If you’re lazy with your local SEO, you’ll drift behind your competition, and you won’t even notice it. Today’s business climate is nothing but cut-throat competition, regardless of the niche. To make a name for your brand, you’ll need to have both general and local SEO on lock.
Local SEO is especially crucial for local brick and mortar businesses functioning at a regional level. This describes most of the small and medium enterprises and startups. However, businesses, both large and small, could do with a robust local SEO campaign.
Unfortunately, for startups and small businesses, improving their local SEO is easier said than done. However, with the right tips and enough commitment, you’ll have local SEO down pat in no time. Regardless of your business type or size, local SEO is something you can hack.
This post will highlight a few techniques you should adopt to boost your local SEO. That way, you can leverage the correct local SEO technique to take your SEO for business to the next level.
1. Increase Your Local Coverage
Enhancing your local coverage is a breeze if you live in a close-knit company. All you have to do is liaise with a few local journalists or radio stations to give you some airtime. This coverage will help get the word out about your brand, but it comes at a price.
In most cases, you’ll have to pay for this coverage, but it’s worth every penny. Most of these journalists or news sites will backlink to your site. Backlinks to your site are great for your SERP ranking.
2. “Localize” Your Content
Make sure your content focuses on the local community and events around the region. There’s no better way to build rapport with local customers than showing you’re one of them. However, make sure your content also revolves around your business or at least your niche.
If you want to “localize” your content, here’s how you do so:-
- Have your content promote local causes like charities or fundraisers
- Have your blog posts speak about local events, news, or people of interest
- Consider location-specific pages if you’re handling customers from a broad region
These are just a few ways you can localize your content to attract the local audience. As long as your content has a local feel to it, you’re good to go.
3. Don’t Overlook Local Keywords
You probably know how important keywords are for your general SEO. The same applies to local SEO; only this time, the focus is on local keywords. How do I know these local keywords?
Glad you asked; you don’t have to start guessing local keywords and hoping they convert. You can use Google keyword planner to get the right keywords for your local audience.Use the local keywords strategically for the greatest effect.
These keywords should appear on your meta content, URLs, and copy. To kick it up a notch, you can also include in-post references for landmarks or visitor hotspots. Doing so gives your local SEO a considerable boost.
4. Make Sure You Have Your Title and Description on Lock
Unfortunately, you don’t have too much space on the search engine results page. With that in mind, you need to make the most of the tiny space to get your marketing message across.
To use that space wisely makes sure you:-
- The title and description promotes your brand
- Steer clear from generic terms that aren’t related to your business
- It captures what your business entails
The title and description are where you get your potential customer interested. It’s the first impression any visitor or potential customer gets about your business. If you want to make a good first impression, make sure you have the title and description down pat.
5. Create a Google My Business Profile
Google My Business or GMB is a tool by Google for businesses to manage their online presence. It’s free to use and is a great way to tell your customers about your location and more information about your business. Yes, you can think of GMB as an online directory.
You have to go through a strict verification process before you get on GMB. That’s the only way Google can tell it’s registering a legitimate business. After that, you’ll add more information about your company, including location, description, and the likes.
Only the official business owner can register a particular business on GMB. This is a job you can’t delegate to your staff unless you’re willing to give up crucial personal details. Registering on GMB can do wonders for your local SEO.
6. Optimize for Voice Search
It’s the 21sy century, and people no longer have to key in words for their internet searches. Nowadays, all you have to do is speak into the mic what you’re looking for, and voila, you get your results. You’ll need to optimize for voice search to get a fighting chance with voice search results.
To do so, you’ll have to clamp down on how customers ask questions and how they make their requests. With voice search, customers normally use long keywords because they don’t have to type everything. That’s why you need to change your SEO content to match the conversational tone most people use.
Keep in mind that voice searches are based on intent. Most users use voice search when they want quick responses to their queries. That means you should be ready with the answers when your customers pose their questions.
Optimizing for voice search can be a tad challenging, especially for newer companies. It’s a great idea to get some professional help for your voice search optimization. That way, you can get the most out of voice searches.
7. Don’t Overlook Your Mobile Site
Often, we’re too busy with our PC sites that we forget all about the mobile one. Unfortunately, doing so could hurt your local SEO and your search engine results page ranking, by extension. What’s more, you’ll be missing out on a vast demographic of smartphone users.
