Local SEO practices make sure that your brand’s website positions high in Google in your local areas. Do you want to be found out by people or clients locally? What else can you do besides including your address and opening hours on your site?
This Local SEO guide for WordPress encourages you to set up your site in such a way that will rank your business higher in Google and other search engines, as well as improve the physical presence of your brand in local areas. In addition to that, it enhances the use of the contact page of your site to a great extent.
Here I want to clarify one thing: setting up a WordPress website or plug-in for your local businesses is easy, but optimizing it for SEO can be hectic. That’s why this guide exists. Check out the technical aspects of our Local SEO on WordPress.
Moz Local
Moz local shows the factors that rank the positions in Google’s local search. Being a local brand, you have to focus on the Moz ranking factors. Moreover, citations are 25% of local SEO. Moz local will help you generate and improve your top citations and keywords. This is just like Google My Business, where you have to make sure that your profiles are 100% complete. All duplicates are removed, so make sure all consistent information is present. Put your URL and zip code through Moz Local. Pick up the most accurate listings and go through each one of them. See all the suggestions. Note that you will also need each profile’s login info.
Improve Your Keywords
Once you have created your listings, you will witness incomplete, inconsistent, and duplicate tags and keywords in the search engine. Go through each one of them and try to fix all of them. You have to make sure that all the listings and keywords should refer to the parent name of your brand.
Incomplete, inconsistent, and duplicate tags and keywords can be refined by paying attention to detail. You can also upload more photos or add categories to create perfect listings. Sometimes you will only have 1-2 categories to work with, so it’s not always possible to refine your profiles 100%. Just do everything you can.
Replace the Default Permalinks Framework
WordPress utilizes the default permalinks framework for posts. This framework is not search-engine friendly and you’ll lose the chance to put a couple of vital keywords in the content. So you have to replace this structure. Try yo use the ‘yourdomain.com/year/month/post-name/’ organization. However, you can pick some other comparable structure. Default framework does not have the capacity to deal with diverse factors. That’s why creating your own framework will definitely enhance the performance of your WordPress website.
Include Google Maps
The Inclusion of Google maps can be a plus for your WordPress site. This extra function will make it convenient for your clients to (physically) discover the area of your organization.
Add Your Company’s Address
The addition of your company’s address on your website really adds credibility to your brand. This makes it easy for your customers to find your organization physically. Moreover, including all the necessary and basic information can also improve the ranking of your WordPress site in search engines.
Show Your Company’s Hours
You must add the working hours of your company to your website. This will let your customers know the best time to approach you online, as well as the best time to visit your outlet physically.
Include a Store Locator
Adding location is very important. The store locator will tell your customers how to easily discover the nearest location of your company’s outlet. Apart from that, clients can fill in their street number, and a list of the closest stores will show up.
Use Specific Keywords
Be sharp and be innovative. Select specific keywords to describe the specifications of your brand and the services you are offering. You have to explore multiple services instead of just focusing one primary keyword (not a good strategy). You can use the Google keywords planner or the Moz keyword explorer. These tools are not only free, but also ensure that you are not missing vital keywords. In addition to that, you can assemble a list of a wide range of keywords so you know that you’re not browsing through the exact same keywords again and again.
Internal / External Links
Google sends crawlers that examine the links available on your page. The purpose is to learn what your content is all about. The important thing is to include the links to useful content on your WordPress site. Interlinking your site to blog articles/pages is also a natural and very effective method of link building for your own website, but outbound links are good too, since it’s sort of like referring to sources to Google.
One last thing: always use expressive link text (called anchor text). Use anchor text link like “about us”, “our product” or “our services,” but never “click here,” as it does not look professional.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness is a very key element. Most people explore websites through mobile devices or tablets. Let’s suppose I’m the user and exploring your website with my smartphone. All of the sudden I have discovered that your WordPress website does not display well on my screen. Now what I will do? I will straight away shift to some other site. So, create a WordPress site that is responsive to all devices. To get rid of mobile errors, setup the “Google Search Console” and use the mobile usability section.
