Every business that wants to grow looks for the best possible visibility on the web. Competition online is tough, and you need to find a way to stand out. That’s why you work on your organic search rankings and put money into ads to reach as wide an audience as possible. But what about the customers right in your area?
Now that nearly half of all searches are local in nature, local search optimization has earned its place in any SEO plan. Where should you start? Here’s a guide.
1. What is local SEO?
Local SEO is a technique used to boost how visible a website is based on where it’s located. Always looking to improve the user experience, Google updated its algorithm in 2006 to bring location into the mix.
Local SEO lets you target user searches with real precision, showing people the most useful results possible. It tends to bring strong conversion rates, since it usually answers searches driven by an intent to buy.
Businesses now need to build this into their plans and work on their local visibility, especially when part of their customer base lives nearby.
2. What shapes local search rankings
Here are the different tools and settings that affect your local search rankings, listed in order of how much they matter:
- Optimizing your web page content around carefully chosen keywords
- Getting mentioned and linked to by sites that carry weight locally
- Making sure your website offers a good user experience
- Being listed in online directories, ideally local ones and ones specific to your industry
- Google My Business, which already performs very well for local SEO on its own, is the tool that has the biggest direct effect on your ranking in Google’s local pack
- Collecting reviews and comments from your customers
Now, do you know how to get the most out of these different tools? That’s what we’ll cover in this third part.
3. How to improve your local search rankings
Build your content around your location
Google shows users the results it judges to be the best match for their search. All of your content should help tell the search engine where you’re located, so it can recommend you to people searching nearby.
On your website, make sure your contact details and address are clearly listed on your contact page. This information can also appear in your footer. If you serve different areas, you can build local pages optimized for each city where you operate. Make sure the name of the location shows up in the titles and metadata of these pages.
One thing to watch out for: these pages shouldn’t be exact copies of one another. Each one should stay useful to your site’s visitors and add real value. Write unique content for each local page, with its own descriptions and images.
You can also write blog posts optimized around a local activity or event.
Your content should reflect where you’re located, not just on your website but on your social media too. Add your address in the section for your general information, and don’t hesitate to mention your location clearly in your posts.
Use structured data
Structured data is information that’s invisible to visitors, but not to Google. These are enriched tags you can add to the pages of your website. They tell Google’s crawlers what your content is about, so the search engine understands it better.
The goal of using structured data is to widen the range of results you show up in. Plenty of tools exist across different platforms to add these tags, including on WordPress.
Get links and mentions from local sites
As mentioned earlier, being mentioned by sites that carry weight locally in your area can do a lot for your visibility, both with new customers and in search results.
As part of your local SEO plan, look into signing up with directories in your area. You can also reach out to local news sites or tourism sites and ask them to mention you with a direct link to your website.
This is what’s known as earning backlinks. In exchange for content you provide these sites, they promote you locally. Google likes to see this happen, though it does pay attention to the quality and fit of these links.
Look for sites that already have a good reputation and stand for something in your field. Check regularly that your information is still accurate on the pages that mention you.
Optimize your site for mobile
Did you know most local searches happen on a phone?
Local searches are very often driven by a desire to buy something right away. Searching from a smartphone lets people send an address straight to their GPS or contact a business in just a few taps.
If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, meaning it doesn’t offer a smooth experience, you risk losing a lot of traffic, and with it, sales. On top of that, Google has been clear on this: sites with mobile-friendly versions get favored in its results.
While some businesses put everything into their mobile version, you also have the option of building a responsive site that adjusts to whatever device it’s viewed on. Another option is to build a separate version of your site, different from the standard one, if adapting it to another format isn’t possible.
Keep your GMB listing matching the information on your site
A must for any local SEO plan, this free tool from Google offers a lot. It lets you build a listing with all your business details and the information people need to reach you quickly.
If your business listing is well set up, Google My Business’s local pack can give a real lift to your local SEO.
To make sure your local visibility keeps growing along with your number of potential customers, keep the information on your GMB listing consistent with your website. It matters that your contact details match everywhere, so Google sees them as trustworthy. The two are connected as far as the search engine is concerned: your website’s organic rankings also affect your local standing.
Update the content of your GMB listing as often as you can. Use Google Posts to promote your offers and anything new.
Get customer reviews
As with anything online, reputation matters a lot. With so many options out there, the reviews people leave are a valuable signal of how good and dependable a product or service really is.
Beyond shaping what people decide to buy, customer reviews and testimonials also play a big part in your ranking. The popularity of a brand and how many reviews it has collected both factor into Google’s algorithm. The search engine wants to give its users good answers, and customer reviews help prove you’re worth trusting.
Encouraging your customers to share their experience on your GMB listing, or on the online directories where they found you, helps improve your local search rankings.
So remember to reach out to happy customers once a sale is done. And always respond to comments, good or bad. Responding well to a negative review softens its impact, and you might even win that person over enough to give you a second try.
