If your small business operates in an active local customer market, focusing on Local Search Engine Optimization will allow it to rank higher for relevant searches – which means more visibility and potentially new customers!
Traditional SEO signals remain applicable when it comes to local search, with additional weight given to things such as NAP+W accuracy and local citations.
Location-Based Keywords
Modern consumers value convenience, so it is no secret that many look for business solutions near them. Therefore, local keywords are extremely relevant.
Explict local search terms differ from generic business keywords by having location-specific intent; such as plumber Seattle. Keyword Planner can help identify these implicit searches while SEO experts advise using tools that allow you to enter competitor domains to view what SERP results they rank for.
Start by compiling a list of your business’s services, then consider all of the ways potential customers might search online for those services in your geographic region. Use a keyword research tool to obtain search volume and difficulty estimates before prioritizing pages that can benefit from locally relevant keywords, with specific goals for improvement set forth as measures of success.
Local Citations
Citations refers to any mention of your business online and should be accurate and consistent for maximum visibility and enhanced search engine rankings, consumer discovery, and greater consumer interaction.
Your NAP data (name, address, phone number) should remain consistent across all of your citations to establish trust with Google’s crawling algorithm and gain their confidence. Any discrepancies could send mixed signals back to them which could reduce your chance of ranking well in local searches.
Your own local citations can be created by listing your business on directories and websites that focus on your geographic area, while services like BrightLocal or Whitespark offer services to audit and correct existing ones. Furthermore, there are specific industry citation sites such as healthcare or legal that target specific audiences for your business and may have higher domain authority than general directories; it is therefore crucial to choose those relevant to you when building local citations.
Local Landing Pages
Local Search Engine Optimization involves tailoring both your content and site structure for a particular geographic region. This includes optimizing both your website as well as individual local landing pages in each location you serve to capture searchers logging onto Google looking for businesses in their locality.
Key to any effective local landing page is providing unique, geo-specific content. Gone are the days when it would suffice to copy and paste text across various landing pages – now, each local page must provide something useful and pertinent to users in that city.
Utilize local schema markup to communicate information such as your NAP, reviews and opening hours to search engines. This will enable your business to rank higher for local snippets – eye-catching results at the top of search results that help drive clicks and conversions from visitors searching in specific geographic markets – like this architecture firm that utilizes their local landing pages in different cities to showcase work they have completed.
Local Content
Experience is key when it comes to local SEO success. If your website is difficult for visitors to navigate, they are likely to return to search results and visit one of your competitors instead.
Establishing high-quality content creation as part of local SEO is another vital element. This may include blog posts, videos, podcasts and animations containing local keywords in order to increase search visibility.
Review Monitoring from Yext helps your business identify and track reviews from various sources such as consumer directories, social media and discussion forums. With this data at hand, it becomes possible to use this information on location pages on your website that feature authentic first-party customer reviews as authentic testimonials – which in turn boost your local SEO rankings as Google takes into account consistency of NAP information when ranking websites.