A local SEO strategy can help in increasing the revenue of a business. For most companies, an effective SEO strategy is key to increasing conversion. A local SEO strategy can help your website ranking higher up than other popular websites.
Also, if you optimize your website for the local searches, it will also improve the visibility for the keyword searches done in your location. A lot of factors of local SEO remained the same in the last few years. However, local ranking factors play a vital role now.
One of the most important factors to consider for every business is Google My Business. In this blog today, we are going to tell you how to create a strong local SEO strategy for your business.
What are the most effective ways to create a local SEO strategy?
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Get instant visibility with Google My Business
Google My Business is extremely important in driving local business. Google is the most-used search engine (both in desktop and mobile) as of June 2020.
The best benefit of GMB is, it helps you in getting instant visibility. Instead of ranking your own domain, your website gets instant search visibility from the local searches in the vicinity.
According to the 2020 State of Local SEO Industry Report, proximity is the third-most influential ranking factor after on-page SEO and reviews. Your company can appear on the first page of the results considering the distance between your location and the user’s location.
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Optimize the GMB profile – how to do it?
Optimizing the GMB listing is the same that you would do for your website. The more detail you provide to the search engines, the more information the search engines will have. Thus, the search engines provide your business as a source of reference when searched with relevant keywords of your business.
Fill every NAP details (Name, address, phone number) and make sure they are spelled correctly. Now, check all the category options. A lot of businesses get ranked just by adding the right category to their business.
Google will update the list of eligible categories that your business comes under. Check for new categories periodically. Use the Local Finder for the categories that your competitors are using to get ranked in the top positions.
Finally, get the keyword optimization done. On-page SEO works as the best ranking factor. A simple strategy is to use keywords in the name of your business. If you start a business that operates in a specific city, then it is very effective to include the main keyword in the name of your business.
A lot of digital marketers think that this could lead to keyword stuffing or penalizing from Google. But it doesn’t happen. Evidence proves that this is working and offers the benefit of local traffic.
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Using citations to develop a local presence
Citations are important in local SEO. They have two important purposes – to validate the business information for search engines and to offer additional targeted traffic.
Thus, it is important to get your business listed in popular directories. Some of the pretty obvious directories include Yahoo and Bing. The popular directories act as a source of information that distributes your business information to numerous other directories.
However, the directories from different each country and regions will vary. Thus, it is important to know which ones will have the best impact on your business with lesser effort. For instance, Yellow Pages is a great option in Canada. If you post your business on Yellow Pages, it will distribute your business information to a lot of websites.
Then you can do a search on niche-specific and location-specific directories. Getting a few links from those directories that are in your location and niche will also improve the relevance of your website. Search with [Your Location] + directories or [Your Niche] + directories.
Also, it is important to qualify in every directory. You have to choose only those sites that have higher traffic and better domain authority. Check whether the sites have a higher spam score. These factors can do more harm than good.
SEMRush is a good tool to check whether a website receives good traffic or not. if the organic traffic is not high enough, then you should not list your company website on it. The end goal is to try and get your company placed on the sites that get relevant and high-quality traffic.
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Create a content strategy
Always remember that your website is as good as the content you create on it. Content writing serves as an important resource of information for clients. Educational content offers 3X more leads than paid ads.
Thus, you will need to offer both educational contents as well as local SEO content for better local search results. Initially, you can focus on creating more pages with local service areas in mind. As your business grows, consider whether you will serve in one specific location or multiple areas.
If you are focusing on a single location, then you can use geo-modifiers in the URLs and titles. Optimize the service and product pages so that they come up with city-specific searches.
For businesses with multiple service areas, you have to publish the location pages according to the target areas you want your business to appear. The location pages must have unique content for every city including the NAP details.
Create content for every level of the marketing funnel. The most important pages are the ones that urge visitors to purchase. Create a content strategy on publishing mid-funnel content that will target the long-tail keywords. The best idea is to find low competition and high-volume keywords.
Publish local content with city-specific events with which your company is involved in. The local content strategy needs to include regular posts on GMB. Create a bi-weekly posting schedule.
You don’t need to create long posts. You can create short engaging posts, use images of products to attract more customers, use summary from your blogs or articles. There is also a separate section for special offers and updates about your company.
Images act as a good source of customer attention
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Local Link Building
Most of the local businesses have a backlink profile that is made up of directory links and profile links. Use the blog of your local business for building authority in your industry. Create linkable assets and insightful resources for both clients and amplifiers.
Amplifiers have a major impact on the backlinks that you get because they are the people who will most likely to link your website. Creating content for the amplifiers will offer your site much more reasons to get links and increase the domain authority.
With linkable and shareable content it becomes easier to build links. Create guest posts, submit press releases, and then reach out to the sites with high domain authority.
Local links are powerful when it is about localized search results. The local links are considered unstructured citations. The local links come from local businesses, newspapers, local event sites, and the chamber of commerce.
Create a local business alliance. Finding a business in your industry is perfect to create an alliance. This will boost your website ranking ability. How? Let us suppose you are a hot tub retailer. Thus, some of your best links will come from certain businesses that sell swimming pools.
Unless you are competing for the same products, a local business in your industry is the best source of links. You can also build resources by targeting vendors and client sites. Improve the chances of getting local links by using your network of resources.
The companies that you are doing business with can be ideal link prospects. For instance, a restaurant can ask the baker that supplies their bread rolls to link their site. target the business owners with who you already have a connection.
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Review Management
The reviews have the power to make or break a business. This is why handling the reviews should always be a priority for any business. This will help in improving search visibility and maintain a good reputation.
Firstly, identify the most important sites for review in your industry. For instance, a lot of companies choose Yelp or TripAdvisor for restaurants. If you are not sure which review sites are good, then use “best + [your keyword]+[your city]”.
The keywords that you are targeting, will display a few directories, and review sites in the search result. Those sites will not only increase optimization but they will also increase your site traffic.
Secondly, you can create a review acquisition strategy. But don’t send out mass emails because that will look spammy. Train the employees to ask for a review once the sale is complete or you can email your customers to thank them and add a few review sites along with it.
Finally, respond to as many reviews as possible and make sure you respond to both negative and positive reviews. Reviews offer a chance to better your customer service. For the negative reviews, the best idea is to respond as quickly as possible because that will reduce the damage to your reputation. Show your customers that you deal with an issue of another customer with an intention to fix it.
In conclusion, it can be said that small businesses cannot miss out on the benefits of a local SEO strategy crafted by a digital marketing agency. If you follow these guidelines, you will be able to make the best use of local SEO and get ahead of your competition in a very short time.
