A Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO
Local SEO plays a vital role for business in today’s digital world, whether you run a coffee shop, a clothing store, or a family owned restaurant, your online presence matters.
And, there comes the role of it!
In this comprehensive guide, we will explain to you about Local SEO Optimization, its components and strategies to boost your business locally.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a digital technique to optimize your online presence to attract local customers.
With this technique, you ensure that your business shows up prominently when someone searches your products or services locally.
Think of it like putting a neon banner outside your store that attracts customers’ interaction towards your store.
Why is Local SEO Important?
Before we dig deeper into this topic, let’s understand the benefit of local seo and why is local seo important.
Below are the three prime local seo benefits:
Hyper-Relevance
- Local SEO ensures that your business reaches the right audience. The audience who are most likely to visit your store.
- When a user searches for “coffee shop near me” or “plumber in [city]”, local seo optimization ensures that your business will show up in search results.
Mobile Dominance
- Ever since the evolution of Mobile, the growth of local queries has skyrocketed.
- Local SEO ensures your business to be visible for nearby queries to the users.
Google Loves Local
- Day by day users are getting more aware of how to better use the search engine.
- They look to find a product or service nearby. To prompt this need, Google often displays a local pack (business listings map) at the top of search results.
- Being this part of the local pack significantly improves your visibility.
Trust & Credibility
- When your business consistently appears in local search results, users will be more likely to interact with it.
- More interaction means more trust in comparison to your competitors who aren’t getting the same.
So, these are the few reasons why Local SEO is important for your business.
Factors Determining Local SEO Rankings
Below are the three factors that determines your local search ranking:
- Proximity: It means how close your business is to the searcher’s location.
- Prominence: What’s your business online reputation? For example, the reviews and mention of your business on other websites over the internet.
- Relevance: It means, how well your business matches the searchers’ needs.
If your business fulfills the need of all these three factors, then your local seo ranking is assured.
Now, let’s learn about the components that makes the local seo complete. If you master each of these components then doing local seo for a business would be cake walk for you.
Key Components of Local SEO
Below are the key components of local seo. Let’s dive into each one of them in detail.
Google My Business (GMB) Optimization
Google My Business is a critical component of Local SEO. Through Google My Business you can claim and enhance your business listing on Google.
Remember I told you above, Google shows business listings at the top in the SERP when users querying for a product or service locally.
Hence having a GMB profile is extremely important if you provide or sell a service or a product locally.
Google My Business Optimization Tips
If you don’t have a Google My Business account yet, make sure to create it first.
NAP Information: While creating the account, make sure to provide the accurate NAP information which means Business Name, Address, and Phone number.
Fill out as many details as possible like operating hours, website, label, industry etc for getting the best leads.
High Quality Photos: To make your GMB profile powerful, upload high quality images of your business, products, and services. As you know, Visual content attracts more users.
Google Posts: In GMB profile, Google has given the feature to publish posts which is also known by the name “Google Posts”. It allows you to publish updates, offers, or events related to your business and it directly appears in your GMB profile in carousel format.
Review and Ratings: To signal Google about the quality and relevancy of your GMB profile, make sure to encourage your customers to leave reviews. Also, you make sure to respond to the reviews promptly, it doesn’t matter whether it is positive or negative.
On-Page SEO for Local Keywords
In On-Page SEO, our focus is to optimize the web pages present on our website.
But, how can we do On-Page SEO for Local Keywords?
Well, we can create location specific content like local events, community news, mentioning local landmarks in our content and so on.
Also, while optimizing your website to excel in local search results, make sure the NAP information on your website is consistent with your GMB or other local citations websites.
When doing On-Page SEO for local keywords, make sure to add them in your webpages and GMB profile.
Local Citations
Local Citations means mentioning your business NAP data on different platforms like business directories, websites, and social media.
Below are the key points to consider while doing the local citations.
Data Accuracy: Make sure to enter consistent information across different platforms.
Industry Specific Platforms: Try to find directories related to your niche and geography and build your profile there for building authority in your niche.
Online Reviews
Online reviews play a significant role in Local SEO. Getting positive reviews about your business from real customers helps other users to know about your business better. That’s how Google rewards your website or local citations with better ranking for getting reviews about your products or services from real customers.
Hence, if you want to improve your business local rankings online, ask your satisfied customers to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare, Trustpilot etc.
Once you get reviews from your customer then don’t stop back, create re-engagement on reviews by thanking them for positive feedback or if any customer leaves a negative review, address it professionally.
Think of yourself, a local restaurant getting positive reviews about delicious food, friendly staff, and cozy ambiance is likely to attract more diners.
Now, since we learn about the key components of local seo, it’s time to dive into the strategies and best practices that you can follow while doing local seo.
Local SEO Strategy and Best Practices
Below are some proven best practices that you can follow to succeed locally.
Local News or Content: Write about things that are targeting a particular geographical reason. The content could be anything, it doesn’t matter whether it is a video, text, or photo. The only thing that matters is its relevance for the local audience.
Local Businesses: Try to intact with other local businesses (especially those who fall in your niche). You can use forums, Facebook Groups, Quora Spaces and others channels to do this.
Local Directories: Try to build your profile in different local directories (especially related to your niche) and maintain a consistent NAP information there.
Online Reputation Management (ORM): As I said above online reviews are very important for local businesses. Hence, managing your online reputation across different websites is super important for local businesses. The reputation becomes stronger when the business owner responds to more and more reviews. It doesn’t matter whether the reviews are positive or negative.
Local Link Building: Try to build relationships with local bloggers, influencers, and neighboring businesses by acquiring backlinks for your local content. Getting local backlinks will not just boost your overall website authority but will signal Google that your website’s content is highly relevant for the location from where you have got the backlink.
Local SEO Schema: There are different schema for local seo that you can use on your website. For example, the local business schema that includes your business NAP information as well as other relevant information.
So, this is it for the local seo guide. Do note that it is not a one time task, it is an ongoing commitment. You have to polish these strategies from time to time.
