Local SEO is so important for small businesses. 46% of searches on Google are for local searching only. Local SEO gave much visibility to many businesses but it got more value during COVID-19. To grow your business you have to follow some local SEO strategy.
When many businesses closed on the physical level whole attention moved towards local search and it made a huge impact within many industries. Many business owners have registered themselves for local listing during the pandemic.
It helps you to have potential customers and give visibility to a targeted audience who will probably get converted. Online profiles are one of the big opportunities for your business or your brand to make a great impact.
what is local SEO in digital marketing?
Local SEO is a form of digital marketing which helps local businesses to grow online. It shows your businesses on Search Engines. It drives organic traffic for your business through keywords on search engines especially “near me” or “nearby” from the surrounding targeted audience.
Local SEO optimize your online profiles on Search Engine. Even though globalization, in 2022 planning about local SEO strategy is still relevant.
Why is Local SEO important for small businesses?
Here are a few facts for your knowing how important local SEO
- Reviews matter the most. As 82% of people make decisions after viewing the reviews of businesses only within 14 minutes of the average time before making decisions.
- 94% of internet users use their mobile devices for local searches.
- Google Maps helps 86% of mobile users to reach local business locations.
- In a survey, it was found that 61% of people do local searches on a daily basis.
- Around 83% of people get to know their nearby businesses through local searches.
Top 10 Local SEO tips and tricks to reach the local market.
1. Optimize for Google My Business
It is very important to optimize your Google My Business and keep it up-to-date. You need to provide updated information about your business for your customers.
There are Google posts also available through which you can keep posting about the product and services of your business and your customers will get to know about you more easily. This creates trust in your business for the people who are linked to your business.
Do ask them to send feedback and reviews. Feedback and reviews are very important. It will even create more customers for you as online business reviews and feedback are a great way to earn new customers as well.
Here are a few tips which will help you in Local SEO:
- Create an account on Google My Business
- Keep posting your goods and services on your account
- Keep your customers engaged with your activities
2. Ensure your business data are consistently online
Business data includes name, address, and phone number especially. These things need to be consistent for your business. For the very first time when you create an account at that time make sure to put original and updated data because it will help your customers to connect with you.
Set up your NAP, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. Set these things in an easy way such as name, and name your business in a way that will be easy for your user and customer to remember and rectify.
Business data also include business hours which is very important for your customers to come to your address or to associate with you at the given time. These information pages must be crawlable to appear on search engines.
3. Optimize Online Directories and Citations
You should even register your businesses on online directories.
It will help you to give more visibility.
There are many Free directory websites available such as:
- Tripadvisor
- Yelp
- MapQuest
- Angi (formerly Angie’s List)
- Citysearch
- Whitepages
- MerchantCircle
- HomeAdvisor
You should even keep an eye on your citations to see whether they are up to date or not. Your citations should always be the same for all of your online platforms, websites or Google My Business accounts.
Pro Tip: Keep NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) consistent on all the citations.
4. Perform a Local Audit
Local Audit is a part of SEO. It must be done to see how well things are working for you, what is not working for you or what can be improved for your business. Here are a few steps to perform your local audit.
Manage your Google My Business Profile:
Manage your profile, and complete your all data information. Add photos, videos and all the other services must be shown in a very representative way.
Check your keyword:
Keywords are a very important aspect of SEO or Local SEO. Keywords must be in a form must meets your business and its requirements. You should select keywords as per your audience, to target your audience in your specific niche.
For example: If you have a bakery shop then for local SEO your keywords must be: “bakery near me” and many such and for local businesses “near me” is the main keyword which will help your local people to reach you.
Inspect your backlinks:
Your backlinks tell Google about your business. Make sure to make backlinks among your niche and from the website which have high DR and nice traffic so making backlinks with them can drive their traffic to your business as well.
5. Improve your Internal Linking
Internal linking will help you to boost your SEO ranking. It will support and navigate your site easily. It distributes page authority through your internal linking structure.
It even helps users coming on one webpage of yours to drive them to another through internal linking. Likewise, your other page also gets user attention.
6. Optimize Your Pages with On-Page SEO Practices
Optimizing on-page data includes URLs, title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, and content. Whenever new content is formed a new page is made. Your content must have great keywords through which you can link your website internally or externally.
Title tags: Title tags are important as before reading the article the title itself must tell you about it.
Meta descriptions: Meta tags are small descriptions for your article information that tell a 2 line story about it.
Content: “Content is a King”. It is informative and very original according to your niche.
These all things are important for on-page optimization.
7. Add location pages to your websites
A website has many pages. Likewise, there are location pages too. Location pages help you to create a business in different localities with one website.
Through one website you can create hundreds of locations.
For Example: If you have a skin clinic in New York City. You can even create pages for Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx. This gives visibility to you and whatever content you put on your website to all the localities on the local pages you have made. This is how it works.
8. Create local content
When content creator writers they really need to write about what the user is in search of not thinking of search engine ranking. When you are doing local SEO it is very important to provide local news and information to reach out to them. Write about the local news and local content happening around must create content on it.
9. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
While creating a website make sure your website is mobile-friendly as well. 64% of the searches are done by mobile. By making the website mobile-friendly website you will be able to get more visibility from everywhere or 64% is a huge amount to be left.
Making a mobile-friendly website gives you a chance to have more customers and showcase your business and services to a large audience.
10. Participate in the local community
A local community is where a group of people discuss the local things happening around is called a local community. You can participate in local communities such as:
- Local Event
- Support local team
- Organize local events with local people
- Join local chambers
These will really help you to have a proper local community.
Conclusion:
Above listed all the 10 local SEO tips and tricks will help you in your local SEO and following this local SEO strategy in 2022 will be able to see great results in your local business.
Whether you are a small business or a big company focusing on the local market, Websitevala can help you with local SEO strategy and its implementation. Contact us at +91-9825492807 or [email protected].
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As a digital marketer, SEO lecturer and WordPress developer I support other freelancers and businesses with their websites from helping with the design and blog posts to optimizing them for search engines. I’m the founder of Websitevala and support successful digital marketing companies like ClickDo as a virtual assistant.
