How To Create A Winning Local SEO Strategy For Your Business?

 

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Local SEO is an important part of any SEO strategy for local businesses. Optimizing your local SEO means more website traffic, leads, and conversions since the strategy is more relevant to your base of local customers. Local SEO enhances your online visibility.

If you have a storefront or service area, local SEO will help your audience find you when they search online. With 60% of consumers searching for local businesses online, local SEO is an essential marketing tool for businesses looking to attract potential customers.

Whether you have a physical location or an online business that serves a specific location, you need a strategy for targeting localized searches and users in your area. This is how you rank higher in Google search, outshine your competitors, and attract even more customers.

Local SEO Strategies relies on marketing your brand, products, and services to local leads and customers.

Does Your Business Need A Local SEO Strategy?

Most of the time, people are looking for products near them, rather than national or international options that may be harder to get. This is particularly prominent in service industries. Only businesses that serve a specific geographic location need to rank in local search for the key terms potential customers are searching for in their area.

 

Types Of Businesses That Need Local SEO

• Bars and restaurants. • Law offices. • Local contractors. • Plumbers. • Real estate companies. • Medical service providers. • Stores and 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!

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.

Now local SEO has a tendency to be a little confusing and seems to be a bit of a black hole to some folks, however, we have broken down the top 11 ways to optimize your website for local SEO for your browsing pleasure!

      1. Your Services And Products

Determine what terms you want your business to rank for. This will be based primarily on the services and/or products you offer

 Your goal here is to take stock of what your business offers and determine some key terms customers might be searching for to find a business like yours. Make a list of these terms to establish a starting off point for your keyword research. Later, you will use local SEO tools to search for these terms, identify geo-specific keywords, assess search volume, and ultimately decide which keywords to target on your website.

 

         2.Audit Your Website

Before jumping into optimizing your site, you need to determine what (if anything) is broken and whether your site has a solid foundation.

An SEO audit can help you identify any technical or on-page SEO issues that could hinder the success of your website. These issues should be addressed before you worry about creating new SEO content, building backlinks, etc.

Or you might decide to hire an SEO specialist who can thoroughly audit your site and come back with a list of items that need to be addressed.

 

      3. Conduct Competitor Keyword Research

One of the goals of local SEO is to not only rank in local search but to outrank your local competitors. In order to do this, you need to know what keywords they are ranking for and how.

Simply do a search of a competitor’s domain and your chosen SEO tool will generate a list of keywords they are ranking for organically. Then, you can see search volume and competition metrics to determine whether these keywords are a good fit for your own site.

Remember, you only want to target keywords that fit the service or products you offer, what your business is about as a whole, what your potential customers are searching for, and the location(s) you are targeting. You want to generate localized, relevant traffic to your site.

 

      4. Identify Geo-Specific Keywords

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. Combining these two lists, you can use SEO tools to research these terms to examine search volume and competition level. You can also look for geo-specific keywords by adding your location to the keywords you are searching for.

Continue conducting keyword searches until you have an exhaustive list of as many relevant, localized keywords as you can find. Be sure to search for different variations of the services or products you offer and the different areas you serve.

 

      5. Implement On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is all about optimizing your website for the localized keywords you identified.

 Here, you will be following on-page SEO best practices to ensure your site is optimized for local search.

This on-page optimization process involves:

•  Keyword Mapping
•  Title and Meta Description Optimization
•  Content Creation
•  Internal Linking
• Image Optimization
• URL Structure

     6. Create Localized Landing Pages

Localized landing pages are webpages created specifically for ranking in organic local 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. When done correctly, you can also run paid ads to these landing pages to not only drive organic traffic but paid traffic, as well. Just be sure to include compelling calls-to-action to entice users to contact you.

 

     7. Optimize Your Google Business Profile Listing

Google Business Profile is a free platform all local businesses can use to drive more traffic, generate customer reviews, and more. It’s essential for your business to have a fully optimized listing to increase your chances of ranking in search.

Simply create an account and 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

 

      8. Submit Business Info To Directory Listings

Beyond GBP, there are other online directories where you can submit your business information. The most reputable directories include Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing Places, and BBB, but there are countless others online.

 Your goal here should be to submit your information to authoritative and (ideally) localized directories in order to drive traffic, earn links, and improve your local SEO. Here, it’s important that your business name, address, phone number, and website URL (NAPW) are consistent across all directories.

If possible, try to find industry-related directories you can add your business to. At the same time, avoid spammy sites or paying for directory listings just to earn a link; not all directories are created equal.

 

      9. Establish a Localized Link Building Strategy

Link building is an important part of SEO in general, but localized link building can look a bit different from link building for other sites. Here, the physical location of the sites linking to your site is also important

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

 

  10. Generate Positive Customer Reviews

The number of positive reviews your website has on GBP 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 GBP, Yelp, Facebook, etc.

11. Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search ;will grow rapidly in the coming years. Therefore, in local SEO, it’s vital to optimize for how people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches.

Essentially, your customers use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches compared with regular search. Because of this, you’ll also have to adjust the SEO of your content to fit the more conversational tone of someone speaking.

Local SEO Tools

Now that we've covered how to optimize your business for local SEO, let's explore some useful tools you can leverage to improve your ranking in the areas where it matters most.

1.  Whitespark Local Citation Finder

 A local citation is any online mention of the name, address, and phone number for a local business. Citations matter because they help surface local businesses in online search, and when local businesses actively manage their citations to ensure data accuracy, it promotes trust of these online listings.

2. Moz Local

Moz Local will ensure your business listing has been verified on Google and Facebook, and distribute your listing across the search ecosystem. Additionally, Moz Local will collaborate with data aggregators to help push listings, ensuring your business gains visibility.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs also offers competitor analysis, keyword research, and insight into the anchor text other websites use when backlinking to your site.

4. BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a comprehensive SEO tool suite specifically built for local business marketing needs. The tool can help you generate and monitor reviews on local sites, understand your local search performance, and analyze nearby competitors.