Local SEO Tips: 5 Best Ways to Improve Your Local Rankings
Local SEO services are important for small businesses that serve a local area instead of the whole country. Local SEO is more concerned with showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) in a specific area than national SEO is. This plan is based on marketing your brand, products and services to leads and customers in your area.
Optimising your local SEO will increase website traffic, leads and sales because your strategies will be more relevant to your local customers. By focusing on a specific local SEO strategy, you will be on the playing field with bigger brands that often optimise for broader keywords and rely on brand recognition rather than value propositions to drive traffic.
Here are the top five ways to do well with local SEO:
- Create an account on Google My Business.
Optimising your Google listing (also called your Business Profile) can be the best way to rank higher on Google Maps and show up in Google Search’s local results. To make these optimisations to your Business Profile, you need a Google My Business account linked to that profile. As soon as you fill out all of the information asked for in your Google My Business dashboard, it will be added to your Business Profile. Your Business Profile will then appear in Google Search local results, the Google Search Knowledge Panel and Google Maps.
- Optimise your site for voice search.
In the upcoming years, voice search will grow quickly. So, in local SEO, it’s important to focus on how people ask questions when they talk to their devices instead of how they type them.
- Use local news stories or events to inspire your writing.
There’s no improved way to get the attention of local customers than to write content that speaks directly to or is about a local issue.
- Focus on keywords in your area.
Google’s own Keyword Planner lets you sort keyword searches by location, so you can see which ones are most popular in a certain area. This lets you make a list of keywords that are important in your area. Once you have them, you should use them in your site’s meta content, copy and URLs.
- Make use of online business directories.
Putting your business’s name, address and phone number in the directories will make your business more visible and help your local SEO.
SEO is ever-changing. Google will add new features to its local SERPs at some point. Always keep up with local SEO. By implementing these actions, you can guarantee that your company takes advantage of local searches and has a strong basis for new SEO features. DigiMore, a local SEO company, can assist if you need it.