The New Year has kicked off and it is time for digital marketers to start off on the right foot by rolling out their digital marketing strategies. In today’s post, we will provide you with simple yet effective local SEO tips so that your business can dominate search rankings in 2017 and beyond.
The concept of Local SEO has gained traction for the following two reasons—
- Majority of search queries come from mobile devices which make location a crucial factor; and
- Google has been giving priority to organic local results for desktop searches as well.
Local SEO campaigns are quite different than general SEO campaigns. Though it is a challenging task to implement a local SEO strategy, it has the potential to provide your business with exceptional benefits. Local SEO strategies can provide your brand with better online visibility besides maximizing your online presence.
Here are few guidelines to help you execute local SEO strategies so that you can get the most out of it.
- Find out the Right Keywords: Once you launch a campaign using Google Adwords, you need to utilize the keyword tool and incorporate it into your website so that the tool can extract countless keywords relevant to your business. Once the keyword tool presents the relevant keywords, you can delete all the Ad Groups on the left column which is not relevant to your business. Now you will find five to fifteen keyword phrase groupings that your business can rank for. After highlighting the different groups, you need to optimize a different page for each group of keyword phrases.
- Utilize Google My Business (GMB): This easy-to-use tool launched by Google helps brands to get free business listings on Google. With the help of GMB, businesses can reflect their information on Google Search Engine, Google Plus, and Google Maps once they add their business details to it. GMB is beneficial not only for businesses but also for customers as this tool helps your customers identify your business easily. When filling your GMB page, make sure you provide complete, consistent, and accurate information. Also, ensure that the GMB location listed by you is verified by the owner. Last but not least, do not forget to mention the specific city that you are targeting in the title of GMB landing page.
- Maintain Consistency in NAP (Name, Address & Phone): In order to gain greater online visibility, ensure that your contact details are accurate. At the same time, you should use a uniform template for your NAP on your website, Google Plus account, GMB page, online business directories, and other sites where these particulars appear online. This will help your business build a solid relationship with the location you are willing to target.
- Utilize Positive Reviews: Positive feedback helps businesses significantly by establishing credibility. Google gives utmost precedence to business reviews and also considers them while ranking your website. The reason why you should capitalise on your business reviews is because people seeking information about your business count on the reviews to understand the quality of your business and if they will be benefitted by your offerings or not. Thus, you should motivate your customers to write reviews about your business. By providing top-notch service to your customers and going beyond their expectations, you can easily generate positive reviews about your business.
- Make Sure You Publish Unique, Enlightening and Comprehensive Content: Ensure that your web pages contain unique and engaging content so as to keep your online visitors engrossed. Moreover, by focusing on regular organic SEO, you can significantly improve your local ranking on Google. At the same time, to protect your Google ranking, make sure you follow SEO guidelines recommended by Google, instead of employing unethical SEO tactics.
- Utilize Citations Properly: Citations lend credibility to your website besides building authority and driving traffic to your site. While considering citations, make sure your citations are uniform. At the same time, to gain a competitive edge, ensure that the citations used by you are from superior websites. Another indispensable requirement is to have several industry-relevant or locally-relevant domains that talk about your business in a good light.
- Set up Different Web Pages for Different Store Locations/Products: If your business has stores in different cities or in different localities within a city, it is advisable to have separate web pages for each store location. You can also incorporate separate links for each store location on a single page. This will help your customers to easily find information about specific stores.
Similarly, if you offer a wide array of products or services, make sure that each product/ service you offer has its own webpage with specific product/ service description.
So these are some local SEO tips that you can incorporate into your local SEO campaign. Though many webmasters find it difficult to implement local SEO, a good understanding of Google’s directives and adherence to fair practices can help you considerably in rolling out your local SEO campaign.
