Local SEO is important and a powerful way to spread your business at any given geographical location.
Interesting facts:
About 46% of all Google searches are local. This means almost half of the Google searches are looking for local information. If your business is not optimized for Local search, you are missing out on a ton of business opportunities.
According to thinkwithgoogle.com, around 88% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone, tend to visit a related store within a week.
These are only a few facts and it is enough to tell you the importance of Local search optimization for your website. Any service or product you are offering can be reached more audiences if you have local search optimized for your website.
From anywhere you are offering your product or services through the web, you must leverage the local customers you can get through your website. Optimizing your website for local searches will increase your chances to make a sale whenever anyone around your business location makes a related search on Google.
With 88% of people visiting any local store after making a local search every week, there are 58% of the local searches made by people who visit a nearby related store everyday.
Enough with facts to make you understand how important it is to optimize your website for local searches. This is when Local SEO comes into play for your website. By the end of this blog, you will learn and will be applying the steps to optimize your website for local searches and rank your website higher.
What is Local SEO
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing your website to increase the online visibility of your local business. Local SEO focuses on optimization more on the basis of the geographical search location.
People search for stores, businesses, services, restaurants, etc. around their geographical location. The top results appearing in the local searches made on google are among the most acquiring business in that locality. Ranking higher on the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is what you want for your website.
Local search engine optimization will help you rank higher and compete with other local businesses at any geographical location. For example, if I am in London and want to eat Thai food nearby. I’ll make a search for “Thai Food Restaurant around me”. The search result will show me a list of Thai food restaurants nearby.
To rank higher on the SERP for Local searches, you will need to do put in a little more effort than the traditional SEO practices for your website.
This is where we would like our business or service website to appear when any local search related to our website is made.
To appear at the top ranks in the local search result will need to optimize a few important aspects of our website. Let us learn about all the optimizing elements of local SEO and how to do it.
According to a report published by Moz, there are a few factors that result in the Local SEO ranking of a website.
Here’s is your step-by-step guide to optimize your website for local SEO.
- Create and Optimize your Google My Business Page
- Make your website mobile friendly
- Create a contact page
- Add a map on your website
- Use Schema on your website
- Get quality inbound links and Improve internal linking
- Create profiles and engage on social media
- Ensure phone number, name and address are consistent online
- Create local contents
- Include testimonials and customer reviews on your website
- Perform a local SEO audit
We will learn about all the points in detail. By the end of this article, you will be easily able to apply these steps for yourself and make your website optimized for better Local Search results on SERP.
1. Create and Optimize your Google My Business Page
Google My Business has become the epitome of local searches. Claiming your Google My Business account will make you visible as a local business and Google will understand your service or business operations more clearly. This will enhance your search result visibility and trust with your visitor.
You can create your Google My Business account and connect your website with the same. With each local search when your business will appear your website can be reached with a single click.
Do add a clickable phone number for mobile searches made. Always remember that around one-third of the local searches are made from mobile. So having an active mobile number of your store or business or office on Google My Business profile will increase your chance of getting leads.
Google My Business will show the user a complete profile of your business profile you have made online. So After creating the profile don’t forget to add relevant images and any chance to collect reviews from your customers (about which we will talk in detail in the next points).
Ensure that your Google My Business profile has the following:
- Your business is verified by Google
- Your website is just one click away
- Your mobile number is active and clickable for calls when done a mobile search
- Posts within your profile
- Relevant Images of your business, store, or food outlet
- Google Map connected
- As many customer reviews as possible and you are actively engaged with them too
If you have these few points covered on your Google My Business profile and Google has verified your business then your ranking factors in SERPs for local searches has one point up that your customers.
When you are located at more than one location, do mention and verify all the locations in your Google My Business profile. This can be done easily using only a login account for any business.
2. Make your website mobile friendly
According to data by Google, 76% of all the local searches made from mobile end up in people visiting a place nearby physically.
Out of that 76%, there are 28% of those searches result in a purchase.
Having your website optimized for mobile adds a huge impact on the local search ranks of your website.
Most people use their mobiles to conduct local searches while traveling or looking for stores nearby. In general, searches also browsing through mobile has increased at a rapid pace in recent times. Almost half of the traffic comes through mobile in most instances.
