Local SEO: The Definitive Guide
SEO experts promise to grow your business by helping people find you around the world…
But what if you don’t need everyone to find you?
What if you’re only concerned with targeting people who live and work where you do?
That’s where local SEO comes in. It can stack the odds in your favor, increasing the chances of the right people finding you in their online searches. Local SEO offers incredible opportunities — and unique challenges — that make it a completely different animal than “standard” SEO.
Raising local awareness online starts with a smart strategy. If you’re willing to execute, you can quickly pull ahead of competitors and emerge as a top player in your area.
Keep reading to find out how.
Local SEO Guide: Getting Started
The first steps to making local SEO work for you are: 1) getting a handle on what local SEO is, and 2) confirming it’s a good fit for your business.
What Is Local SEO?
In a nutshell, local SEO is a strategy to drive more business using online search engines. “SEO” is short for search engine optimization, specific strategies to increase website visitors by boosting your ranking in online search engines. “Local” is just the specific kind of SEO strategy: one designed to cater to a limited geographic area.
Local SEO strategies usually target a combination of keywords and names of cities or towns. A plumber, for instance, might target the phrase “Atlanta plumber.” If your business has multiple locations, you can always target different markets simultaneously.
Is Local SEO Right for My Business?
The Internet has created the potential to acquire customers no matter where they live. That works just fine for some businesses, especially if they sell digital products. But many others still rely on customers physically coming into stores or being close enough to come to them. If your business is limited to a certain area, you could do well with a smart local SEO strategy. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a restaurant, lawn maintenance service, or doctor’s office. Geographic limitations can work to your advantage in the world of local search. Once you’ve decided local SEO is good fit, it’s time to put a basic strategy into action.
How to Do Local SEO from Scratch
There’s no shortage of SEO advice out there. Because SEO is so multidimensional (and changing constantly), thousands of tactics get introduced and modified. Strategies vary a ton from one expert to another. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. You want to drive more search engine traffic, but just figuring out where to start can seem impossible. Some experts recommend high-risk strategies. They might pay off for a few months, but they fizzle whenever a major search engine changes their algorithm. You can spend a lot of time and effort trying to stay ahead in that rat race… Or you can stick to tried and true principles of good local SEO. Take a look at this simple step-by-step approach. You’ll come away with a system to attract more customers online. Let’s get started.
Step 1. Lay the Foundation
The first step to solid local SEO is doing the groundwork to make it easier for people to find you in their online searches. It’s amazing how many local businesses still don’t have a website. Some resist the idea because they do all of their business face to face. But even if no one buys from you online, that’s almost certainly where they’re looking for information. You better believe you want your business listed in the largest online directories! Hopefully you already have a business website. If you do, make sure it’s updated with a responsive design. Your potential customers aren’t just sitting at home typing on their desktops. They’re on the move, using tablets and smart phones to find the information they need. Responsive designs make the browsing experience as pleasant as possible… no matter which device a visitor uses. Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. What if they’re downtown, get hungry, and check their smart phone for a good restaurant nearby? They won’t stick around if they land on your website if it’s confusing and they can’t even find the menu. They’ll turn to one of your competitors instead.
After you get your website in order, make it easier for searchers to find you by establishing a presence on popular review sites for your industry. Each profile you create acts like another “platform” for local visitors to land on. It’s an incredible opportunity to demonstrate social proof (in the form of positive reviews from customers) and drive people back to your website, and eventually, into your store. Some of the most popular review sites include:
Don’t just slap together half a dozen profiles and call it a day. Invest the time to flesh them out. Choose the right categories for your business, add your address and phone number, include your hours of operation, and upload quality photos. Review sites don’t just help your website rank higher in search engines like Google. They’re also search engines in their own right. Accurate, complete profiles help you get exposure to their audiences as well.
Step 2. Optimize Your Website (On-Site SEO)
Once you’ve laid the foundation and established yourself on popular review platforms, it’s time to optimize your website for better search engine rankings. The higher you rank for your local keywords, the more free traffic you receive. These tweaks on your own website are known as “on-page” or “on-site” SEO. Making your website as attractive to search engines as possible is the first in a two-phase SEO strategy. More on the second phase — raising your profile through links from other websites — in just a minute. Good local SEO starts with solid website structure. Clarity is key here. If you sell multiple products or services, break them down individually (or into related subcategories) on separate web pages. These pages — called landing pages — create opportunities to attract targeted visitors through precise SEO tweaks.
Name, Address, and Phone Number (Schema)
Even if you work out of a home office, it’s crucial to present your business name, address, and phone number often and consistently. This doesn’t just give interested visitors more opportunities to reach you. Displaying your address consistently within your website content makes it easier for search engines to determine your business is relevant for local search terms. Schema.org worked with the largest search engines to make it easier for their algorithms to spot key information on websites and categorize it. Unfortunately, a lot of local businesses are behind the curve because they haven’t adapted Schema.org code on their sites. Their search engine results pay the price. Check out Schema.org to find snippets of free code you can implement on your website. The html tags pass key information to search engines without showing up on your website when visitors look at it. Where should you display this information? Your contact form is always a good bet. And including your business name, address, and phone number in your footer makes sure it shows up on every page that search engines crawl.
