We live in an era where there is no need to develop a headache because you are relocating or spending your summer vacation in another place where you don’t know how to find your way. In a situation like this, we know how to use search engines like Google to get the address of the nearest coffee shop, restaurant, saloon or even order for their home services just with our smartphones.
That is what local SEO is all about which is making your small business available and visible on Search engine result pages(SERPs) for customers in your geographical location who need your services. Therefore, Local SEO can be defined as all the effort taken to enhance the presence of a business online whenever researchers type the business products, services, name or related things in the search box.
Are you one of the business owners that subscribe to the school of thought that having a website is not necessary or you have, but not making the best use of it? Let me tell you that you are missing a lot of customers no matter the quality of your products or services. Even Google itself recognizes that about 46% of users are making searches base on local intents. Come to think of it, what first comes to your mind when your phone develops a fault, or when you need to get a new book, it’s Google right?
It’s time you wake up from your slumber and join your fellow businessperson in competition for tons of customers out there. As for what to do, this article is to disclose every process involve in local SEO, and serve as a curator to whoever is longing to rank his business online.
PROCESSES INVOLVED IN LOCAL SEO.
The following are the activities performed in local Search engine optimization:
1. Website Optimization for local search.
There is a need to optimize a local business website because of the presence of numerous competitors. Certainly, a business owner won’t be the only one offering a particular service in the neighborhood, it is even possible that there may be three coffee shops along a street with each having their site, but the one that ranks higher will get the highest sale. How can this be done? By working on your website pages.
To optimize a local business website, you need to provide more details about your business on the homepage, the information includes your business name, full address, opening hours, and phone number. In addition to that, ensure that the email and phone number can be clicked upon, so that visitors will be able to contact you with few clicks, no need for copy and paste. To optimize better, try as much as possible to reduce customer stress by adding a map showing the location of your business, and adding testimonials can go a long way in convincing them.
2. Creation of an online profile for your business.
Have you heard about Google My Business? This is a platform that gives every small business the chance to be on Google first page. With this platform, you can create a business profile that will be linked to Google Maps, thereby increasing your visibility to people that are thirsty for your services.
Google My Business can also be linked with your previous website in case customers need to make an order. To know more about Google My Business and it’s benefits, check my blog list for the topic, reach more customers by using Google.
3. Social media marketing of local businesses.
This strategy makes use of social media networks to promote your local business. It integrates all social media profiles owned by a small business with the website. However, it is important that you maintain the same business profile for all your social media accounts, customers look into this to evaluate your level of seriousness and technical know-how.
4. Local content creation.
There is no way we can separate content from local SEO because it is the element that will draw them to your website. These blogs must focus on helping your customers with their problems and not just about your products or services. For example, if you own a phone repair shop, your articles should have titles like what to do when your inbuilt battery smartphone suddenly went off, or how to choose a quality waterproof pouch for their smartphones. Summarily, your website contents must be that which add value to your customer and not self-centered articles.
For better content optimization, endeavor to use the name of the town and city where your business is located in every post you create. As I have stated earlier on, that large percentage of people are making searches because of local intents, therefore using the name of the town in a blog post would narrow their searches to your website.
5. Link building.
Link building is another form of local SEO, and it is all about building relationships and interconnecting with business websites of similar niche. The very easy way of generating backlinks to your small business site is by adding values to others. How can this be done? Through blog commenting.
Blog commenting is the act of adding meaningful, insightful and encouraging comments and your website link to another business website that offers the same services like yours, or by mentioning their website in your content. Finding a business of the same niche can be done by typing your search in a search box using this format “keywords” + leave a comment, note that keywords can be the product or specialization of your business. Other forms of generating backlinks is technical and requires the hiring of a professional Off-page SEO marketer.
6. Local citation.
A local citation is simply the mentioning of your business name, email, phone number, opening hour, and website on any platform on the internet. This can be done by adding these details on local and industry directories, other business blogs, and local search engines such as Yelp or Foursquare.
Local citation helps your business to rank higher on search engines because the more citation you have on the internet the more the confidence and relevancy allocated to your website by the search engine. As local citation can be of great advantage to your business, it can also be the source of the problem to your internet presence, therefore endeavor to maintain consistency in details provided, or perhaps hire a professional to carry the task out for you.