According to Think with Google, “Near Me” searches on mobile have increased around 250% since 2017. So optimizing your website for a better mobile view will show a great impact on your local searches which will be actually resulting in leads and more business.
3. Create a contact page
Your website must have a dedicated contact page. People want more and more information when they look at your business. Having a dedicated contact page ensures that you have given enough details for your customers to connect to you through different mediums.
Your contact page must contain the following details:
- Name of your business
- Contact number
- E-mail Id (If relevant to your business)
- Your business address
Ensure these details are clearly mentioned on your website. Through this you are conveying a clear message about the availability of your business and anyone interested in your services can clearly reach you through their preferred method.
If you are located at more than one location, do mention that clearly on your website. Include the complete name and address of the locations if it is under 10. If you are at more than 10 locations you can just mention the city names and give address locations through your Google My business profile.
4. Add a map on your website
Local SEO in simple words means is to help people find you around their geographical location. Adding a map to your website is of great help and importance. Through the map, anyone searching for your store or office can locate and find you through your website easily.
As a matter of fact, around 86% of the local searchers will look for your location through Google maps. So it is vital that you have got the Google Maps location added of your business on your website.
5. Use Schema on your website
You must apply Local Business Schema or say Structured Data Markup to every page of your website. Schema.org was invented so that different search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing can have a common language to read websites. Applying Schema on every page of your website will it easier for the search engines to understand what your website is about.
Applying Schema will surely help your reach up the ranks in SERP. By adding the correct Schema markup for local businesses you will be telling the search engine that you are a geographically based business. This will boost your website whenever a relevant local search is made.
For any website, you can check whether your website has Schema markup working or not by using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. You can run a test on your website and see the breakdown results.
If you do not have Schema on your website, then you can add it easily by following the following steps.
– For any HTML website, you can add Schema using a simple tool called Hall Analysis. You can just fill in the information and copy the code that appears on the right-hand side.
Next, you will have to paste the code in the <head> section of your document or page.
– For the WordPress website, if you do not want to add anything manually you can simply add a plugin for Local SEO Schema. Yes, you can search in the add new plugin section and add the same, and activate it. This is how easy to add Schema to your website.
After you have optimized your website with Schema for local business you can expect better results in SERP. Optimizing for local SEO will help you gain more visits from local searches and with the possibility to make a sale.
6. Get quality inbound links and Improve internal linking
Getting quality inbound links is applicable for generic SEO as well as Local SEO. Getting links to your website from trusted websites and sources always adds to the credibility of the website. It tells the search engine that the website is trusted by many and this as a results increase your ranks in SERP.
There are many ways through which you can start getting inbound links to your website.
– Guest Blogging:
This is the easiest way you can start. You can write guest blogs for websites related to your niche and if it is published you will get a inbound link by the name of Author or publisher. You can also try to submit blogs to big internet media website and ask them to publish your articles. Getting inbound links from trusted sources which has higher domain authority will add value to your website.
– Partnerships:
You can collab with similar publishers or bloggers who write related to your business. For example if you have a Thai Restaurant and there is a food blogger who writes on related topics, you can ask him to mention your Restaurant in any blog which is about Thai food around your locality.
– Building relationship
Building relationships with businesses is a great way to attract quality inbound links to your website. You can start by writing thoughtful comments and leaving links to your website. You can join similar business groups and contribute to the conversations.
In addition to getting inbound links to your website you should also improve your internal linking structure. Internal linking helps in a better site navigation. This helps the search engine read the website more efficiently.
Internal linking will improve your website authority by conveying that more and more information is there for the visitors. This also enhances navigation across the pages for the visitors.
7. Create profiles and engage on social media
Social media is something that cannot be ignored at the present times. Every small or large business is on social media and target their audience. You cannot miss out on these. You must mark your presence on social media.
You should share content, images and relevant videos and engage with audience on social media to show your presence. Sharing and engaging with your audience will boost authority and trust of your business. You can also share you Google My Business profile on social media and show the audience that you are present nearby and they can reach you.
By being present and active on social media platforms you will be more visible to your possible customers. This will also give the search engine more information about your business and help you boost your ranking.
8. Ensure phone number, name and address are consistent online
For Local Businesses, it is important that you make it easy for people as well as Google to find you. You must set up your NAP, which stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. The NAP should remain constant across all the platforms. On your website contact page, Google My Business profile, and also across all the social media profiles; this must remain constant.