The average person spends about three hours and fifteen minutes on the phone each day. According to Techcrunch, more than 6.1 billion people around the world are proud smartphone owners. These statistics should be enough to make you keener about your mobile site.
When it comes to your mobile site, your primary concern should be the site’s responsiveness. Later, you can worry about the design and the interface. Here are a couple of ways you can make the site more responsive.
- Make sure your interface is bug-free
- Make sure your site takes no more than four seconds to load
- Only use relevant pictures for your site
- Make sure your fonts are large enough to be readable
If you don’t have a mobile site, you should get one as soon as possible or ask the pros for help. There’s a lot you’re missing on. Once you get your mobile site up and running, don’t forget to do the above to make it responsive.
8. Get Customer and Client Reviews
Reviews are a great way to show potential customers what you offer and the quality of your products and services. Reviews also boost your local SEO, especially if you have a GMB profile.
It’s a bummer that not many customers are willing to leave reviews. However, there are ways you can persuade them to do precisely that. If you want to get reviews from your customers, you can:-
- Send emails or texts requesting them for their reviews or personal opinions
- React to all the current reviews and act on any negative ones to address the issue
- Demand a summary after you complete every transaction
These are just a few ways you can get your customers or clients to review your business. Reviews not only boost your local SEO, but they also attract potential clients to your business.
9. Use Schema Markup
Schema markup is a special code that helps search engines get more informative results from your website. It’s the perfect way to get an edge over your competitors because not a lot of people know about schema markup.
However, using schema markup isn’t a DIY job; Unless you’re a web developer, you’ll need some help using schema markup on your site. However, it’s a one-time process, and you’ll be good to go for as long as your type of website is on the internet.
10. Have Citations From Different Non-Competing Sites
You have to establish your name on cyberspace to rise in SERP rankings. One of the best ways is by getting citations from as many aggregate business sites as you can. Yext and Factual are great examples of such sites, but many more can do your bidding.
Citations are listings of your business name, phone number, and additional contact information on other sites. If you get citations from local business sites and other sites, your online presence boosts your SEO.
However, make sure you get citations from reputable sites for the citations to actually impact your SERP ranking. For some authority sites, you might have to pay for citation, but with most business sites, it’s free.
11. Add a Virtual Tour
If you really want to up the ante, then add a virtual tour to your site. As the name suggests, a virtual tour is just like a normal tour, but you don’t have to leave your desk or couch. Virtual tours are a great way to show your visitors what you have to offer.
What’s more, with the roll-out of 5G coming soon, these virtual tours should be seamless. Plus, virtual tours are straightforward to set up with our smartphone cameras becoming more powerful as time goes by. Add a virtual tour to your site and make sure you post the link to it on your social media.
Add your virtual tour to your GMB to boost your local SEO even more. Add a virtual tour today and give your visitors a peek under the curtain.
12. Make Sure You Get the Tags Too
Tags are a great way to boost your SEO and increase your SERP ranking. However, to make the most out of tags, make sure you take your time with them. Hold meetings with your staff and teams and find out the best tags you can use for your site.
On your Google My Business account, look for the “about me” section. You’ll find a place for tags there. You can list all the relevant keywords and tags you want in that section. Make sure you get all of them, because a single tag may make a significant difference.
Creating tags is easy, but make sure you don’t do it in a hurry. Make sure you get as many relevant tags as you can for the best result.
13. Embrace Content Marketing
The ill-conceived notion that content marketing is only for large sites is, well, ill-conceived. Content marketing is still as effective for local businesses and maybe even more effective. If you want to get more local traffic, then content marketing is the way to go.
To capture the right audience, make sure your content centers on your niches. Also, make sure your content adds value to your target audience. “How to” articles are great or have content that aims to answer questions our customers frequently ask.
14. Get Backlinks From Other Local Businesses
Backlinks are a great way to promote your brand and also boost your local SEO. Backlinks are links on other business sites that lead straight to your products. There are plenty of businesses you can approach for backlinks.
For a classic win-win scenario, offer to backlink any business that backlinks yours. Proper backlinking is crucial for your brand’s marketing and local SEO too.
Boosting Your Local SEO Is a Breeze
With the above SEO tips, boosting your local SEO should be a walk in the park. However, it takes a lot of commitment and sacrifice to rank high on SERPs. Remember, you’re never too good for a bit of professional help.
Help with your local SEO is just a click away. Contact us today, and we’ll sort you out.
