Are you running a small business? Do you want to attract more customers from your local area? You should focus on optimizing your website for local SEO.
Local SEO is a potent marketing tool that can help you attract more customers while simultaneously lowering marketing costs. It’s based on using search keywords that contain local place names, while also targeting local users on social media, in business directories, and wherever people go to look for small businesses local to them. People performing local searches are much further down the purchase funnel and are usually much more prepared to make a purchase right away – plus, since they’re nearby, they’re in a position to patronize your local business. These are the people you want to target, and local SEO helps you find them. Here’s how to do it.
Register in Business Directories
You need to register your business in local business directories, so you can get closer to the people you want to target. You should also register your business in larger directories, like Angie’s List, Yelp, or HomeAdvisor. These listings can help generate backlinks to your website, which can boost your SEO. They also make it easier for local searchers to find your business. Just make sure your business information – name, address, phone number, website URL, and other information – is consistent and correct across all directories.
Get Active on Social Media
Social media platforms give you the opportunity to reach out and engage with local customers and people who might be interested in your business. You can talk with customers, share content from your website to generate backlinks, and advertise your services and promotions. Many people will engage with your company online only through social media – some don’t even use normal search engines like Google and Yahoo!, but will search for local businesses on social media platforms alone.
Create a Google Maps Profile
Google Maps & Search has supplanted the previous Google Business Profile, so you need to make sure you claim your business on Google Maps and that the information appearing in your listing there is correct. Your Google Maps profile should show potential customers where you’re located, what your hours are, what services you offer, and so on. It should show Google reviews for your business and photos of your products and services. You can even get into the Google 3 pack for local search returns – in fact, you’re much more likely to make it to the top of local search returns than general ones.
Optimize for Less-Used Search Engines
Not everyone uses Google – some use less popular sites like Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo. Make sure you optimize for these less-used search engines as well. You’ll need to claim a business profile on services like Apple Maps and Bing Places in order to attract local search traffic from these engines. This way, you’ll get local search traffic from multiple sources.
Tweak Your On-Page SEO
You should optimize your page for local search, using local search keywords and phrases in your title tags, meta descriptions, content, headings, and subheadings. Make sure that you include location data for your business, and if you have multiple locations, make sure they’re all covered. The more specific you get with your locally targeted SEO keywords and phrases, the more local traffic you’ll be able to attract to your website and the more conversions you’ll get.
Generate Backlinks to Your Site
Backlinks are a powerful tool to boost your off-page SEO by showing search engines that your site is considered authoritative and trustworthy. Building backlinks can be a time-consuming process, and it’s often one that’s best assigned to a company offering local SEO services in Phoenix or wherever you live. Otherwise, you will need to invest a lot of time into networking with influencers, bloggers, and other local business owners to generate backlinks to your site.
Create Content with Local Relevance
Each fresh blog post you add to your site is a new page that can be indexed by search engines, and it should include map-based search phrases and geo-targeted content. Adding fresh content to your site regularly can help it consistently appear in the top of search engine returns, and gives you the opportunity to optimize your site with additional SEO keywords. If you’re having trouble coming up with locally relevant content ideas, consider adding customer testimonials, employee profiles, company news, and write-ups of local industry events, as well as educational content. If you’re looking for an easy way to attract more customers to your small business, consider optimizing your site for local SEO. With local SEO, you can target the people who are already interested in your services, and turn more of your website visitors into customers.
