Local SEO is the process of optimizing your business to attract more customers in its vicinity. If your business has a physical presence, it needs local SEO to thrive.
For example, you might run a car repair business, but there are other three car repair businesses in the same area.
So how do you ensure that more and more people come to you for anything related to car repairs? The answer is- through local SEO best practices.
You might have noticed that whenever you conduct local searches such as finding salons near you or restaurants nearby, Google comes up with a list of nearby businesses related to your search.
Local SEO optimization tries to ensure that your business not only appears in that list but also tops it. This is to ensure maximum footfall at your business location.
There are several local SEO strategies that a business can implement for itself. However, getting in touch with local SEO consultants make the task much smoother and easier to accomplish.
Local SEO consultants are experts in executing local SEO strategies and know what works best for the kind of business you run.
Local SEO Checklist 2021 | Top 5 Local SEO Best Practices You Should Know
Let us look at the best local SEO strategies your SEO consultant can implement in 2021 to improve the reach in your area.
1. Create Google My Business (GMB) Listing
In 2021 too, the first local optimization tip that’ll come your way is to create your Google My Business listing.
GMB listing is equivalent to listing yourself on yellow-pages. Although yellow pages are redundant now, GMB still exists and plays a vital role in bringing your brick and mortar business to people’s notice.
Setting up your GMB listing is relatively easy. Complete your profile stepwise and ensure that you provide the right information. Choose the right business category to ensure that it appears on Google search for relevant queries.
You can optimize your GMB listing with a description of your business, add images and videos and once your listing is live, you can even write small posts and share updates related to your business there.
Moreover, once your GMB listing is active, please ask your customers and clients to leave ratings along with reviews and feedback about your business if they are happy with what you’ve offered them. This will help other people to understand the quality of your products or services and encourage them to visit your store.
2. Keep Your NAP Information Consistent
Besides Google My Business, there are a few other business listing sites where you can add information about your business. This will help you get more exposure and people will be able to discover your business location and contact information very easily.
A common problem that appears when you add your business information to multiple local listing sites is a discrepancy in the business information provided. For example, you list your business on GMB in January 2021 and on Yelp in February 2021.
However, the business phone number you had in January had to be changed, and you now have a new connection for February. Now, when people discover your business on both GMB and Yelp, they find almost all information to be similar except the phone numbers!
This can confuse the user, and he/she might choose to ignore your business altogether and find another alternative. Therefore, whenever you add or update any information about your business, remember to update the same on all the local listing sites.
The NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) information of a local business is crucial for people willing to visit the place physically. Any inconsistency in NAP should be addressed immediately.
3. Target Local Keywords
One of the essential parts of local SEO optimization is to target local keywords. You may want to target city-based keywords or drill down to hyperlocal keywords based on your conversion goals.
Once you list down the local and hyperlocal keywords to target, the next step is to optimize your website with them. When it comes to website optimization, you not only have to ensure that you optimize the content with keywords but also write additional content to accommodate as many keywords as possible.
Moreover, you also need to optimize the headings, title tags, and meta descriptions for your website. You also need to optimize your local keywords into your URLs if possible. When you implement these changes on your site, you’ll have to ensure that the keywords are added naturally to your site and not stuffed.
4. Create Local Content
Speaking of local SEO optimization, the benefits of creating locally relevant content cannot remain far behind. If you want to maximize your lead generation through local SEO, you need to create locally relevant evergreen content.
If you sell electric cars, you can write content on the benefits of using electric cars over conventional ones or gather data on how automobile emission has led to climate change in your locality year over year. Such type of content is not only relevant to your business but also help promote it.
5. Focus on Building Quality Inbound Links
Inbound links play an important role in determining the quality of your site. Building backlinks is a gradual process that takes time, especially when you aim to get link-backs from high-quality websites.
For local businesses, the process of getting inbound links is a little different. You can get in touch with influential people in your niche industry like contractors, suppliers, distributors, and wholesalers and try finding opportunities to place contextual links on their sites.
Another way to build links is through guest posting. You can find sites that accept guest posts related to your niche and then write custom emails to the webmasters requesting them to accept your guest post request. Once approved, you can expect an inbound link to your site in exchange.
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