If your business relies on local customers, Local SEO is a MUST!

LOCAL SEO

Make sure local customers find you first.

All-day, every day, millions of people are using internet search engines to find businesses and make purchasing decisions. In fact, over 3.5 billion searches happen every day on Google and 46% of those searches have local intent. That’s 1.6 billion local searches done every day.

As a small business owner, you can’t afford to NOT have your business represented online. If you’re not visible to your potential customer, they will find your competition.

WHAT IS LOCAL SEO?

If you rely on local customers for your business, then local SEO is a must. Local SEO focuses on increasing online visibility for businesses that depend on customers within their geographic area. When proper online local SEO techniques are applied, you’ll see better rankings in search engines.  This will naturally bring more qualified leads to your business.

While larger companies market to the masses, part of a successful SEO strategy is to target your local market specifically. This is especially helpful for small businesses and brick-and-mortar stores as well as businesses that serve clients face-to-face. 

Whether you have 2 locations or 200, you must understand and follow search engine best practices. In doing so, you maintain trustworthiness with search engines as a reliable source, and in turn, they will increase your visibility to your potential customers. Bottom line, not only do you need to be present online, but you need to be intentional about presenting your business online.

A SOLID LOCAL SEO STRATEGY

A local SEO strategy starts with the process of fine-tuning your website and listing your business in local directories. This increases the ability for your business or website to be “found” easily. By keeping your map data and business listings consistently updated and accurate throughout all search engines, local SEO ensures that your placement on search results pages is optimal.

Local Directory Listings – Google My Business

Gone are the days when customers only visit a company’s website to get the information they need. In other words, your website isn’t the only place you need to be online. You need to make sure your business is properly listed on main search engines like Google My Business. By building these online profiles correctly, you’ll provide search engines with important information about your business, which helps boost your visibility to customers.  Once you provide all of the requested information, it will be added to your business profile which appears in local search results.

Update NAP Citations

Google factors your entire online presence into its Google Maps search results. One critical factor in that presence is the consistency of your online business data, including your NAP and site. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number, and they should appear exactly the same across the web. Any inconsistencies don’t reflect well with search engines and will hurt your rankings and visibility.

Optimize Your Website

It’s important to implement SEO best practices throughout your website. From keyword data to the content on your website, using the most relevant keywords naturally throughout your content will satisfy both search engines and what users need to make their decision to engage with you.

You will naturally drive more quality inbound links when your website is strategically optimized. Developing a strong content strategy and crafting high-quality blogs will also increase your opportunities.

Beyond just inserting keywords, Google values relevant and useful content and will prioritize high-quality content in their search rankings.

Optimizing your URLs, page titles, heading tags, images, internal linking structure and more are also essential tactics used to boost your SEO rankings. Why? All these steps meet search engine criteria by telling them you’re a legitimate company.  Content strategy services include more than just using the data from our research to insert keywords—we also study what type of content ranks best, create the long-form content that Google ranks highly, and use lists, FAQ sections, how-to guides, and other components of high-quality content that can help you effectively reach your potential customers.

Create A Page For Every Product, Service, or Location

When it comes to SEO, it’s not helpful to consolidate.  As a business owner, you don’t want to dump all your products and services on one page. Instead, a separate page should be created for every product, service, or location your business offers. Doing this helps paint a more clear sitemap for search engines. It creates the opportunity for search engines to see you as a specific authority for each product to service. Which in turn helps each product/service rank for that specific offering, and opens the door to specific schema applications.

Online Reviews

When search engines are trying to determine the best results to provide online users, your online reviews are going to factor into their consideration. Positive reviews are critical in showcasing the quality of your service. They tell search engines that your business is trusted and useful. The more positive and consistent quality reviews you receive, the more your search engine rankings will improve.

How We Can Help

So much goes into an effective local SEO strategy. We keep up-to-date with algorithm changes on Google and ensure you are regularly engaging with your audience. Competition is fierce in the local marketplace, and those businesses who get local SEO right are winning in the rankings.

Understanding the best practices for local SEO is complex, but that’s our specialty. As a small business owner, you already have enough on your plate. We take the guesswork out of your local SEO strategy by doing the hard work for you.

We will work with you step-by-step. Our main objective is to boost your online presence and make sure your business is reaching your target audience online. From setting up your Google My Business account to providing analytics and conversion tracking, we’ll take care of it all so you can outrank your competition and increase your revenue.

Want to see some real results? Check out a few of our digital marketing case studies here!

Local SEO FAQs