Local SEO can help businesses of all types and sizes get in front of customers at the exact moment they’re ready to buy. Keeping up with the latest local search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, including optimizing listings and content, can help brands dominate local search results and drive incremental performance year over year.
There are many ways to optimize for local search, but some key tips include using a Google My Business profile, building citations on relevant websites, and creating content that answers questions people have about your product or service. Also, don’t forget about the importance of reviews and ratings; they can have a huge impact on local rankings.
Having a strong presence on local review sites and social media can boost your ranking, too. Try to respond to all reviews, whether positive or negative, as this shows you care about your customer experience. And be sure to use schema markup to tell search engines additional information, such as hours of operation.
One of the most important aspects of local SEO is to make sure your website includes your NAP, which stands for name, address, and phone number. This is critical for local rankings and needs to be included on every page of your site. NAP should be in crawlable HTML text, not an image, so it can be picked up by search engines.
Researching and targeting the right keywords is another crucial aspect of local SEO. For some businesses, it might be necessary to take a hyper-local approach, meaning only using the town and zip code in which they are located as a keyword focus. However, for other businesses, particularly those serving a wider geographic area, it might be more effective to target the names of counties or even states, as well as specific towns and neighborhoods.
It’s also important to remember that search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, so it’s essential to keep up with industry news and to stay on top of the most current local SEO best practices. Marketing analytics software company Moz publishes an annual survey of local search ranking factors, and this is a great place to start for shaping your strategy.
Another useful tool is a local-search data aggregator, which can help you track the performance of your site in different local search engines at the same time. This can give you a more complete picture of how your local SEO is performing and identify any areas that need improvement.
Local searches are becoming increasingly common, and the competition is getting tougher for businesses of all kinds. By following the best local SEO practices, businesses can rank higher in local search results and attract more organic traffic to their websites and physical locations.
To get started, create a Google My Business profile and optimize it to reflect the details of your business. Then, build a high-quality, mobile-optimized website that answers the questions that your target market is searching for. Finally, don’t forget to promote your business on social media and local review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.