Search engines play an indispensable part of any successful business strategy, helping drive traffic, conversions and revenue for online businesses.
Local SEO allows your business to attract customers in its local area by ranking on Google’s map pack and organic results pages, while simultaneously increasing credibility and trust with potential customers.
Keywords
Local keywords are terms people use when searching for products and services in their locality. Local SEO keywords are crucial for businesses that rely on local customers as it allows them to rank highly in search engines and increase organic traffic.
With mobile phones being ubiquitous these days, more people than ever before are using local searches on them and visiting businesses nearby within days or so of performing a search.
Google’s algorithms have become adept at recognizing local intent, providing results most pertinent to a user’s location – something known as proximity factor.
Careful selection of keywords is vital to a successful local SEO campaign, and many tools exist that can assist in this regard.
On-page optimization
Search engines such as Google rely on various forms of data to assess the relevance of website content. This includes such factors as its text, HTML elements (such as title tags and meta descriptions), internal links and more.
Optimizing your website for specific keywords helps search engines better understand how well the page answers user inquiries and increases the chance that people click through from search engine results pages to your website, leading to more organic traffic and increased conversions.
Optimization involves both SEO best practices and technical considerations that fall under your control – for instance, site load speed is an integral component in Google’s evaluation for ranking purposes.
Create content that meets Google Quality Rater Guidelines is another key aspect of on-page optimization. Google wants to show its users only original, high-quality material, so its web crawlers identify and evaluate high-quality sites.
Off-page optimization
To achieve optimal search engine results, both on-page and off-page SEO strategies must be employed in tandem. But which off-page strategies work for your particular needs?
Off-Page SEO involves expanding your online presence through content marketing, social media presence management, link building and guest blogging. While on-page SEO focuses on making sure that your website is well structured and optimized, off-Page SEO seeks to expand that presence further still by optimizing its presence across various channels on the Internet. This could include everything from content creation and social media optimization through to link building strategies and guest blogging.
Establishing links from trusted websites can have a dramatic impact on your rankings and help build the reputation and authority of your brand.
Off-page SEO strategies such as responding to reviews, listing your business in local directories, and creating a Google My Business account can all help your local presence appear on the first page of searches for its specific location.
Link building
Link building is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization, as it helps drive direct traffic directly to your website and boost its search engine ranking.
Local SEO link building involves gathering links from businesses located within a specific region. This approach can be especially effective for local businesses as it reaches consumers who are more likely to purchase from you.
Make sure that when creating content for local customers, a variety of keywords are used in your content creation to rank for more search terms. This will increase traffic to your page from local customers.
Reaching out to your network of business partners and offering them the chance to guest blog on your site can also be an effective strategy for local SEO link building, and will produce backlinks that benefit both of you.