Local SEO: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

When it comes to small companies, local search is very effective: 46 percent of all Google results are for local data, which means that if your company is not optimized for local search, you may be losing out on prospective consumers who are eager to buy in your region right now. In summary, if you want your company to remain relevant, local SEO is essential. The following is a complete guide that will cover local SEO best practices and tools to assist you in optimizing your company for local SEO.

What exactly is Local SEO?

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of 'optimizing' your web presence in a way to lure more customers from local search results. These searches are carried out on search engines such as Google and others.

We spoke to Adam Collins from Ignite SEO in West Midlands, he said, “Local seo has higher importance for your business. It helps to stand out in local searches by listing your business on Google My Business. With the growing number of mobile internet usability, local seo can be a rewarding seo strategy for your business. It has a great return on investment with a higher conversion rate.”

Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

The following local SEO tips will help to make your site more visible to search engines:

Optimize your website for Google My Business.

Google My Business is a service designed to assist your company in meeting Google's requirements. You'll want to do the following to make sure your business is optimized for Google My Business:

• Create and validate a Google My Business page for your organization.
• Make use of Google Posts from inside your Google account.
• Encourage your consumers to provide feedback on your website.
• Respond to evaluations in a genuine manner, indicating your location.

If Google is able to verify that your company is legitimate, the search engine may award your company with a highly sought-after sidebar space in Google's local search.

Engage in social media conversations and submit updates to Google My Business to build your brand.

Google now considers information posted on social media to be more significant than it has ever been in its search results.

Verify that your name, address, and phone number are accurate across all platforms.

You must make it as simple as possible for consumers as well as search engines to discover you. Establish your NAP, which represents the name, address, and phone number, in order to accomplish this (with area code). This must be provided on your website in the form of crawlable HTML content.

Avoid making the frequent error of simply putting the NAP in a picture — images, unlike HTML text, cannot be indexed by search engines and thus cannot be found. The most frequent place for the NAP to appear on a website is at the bottom or top of the page.

Carry out a local search engine optimization audit.

The following are examples of what may be included in a local SEO audit:

GBM Audit- What does your Google My Business look like on the search engine results pages? Is the information provided correctly?

Google Search Console Audit - Is your website accessible to be crawled? Is there anything wrong with it that would make indexing difficult?

On-Page SEO Audit - Does your website include all of the on-page SEO components that are necessary for ranking success?

Citation Audit- Ensure that all of your citations in the major business directories are accurate by doing a Citation Audit.

Competitor Analysis - How does your website compare to the websites of your competitors? Are there any loopholes in your knowledge that you will need to fill? In terms of link building, content, design, as well as placement, how do you compare to your competitors?

Website Audit - How well does your website perform in comparison to the competition?

Make your internal linking structure stronger.

While having external links going to your site is great, optimizing your site's internal linking structure can also help you rank higher in search results.

Create relevant local content.

Google is becoming more intelligent, which implies that content producers are now able to write for their audiences rather than for search engines. However, although writing about broad subjects may draw in a large audience, it is often more essential to narrow your emphasis and write about local or industry news in order to attract a more targeted local audience.

The URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content should all be optimized.

If you're writing content for your website, each new blog post is an additional indexed page for your site, an additional page from which to focus a local search term, as well as an additional chance to be discovered in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Create location pages on your website.

Location pages should be created if your company has more than one brick-and-mortar location. Readers may find your name, address, phone number, business hours, unique shop descriptions, parking, and public transportation information, specials, and testimonials from satisfied customers on your location pages.

Obtain inbound links that are relevant and authoritative.

Internal links are very effective ways to improve your local SEO since every incoming link signals to Google that you are a reputable business; furthermore, inbound links have the potential to increase your domain authority.

Use local SEO tools such as:

• Whitespark Local Citation Finder
• Ahrefs
• Moz local
• Screaming flog
• Buzz stream

Conclusion

Local SEO is a critical component of any SEO plan for small and medium-sized companies. A local SEO strategy can assist your audience in finding you when they search online if you have a physical shop or service region.