First off, let’s be absolutely clear about one thing: there’s no single strategy or tactic that “solves” local search engine optimization. As with most things in life, there are a variety of ranking factors, signals, and red flags that Google looks for in determining local search results.
When it comes to local search optimization, you still need quality backlinks to your site. You still need a presence in local business directories. You still need to claim your My Business page with Google.
Still, there’s one simple search engine optimization strategy that unites virtually all practitioners of local search optimization. So if you’re just starting out in the world of search marketing and need to find a way to boost the effectiveness of local SEO, then you need to know this simple trick.
The first thing you need to do is identify your most important local keywords. Usually, this will be some variation of your product or service followed by your city and state. For instance, top-performing local keywords include search terms like:
- moving companies san diego ca
- ice cream raleigh
- commercial painters wichita ks
Now, if you want to rank highly on those keywords, then those keywords have to appear on your website. Seems obvious, right? You’d be surprised how many businesses fail to include their most important keywords on their web pages, at least not verbatim.
And there’s a simple reason for that: it’s really, really hard to use the phrase “moving companies san diego ca” in a sentence. Yet the best way to rank on those keywords is to use those words exactly as people type them into Google, without adding commas or changing the order.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of possible sentence constructions that actually allow you to use those words verbatim. Which is why virtually everyone interested in local search optimization has used some variation of the following sentence over, and over, and over…
“Our [insert company name] has the very best ice cream Raleigh NC has to offer!”
Once you start looking, we promise, you’ll see this sentence construction appear all over local business pages. It’s a useful way to insert keywords in a sentence that doesn’t sound completely insane. The fact is, each week there are 645 million page views of local pages. And with local mobile ad spending expected to reach $18 billion in 2016, this simple sentence construction might just be your best defense.