If you have a website, you may already know how important it is to appeal to search engines to boost your Google ranking. However, the best way to SEO your content if you’re a local business is to engage in local SEO. When you have a business website that needs a local audience, you may wonder- how do I improve my Google search ranking? To do this, it’s important to use the right words that tell the search engine where you are located and what your company does. These keywords need to be highly local and must not be used so often that your content comes across as spam.
The other part of the SEO puzzle is to sign up for a Google business listing. With effective Google business SEO, you can place your company’s contact information right where local people will find it when they conduct a search. Google has its own guide to local SEO that can answer your basic questions about how to claim your listing and how to make sure the information is correct. When you have your business listed under local searches, you will get more local people who will see your listing and can go right to your website.
93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. That’s really not anything new; however, did you know that the type of searches web users are making is rapidly changing? Whereas before web users were just searching for general terms, like “SEO services,” now they’re looking for local businesses, using search terms like “SEO services New York City.”
Needless to say, this move towards more local searches means that you have to tweak your search engine optimization strategies in a way that will earn your business more local traffic and improved local ranking. If you’re like many others, you probably have no idea where to begin localizing your SEO. That’s where this simple four-point local SEO guide comes in.
Put Some Magic Back into Your Marketing Campaign with These Simple Tips for Local SEO
1.Rid the Web of Duplicate Business Listings
For Search Engine Journal, one of the simplest ways to improve your local SEO is by taking down any duplicate listings for your business on Google or elsewhere. The process is usually quite simple. You need only claim these pages as the business owner, deleting the one you don’t want.
2. Optimize the Footers on Every Webpage
The most important tidbits of information for getting your business found by local customers are your name, address, and phone number. As Yahoo! Small Business suggests, putting this information into the footer section of each of your pages is an extremely effective way of getting the information crawled and turned into useful data for finding your business. It’s also free.
3. Suggest Customers Review Your Business Online
Now, you might think we’re nuts when we suggest this, but asking your customers to review your business online can be great for local SEO. Whether they review your business negatively or positively, each review represents a good chance to make a genuine PR move, demonstrating you care about your customers. Plus, every review counts as another post mentioning your business, a key part of SEO success, as Forbes writes.
4. Google May Be King, but Bing and Yahoo Are Important, Too
As Search Engine Watch sagely points out, while it’s true that Google owns 60 to 70% of the search engine market share, you can’t afford to ignore following the rules for Bing and Yahoo. Yes, they are considerably smaller players, but they still represent a sizable portion of web users. Don’t ignore them.
Are you a marketer specializing in local SEO strategies? What tips would you give to businesses looking to get noticed in localized SERPs? Let us know in the comment section below. More.
