Local SEO: The Ultimate Guide to Boost your Local Search Rankings

In the previous blog, we saw how SEO impacts the business and why it is important for your business. Today we’re going to see that along with  SEO, Local SEO is also important for your business.

What is Local SEO?

In online search results, both Traditional SEO and Local SEO focus on improving your rankings so that more individuals can find, contact, and buy from your company.

But the basic difference between the two is: While Traditional SEO focuses on improving the visibility of your site on a national or global scale, Local SEO allows you to connect with searchers in your area by capturing local search territory. Moreover, Local SEO implements tailored initiatives to help you communicate with the searchers of a particular area.

For example, let’s say I’m hungry and looking for the best Pizza Place and search “Best Pizza Restaurant in Ahmedabad”. Now, if you own or run a Pizza Restaurant, you want to show up for the search at the top of the local results and Local SEO will help you get there.

As 80% of local searches convert, if you're a local business looking to increase foot traffic, sales, and income, it's highly necessary to invest in Local SEO.

If you own or manage a hotel in the LA area, you want to show up at the top of the local results for that search — and local SEO can help you get there.

As the approach is more applicable to the local client base, leveraging your Local SEO means more internet traffic, leads, and conversions. Think about this oriented approach as a way to help you compete more aggressively against bigger domestic brands that have endless spending resources. You will neutralize the benefit of larger brands that systematically optimize for wider keywords by concentrating on unique Local SEO to-dos and depending on market awareness to pull in traffic instead of value propositions. Without Local SEO, your business may be missing out on a large amount of traffic.

Following are some of the ways implementing which you can make your Local SEO successful:  

1. Create a Google My Business (GMB) Account:

As seen earlier, the most successful way to rank higher on Google Maps as well as achieve visibility in Google Search local results is by creating your Google Listing (aka your Business Profile). However, you need a Google My Business account linked with that profile in order to get access to your Business Profile to allow these optimizations.

To optimize your Business Profile on Google, ensure that you:

• Establish a Google My Business account and check the business ownership.
• Provide detailed and up-to-date details.
• Include the logo, hours of operation, appropriate ways of payment, the product or service you sell, and several photos.
• Encourage your clients to online review your business.
• Respond to customer feedback honestly.
• Publish updates to your Profile (Announcing services, Events, and Promotional offers).

2. Encourage your customers to write regular reviews:

Encouraging your customers to write regular reviews doesn't just leverage your Google My Business presence, it also invites more local customers to buy from you. According to a recent study, 85% of consumers trust online feedback as they trust personal suggestions.

Following are some of the tips to encourage customers to write regular reviews:

• Ask in person for a summary after the closing of a deal.
• Send a post-purchase email or text asking clients to write a summary (but only after screening them into an internal survey to ensure that you do not target disgruntled clients).
• Respond professionally to current ratings, acknowledge reviewers, and answer to queries/issues in not-so-favorable feedback.

3. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly:

Today, most individuals use their smartphones as their primary device. There are 3 billion mobile subscribers, and 1.3 billion who own personal computers.

Pete Polgar, Clikz Digital's Chief Marketing Officer, says, "Mobile traffic increases year over year and is poised to surpass desktop traffic very soon."

He also adds that "A phone is more versatile and offers the end-user more value than a computer. As the technology will get cheaper over the next few years, we are going to witness a massive increase in phone usage."

Polgar says, if your website isn't designed for mobile devices, you're losing out on a majority of the ground. He points out that if your website isn't mobile-friendly, Google would not rate your site highly. If your users have a poor mobile experience, there’s a possibility that they will not return to your website.

This indicates that you must optimize your mobile website to have an upper-hand in Local SEO as well as in SEO.

The following are some of the tips to Optimize your website for Mobile:

• Verifying the website's content and performance.
• Using larger, easy-to-read fonts.
• How fastly it gets loaded on different devices.
• To check if the content is readable by users and search engines or not.
• Ensure an intuitive UI for excellent UX.

4. Hone in on Keywords:

Make sure your keywords should be suitable for local customers.

Google's own Keyword Planner helps you to sort location-based keyword searches to get an idea of a specific region's common search words. This helps you to build a list of keywords to pursue which are locally appropriate. Once you have them, they can make appearances in the meta content, copy, and URLs of your website. Also, have references in your post to region-specific landmarks and hotspots.

5. Make use of location-specific "About Us" Page: 

A good "About Us" page should create your authority, outline your experience, and tell the tale of your business in a way that highlights the distinctive character, voice, and style of the brand.

The "About Us" page is about drawing a picture for your present and prospective customers. Show what you can do, demonstrate that you can perform, and add a little flair to show how you stand out from the competition.

The "About Us" page should provide the following:

• Business Hours. 
• Correct name, address, and phone number.
• Reviews.
• Perks your business offers.
• Parking Availability in your business premises.
• The precise location of your business on Google maps.

6. Make use of Online Business Directories:

Websites like Yelp, Foursquare, MapQuest, and YellowPages are some of the Online Business Directories.

Online Visibility will not only help get your business name, address, and phone number into these directories, but it will also improve your Local SEO.

The following basics must be included in your business listing:

• Precise business name, address, and phone number in all directories.
• A backlink to your website.
• A detailed overview of your business.

7. Focus on getting High-Quality Backlinks:

Backlinks are the first and second most relevant factors for local results and for localized organic results, respectively.

To improve your Local SEO, it's crucial to get connections, but their consistency is equally also important. 

The following are some of the tips for getting High-Quality Backlinks:

• On your site, produce high-quality content so that others can connect to your content.
• Guest blog on authoritative sites.
• Engage on social media with local influencers to get them to connect back to you.

Conclusion - SEO shifts quite frequently. You never know when Google will add new local search functionality on its SERPs, but you can count on these improvements to come. That's why it's necessary to remain on top of the local SEO at all times. By implementing these 7 steps, you can ensure that as new SEO features are added, the company not only takes advantage of lucrative local searches but also has a firm base.

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