On your website make sure that you have added NAP as an HTML text which is crawlable. If you have added it only as an image form then you might want to update it in the form of HTML text.
9. Create local contents
Creating content is essential for any website to grow. You can create content in the form of blogs, videos, or infographics; whatever is relevant to your industry. Blogging is one of the best ways to get inbound links and increase domain authority.
You should share local news, information, industry gathering around your business through your website. When writing the posts make sure to add the neighborhood town or locality about which you are sharing information or news.
Write posts that can benefit your reader and industry community in some way. For example, if you are a restaurant, you can write about the different types of cuisines, you can write about cooking tips, share information about the history of the food that you serve.
Through the different forms of engaging content, you can reach your audience. You can also share links to your posts through social media and engage with your followers. Be the local authority of your business by promoting local industry news, information about gathering, and upcoming events or offers that customers can have benefited from.
You can also post interviews with any local expert and share it on your website and different social media platforms. Create a page on your website for blogs and keep the navigation to informative pages easy. This way people can visit the pages and read, share and engage with your business.
The search engine will also increase the domain authority of your website and this can surely push up the ranks in SERP.
10. Include testimonials and customer review on your website
Testimonial increases trust in your website. Customer testimonials and reviews will give confidence to potential customers in your business. This will result in getting more relevant leads and potential customers will visit you.
Testimonial and customer reviews are considered an important factor by the search engine to trust your website and thus increase your ranks in relevant search results. Google sees that customer satisfaction is important and testimonials are a great way to build trust.
For example for a Hotel, a customer sharing their opinion of stay and giving valuable insights will help more potential customers to trust the service provided by them. This is an important factor and should not be neglected by Local business owners.
Research shows that around 81% of people check the rating and read reviews when they conduct a Local search for any business. This is one of the most important ranking factors in Local searches. Reviews on Google My Business profile, response on your website content, and positive engagement on social media all add up to the ranking factor to your Local search result.
11. Perform a local SEO audit
After you have done the fundamentals complete for your website. You might want to perform a Local SEO audit. The audit will give you a better insight into all the pages. From this, you will get a list of changes you might do more for better results in SEO.
Few of the following information you can get and you can then do modifications if required to improve your page rankings.
– A complete performance of your website. How well your website is performing.
– Results of the Citation Audit. The NAP of the website is well organized or not. They must respond well. The audit will tell if the citations are working in place.
– On-Page SEO audit will tell you about all the on-page elements working and present on the website. On-page elements include meta descriptions, title tags, internal links, bold texts, schema, alt text, etc. From an on-page site audit, you will get to have a better understanding of all the working elements and what more you can improve.
– This will also give you an insight into your competitors. Competition analysis will be helpful to check areas of improvement and keyword ranking.
– Google My Business Audit will tell you how your profile appears in the SERPs. This will help you understand better how to keep improving your profile and keep engaging with your customers.
There are a few Local SEO tools that can help you improve you understand your website needs better. You can leverage these tools and apply the requirements on your website to reap better Local SEO results.
Whitespark Local Citation Finder
Citations are an important ranking factor for local searches. You can use this tool to locate and add required citations. This examines your competitors, recommends where to list your business, and monitors your citation growth to improve local search rankings.
Moz Local
Moz local will help you collaborate with data aggregators and help push your listing up. This also is cheaper than its competitors. Moz will also run a complete website audit and help you do modifications for better SEO results. It will help you ensure business listings on Google and Facebook and make sure they are verified.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the largest SEO tools out there. They help you a complete understanding in terms of SEO and Local SEO for your website. From helping in link building to suggesting keywords. They will do everything your business needs. You can also conduct a competition analysis using Ahrefs and apply certainly needed modifications to your website. It can help you with keyword terms if you want to run Local ads and much more.
Local SEO: Conclusion
For businesses at any geographical location, you must perform Local SEO optimizations to your website to get better results. By following the above steps and regularly engaging with your customers through Google My Business and other social media networks you can build trust with the search engine.
These processes will surely boost your ranks in the SERP. Well Local SEO alone is not enough. You must also follow the best SEO practices on your website. So that you are beating your competitors in all the aspects.
Any local business can excel if they are providing good customer service in whatever business they are in. The website and internet will add to bringing more business to you.