People searching online want results relevant to their location; therefore local SEO marketing is essential for businesses hoping to expand within their community.
Establishing your business in all of the top local directories and garnering positive reviews can increase its SEO ranking locally.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is an essential element of local SEO marketing, helping increase your website’s search result ranking, increase traffic and sales, and raise brand awareness.
Keyword research involves identifying which search words people are typing into local search engines when looking for products and services nearby, in order to optimize both websites and paid search ads to rank higher in local searches.
As part of local SEO, it is crucial that you prioritize keywords relevant to your industry and business, and optimize the website for mobile users.
An effective keyword planner tool can assist in the discovery and ranking for commercial-driven keywords in local SEO campaigns, and high-intent queries that generate foot traffic or web visits from those ready to buy products and services.
On-Page Optimization
Local business websites should strive to rank on the first page of Google search results whenever a potential customer searches for products and services they provide, by optimizing keywords, backlinks, citations and local listings.
On-page SEO involves crafting optimized meta descriptions and title tags that speak directly to search engine robots in their language, helping them index relevant content on your site that meets user queries.
On-page local SEO involves including your name, address and phone number (NAP) within crawlable HTML text on your site so it will display in location-based search results correctly.
Consistency across your social media pages, websites, and GMB profile is also critical to successful local search rankings. Utilize different sources to verify NAP consistency and fix any misspellings, duplicate listings or address/phone number discrepancies that arise to increase local search rankings.
Link Building
Link building is one of the most effective SEO strategies, helping search engines assess whether the content on your website matches user queries while simultaneously increasing domain authority.
As part of local SEO marketing, it’s vital that companies focus on building quality backlinks from relevant and trustworthy websites. If your company offers plumbing services, for instance, it should aim to secure links from high-quality industry-related sites.
As part of local SEO, it can also be beneficial to acquire backlinks from geographically related websites. Gaining links from local news websites, neighborhood associations and organizations specific to your region can help improve rankings in local searches.
Reaching out to other local businesses and offering to trade links is another powerful tactic for local link building, and creating an expansive backlink profile that benefits both websites involved.
Content Marketing
Content creation is at the core of any successful digital marketing strategy. Content can take many forms – social media posts, videos, blog articles and emails are just some examples.
An effective way of increasing local search traffic is through writing relevant and useful content that assists customers in solving their issues. This builds your business’s reputation while increasing Google ranking.
To do this effectively, it’s necessary to identify which keywords your target audience uses when looking for local products and services – something keyword research tools like Semrush can assist with.
Once you have your list of keywords, use them in your web pages and blog posts to optimize for their respective locations. This should include in both titles and meta descriptions.