How to Boost SEO Strategy for Your Business. Local SEO is one of best marketing tools for new business. Increase traffic . With consumers searching for local businesses online, local SEO is an essential marketing tool for companies to attract customers.
Does Business Need a Local SEO Strategy
Companies that serve a specific location need to search for the key terms l customers and search for the area. Google considers many local search ranking signals when determining how to organize a website in the Map Pack. This is why it’s essential to be strategic about your local SEO to cover bases and give business to edge.
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Businesses Need SEO
- restaurants.
- Law office.
- Local contractor.
- Plumber.
- Real estate companies.
- boutiques.
- Hair salons.
- Government agencies.
- Local non-profit organizations.
- Coffee shops.
- Local consultants.
- Manufacturers.
- Local marketing agencies.
- Museums.
- Auto dealers.
- Photographers.
- Colleges and universities.
- Casinos.
- Any other business that wants to be found!
Benefits of Local SEO
There are several undeniable benefits of having a local SEO strategy. The first benefit that comes to mind for most people is increased traffic, but there are many more perks that can drive your business growth.
Some of the benefits of local SEO include:
- Increased organic traffic.
- More relevant traffic.
- Reduced ad costs.
- Higher website authority.
- More customer reviews.
- Increased brand awareness and trust.
- More localized backlinks.
- Improved social signals.
- Better website experience for users.
Creating Your Local SEO Strategy
Once you’ve determined that your website needs local SEO, it’s time to create a strategy for increasing your local rankings and website traffic.
Take Stock of Services and Products
Determine terms you want the business to rank. It will be based primarily on the services and products.
You have a local digital marketing agency, and chances for your services include “social media marketing,” “Face book marketing,” “paid advertising,” and the like.
Your goal is to take stock of your business and determine critical terms you might be searching for business.
Audit Website
Jump into optimizing the site and determine what is broken and whether the site has solid. SEO can help you identify any technical or on-page SEO issues that could hinder the success of your website. These issues should be addressed. You might decide to hire an SEO specialist who can audit the site and come back with a list of items that need to be addressed.
Some SEO issues to look out for:
- Site speed.
- Missing titles.
- Meta description.
- Broken link
Competitor Keyword Research
The goal of local SEO is to rank in local search and outrank your local competitors. To do this and you need to know what keywords are ranking for.
SEO tools like Ashraf help you to competitive analysis and what terms your competitors are ranking and where backlinks are coming from. You also see what keywords your site is already ranking for.
Simply search competitor domains, and choose an SEO tool and
search volume and competition metrics to determine whether these keywords are suitable for your site.
Remember only want to target keywords that fit the products you offer, what your business is your potential customers are searching the location(s) you are targeting.
Specific Keywords
Using a previous example, let’s say you own a Mexican food restaurant in Seattle, Washington.
In step 1, you identified some terms that summarize what your business offers. In step 2, you researched your competitors to see what keywords they were targeting.
You can use SEO tools to research these terms to examine search volume and competition level by combining these two lists. You can also look for geo-specific keywords by adding your location to the keywords you are searching for.
For example, a Semrush search for “Mexican food Seattle” generated a longer list of keyword variations, including:
- [best Mexican food Seattle]
- [Mexican food west Seattle]
- [cheap Mexican food Seattle]
- [Mexican food capitol hill Seattle was]
Implement On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is all about optimizing your website for the localized keywords you identified in steps 2-4.
Here, you will follow on-page SEO best practices to ensure your site is optimized for local search.
This on-page optimization process involves:
- Keyword Mapping: Mapping your target keywords to the individual pages of your website. Ideally, each page will have a target keyword that is relevant to what the page is about.
- Title and Meta Description Optimization: Including your target keywords in the page titles and meta descriptions across your website. Make sure each page has a unique title and description.
- Content Creation: Writing informative, keyword-optimized content that explains what your business is about and the services/products you offer. Write with your target audience in mind, but include your target keywords throughout.
- Internal Linking: Add internal links between various pages on your website. These will help users find the information they are looking for and more easily access your important pages.
- Image Optimization: Include eye-catching images with optimized alt text. Try to include your target keywords, if possible. Reduce the file size of your images to reduce website load time.
- URL Structure: Create concise URLs for all of your pages and posts. Ideally, each URL should include the target keyword for that page. Fix any broken links on your site.
Create Localized Landing Pages
Localized landing pages are web pages created specifically for ranking in local organic search. These pages should be optimized with the geo-specific keywords you’ve identified and include informative content that draws in your target audience.
Best practices for creating landing pages include having optimized H1, H2, and H3 headings, writing keyword-optimized body content, including internal links, adding images, and optimizing for mobile search.
You can also run paid ads to these landing pages to drive organic traffic and paid traffic when done correctly. Just be sure to include compelling calls to action to entice users to contact you.
Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
My business is a free platform all local businesses can use to drive more traffic, generate customer reviews, etc. Your business needs to have a fully optimized listing to increase your chances of ranking in search. Simply create an account, claim your business, or create a new listing. Then, you can include your business address, phone number, website URL, images, hours, and more so users can learn more about you.
There’s a reason why GMB is considered the most valuable local marketing service. Use GMB to your advantage by fully optimizing your listing to improve your local SEO over time.
Submit Key Business Info to Directory Listings
Beyond GMB, there are other online directories where you can submit your business information. The most reputable guides include Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing Places, and BBB, but countless others are online.
Your goal here should be to submit your information to authoritative and (ideally) localized directories to drive traffic, earn links, and improve your local SEO. Here, it’s essential that your business name, address, phone number, and website URL (NAPW) are consistent across all directories.
Establish a Localized Link Building Strategy
Link building is an integral part of SEO, but localized link building can look slightly different from link building for other sites. Here, the physical location of the sites linking to your site is also essential.
Try to attract links from other businesses in your geographic area. Also, create localized content to drive local links, requesting localized anchor text to generate the best results.
A few ways to earn backlinks include:
- Directory submissions.
- Outreach.
- Guest posting.
- Creating content assets.
Generate Positive Customer Reviews
The number of positive reviews your website has on GMB is a significant ranking factor for local SEO. Therefore, one of your top goals as a local business owner is to generate as many positive reviews as possible – ideally, across all your directory platforms.
Conducting client exit interviews is a great way to ask clients for reviews after your engagement. You can also send follow-up emails to customers asking them to review you on GMB, Yelp, Face book, etc.
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Conclusion
Search Engine Journal recently released a complete guide to local SEO for businesses. This guide covers everything from what local SEO is to finding link opportunities to using social media to improve your SEO.
Start with these resources if you’re ready to create your own local SEO strategy. You can audit your site and establish a data-driven SEO plan to improve your rankings, drive traffic, and dominate local search.
