When you’re getting such local links, you can certainly receive a boost in your search engine rankings.
12. Optimize your website for local keywords
Without proper on-page optimization, most of the tips in this article will not work.
On-page optimization involves:
- Having an appropriate keyword density
- Using proper meta tags
- Maintaining relevant permalink structure
- Using keywords and longtail variants as alt tags
- And so on
When you do so, you significantly increase your website’s relevancy to a particular keyword or a term. Doing so will certainly provide you with a boost in rankings.
13. Publish local content
Content marketing can benefit you greatly if you’re trying to rank local or national.
What many local businesses do not know is that the same is true for local businesses as well.
You need to consistently publish local content. It will increase the relevancy of your website to your industry. Not only that, you can get backlinks by doing the same.
Once you get backlinks to these posts, there will be a trickle effect on your other pages as well. That will help you increase your rankings.
14. Voice optimize your website
With the advent of Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, voice searches are increasing at a rapid pace.
If you do not optimize your website for these voice searches, it can become difficult for you to rank in the search engines.
To do so, you have to make your content is skimmable. It should be easy to read in a single glance.
Not only that, you can convert your post into an audio file and integrate the audio at the top of your post as well. That will also help you voice optimize your website.
After doing so, you can certainly rank higher as Google prefers such websites.
15. Publish case studies regularly
As a business owner, of course, you will have at least a handful of customers who are satisfied with your service.
With their permission, you have to publish case studies on your website articulating how you provided them with the product or the service.
Doing so has a few advantages when it comes to local SEO. These include:
- You will be adding fresh content to your website. Search engines prefer websites that do so.
- The case studies are like magnets. Sooner than later, you will start gaining new backlinks because of them. That will once again help you rank higher.
Both these advantages make case study a necessity rather than a luxury.
16. Have different pages for each location
Search engines do not prefer vague websites. Due to the same, you have to create pages on your website so that each page articulates the service you provide and the city in which you provide that service.
For example, if you provide lawn moving services in various cities in your state, create a separate page for each city.
Not only is it easier to rank a website this way, but also search engines prefer those pages as they can rank each page individually for targeted search engine queries.
17. Increase your social media activity
Every industry has a few local social media pages and groups. These can help you gain citations as well as backlinks.
For the same, you have to increase your social media activity. Rather than just spamming these pages and groups, you have to contribute to them. Once you do so, dropping a link here and there will not be a problem.
Such a link is worth its weight in gold. It will give you a boost in search engine rankings.
18. Establish relationships with local bloggers and publications
Most websites targeting national and global keywords do not have the advantage of building local relationships. However, as a small business owner, you do. You have to establish relationships with local bloggers and publications. You can meet them at industry events and even in your city.
By establishing such relationships, gaining citations and backlinks from their websites will not be a problem. When that happens, you can certainly increase your search engine rankings.
19. Start with local longtail keywords
One of the most underrated local SEO tips is to always start with local longtail keywords. Instead of targeting the keywords, getting more searches, and having more competition, you have to target the smaller ones.
Sure enough, those will not provide you with the same number of customers, but they will certainly read faster. It will help you gain traffic faster and also provide you with the ROI sooner.
You have to take into account the competition of such keywords and then choose them. Doing so will help you see a small but consistent trickle of customers.
20. Join local business communities
You might be thinking, how to improve local SEO with local business communities?
When you join such a community, they often have directories of their members. You can get a citation or a backlink from their website by doing so.
Not only that, you can network with other local businesses as well. Doing so can also help you gain citations and backlinks.
The cost of joining such a local business community is just a few dollars each year.
In return, you get valuable backlinks, citations, and opportunities to socialize and network with local businesses. All these can certainly help you with Local SEO.
21. Cover local events
Another way to get a boost in search engine rankings is to cover local events happening in your city and community.
The coverage of such local events can help you get backlinks. Not only that, when you add fresh content to your website, you will get a boost in search engine rankings as well.
As you can see, covering the local events might require some effort, but you can get better search engine rankings in return, which makes them worth it.
So, instead of just spamming your URL across thousands of pages, you need to follow these 21 tips to rank higher for local keywords. Our local SEO tips can certainly answer your question of how to do Local SEO and make life easier for you to gain customers online for your local business.