Local seo is an effective way for small mom-and-pop businesses to rank higher on Google Maps and search engine results pages. Unlike traditional SEO, local SEO takes into account reputation management signals like Google My Business listings, reviews, and citations in addition to ranking signals like localized reviews of businesses on review platforms like Yelp or Yellowpages.
Utilizing local SEO can significantly boost your marketing and sales by reaching the people in your local community. Furthermore, local seo allows customers to connect with you both online and off, increasing brand recognition.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a key part of local SEO. It allows you to understand how searchers are searching for businesses like yours and identifies implicit local keywords (like those found in autosuggest, related searches, and Featured Snippets). Furthermore, keyword research also lets you spot what terms your competitors are targeting so that you can take them away!
Include local keywords throughout your website content and pages, such as meta titles and descriptions, page headers, image tags, etc. They’ll help Google determine that your business is relevant for people in its vicinity.
Researching local keyword usage will also enable you to discover long-tail keywords – those words with low search volume but high intent – for use on service pages such as medical spa services pages. Doing this will attract qualified traffic and drive more conversions while using these same words in paid ads that target those within your service area.
On-page optimization
Local SEO is an invaluable marketing strategy that can help your business compete with local competitors and gain online visibility. Not only will local SEO improve organic search engine rankings, it will also help it appear in local pack results (search result pages that display nearby businesses when users type relevant search queries).
Optimize the on-page content of your website in order to maximize local SEO effectiveness and use relevant keywords and write engaging meta descriptions that inform searchers of what your business does, its services offered and areas served. This can give searchers a clear picture of your organization.
Always include your NAP (name, address and phone number) on all of your webpages – not only in the footer but also on service area pages and contact pages to maintain consistency for local SEO purposes. Doing this will create consistency across the board that can lead to positive SEO results.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization for local SEO is just as vital. This includes optimizing both your Google Business Profile and NAP citations – these references often appear online directories, social media profiles or review sites – with your business name, address and phone number (NAP).
Off-page optimization includes improving your website’s speed. A slow site can cause high bounce rates, which in turn negatively impact search engine rankings. To optimize its speed, try utilizing free tools like PageSpeed Insights.
Blogging is another powerful off-page SEO technique. Although it doesn’t affect direct ranking factors directly, blogging can help build authority and increase brand mentions by producing high quality content that draws more visitors to your website and encourages them to share it. When blogging for off-page optimization purposes it is key that any relevant site links to it with high domain authority; to do this effectively write articles for question and answer websites such as Stack Overflow and Quora as this will give your articles extra authority.
Link building
Local link building is one of the key aspects of local SEO. It can increase search rankings, build consumer trust and help distinguish you from your competition. Local links are easier to locate compared to industry or national-scale links because they’re tailored specifically for your business – search using tools like The HOTH’s Local Citation Scan or Whitespark’s Citation Tool, while dodging proxy domain metrics like Domain Authority, Trust Flow or Toolbar PageRank when prospecting local links.
Reaching out to local bloggers and influencers interested in your business is another effective way of spreading the word and building up a following. Additionally, gathering customer testimonials or reviews and posting them online will increase customer experience and strengthen your NAP (name, address, phone number). Google will take note and accept you more easily as legitimate and trustworthy business.