Generally, people click on the first few links that come up on their search results, especially if they’re looking for local businesses, goods and services. If your website doesn’t show up in those first few results, then your chances of attracting new customers diminishes. If your business strives to appeal to local audiences, then optimizing your local SEO is essential to attracting the business of customers over competitors.
If you aren’t focusing on your search rankings for local queries, then you are missing out on a critical chance to improve the success of your website, and in turn, the success of your business. That’s why local SEO should be a primary focus of your SEO efforts.
If you’re wondering how to optimize your SEO for local success, you’ve come to the right place.
Localize Your Web Content
How many times have you searched for a business near your location? Probably a lot. Research from 2014 showed that nearly 96 percent of computer users, 79 percent of mobile users and 81 percent of tablet owners conduct local searchers. In 2018, those numbers are almost certainly higher, which means you need to have content on your website that appeals to these local searches.
For example, if you own a criminal defense law firm in Allentown, Pennsylvania, titling a webpage “Experienced Criminal Defense Lawyer” won’t do much to improve your local SEO. But, if you create pages titled “Allentown Criminal Defense Lawyer” and “Whitehall Criminal Defense Lawyer” and “Fogelsville Criminal Defense Lawyer” and include relevant, non-duplicate content on each page, you will begin to cater your website to local audiences seeking a criminal defense lawyer, improving your local SEO.
So when people in Fogelsville search for “criminal defense lawyers in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania,” now your website will be more likely to be one of the first results for specific location searches.
Get A Google My Business Listing
A business listing on Google allows you to add photos, business hours, contact information and reviews, so people can view information about your business on both Google and Google Maps. This helps to acquaint local customers with your business, without having to directly focus on your website.
If someone in Berks County, Pennsylvania was looking for digital marketing agencies that specialize in the automotive industry, they would likely search for “automotive marketing near me.”
While a bunch of paid ads and varying results surface in the results, the first business listing in these results is for BitMoto, our subsidiary company! These listings are powerful tools when it comes to local search results, and they’re something you don’t want to ignore as a business.
Build Local Backlinks
Off-site SEO and backlinking can be challenging, but getting reputable outside websites and businesses to link to your own website can not only increase awareness about your business, but it can drastically improve your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), as well.
Building links from outside sources is an indicator to search engines that others believe in the quality of your content, which is especially helpful when it is another business within your same locale.
This can be done by writing guest blog posts for local publications, being mentioned by other blogs and websites, and partnering with other local businesses. The more reputable links you have from high-quality websites, the better your SEO will be.
This will take some trial and error, as you may need to build some mutually beneficial relationships with other local business, who may link to your website in exchange for a guest blog post or reciprocated link. Building strong SEO for your business is a marathon, not a race. But while it can take some time, the results are extremely valuable and can greatly benefit your business.
Local Lessons
Improving local SEO is a mighty task for many businesses, especially small and local ones. This is why many businesses rely on SEO experts to help them with their local search engine optimization efforts. At Strunk Media Group, we would be happy to help you with improving your local SEO. Just leave the search engine stuff to us, and you can focus on running your business and connecting with local customers.