Essential Local SEO Tips That’ll Make Sure You Don’t Miss the Boat
– By #RSA
If you’re a small business owner, then local web traffic is your lifeblood. Roughly 40-60 billion Google searches take place in the US each month, and the intent for 46% of all Google searches are to find local information. So it goes without saying that if your website isn’t optimized to capture searches with local intent, you’re missing the boat… BIG TIME.
So how do you create strong Local SEO? These tips will get you started.Create a Google My Business account
Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Accordingly, anything you can do to optimize your business presence within their platform will only help to ensure they are comfortable displaying your information.
Creating a Google My Business account helps them to verify your business as authentic, which could mean your business is potentially rewarded with a sidebar space in Google local search.
List Your Business in Online Directories
In addition to your Google My Business listing, you should spend time establishing a presence on other popular directories as well. The following examples may or may not be applicable, depending on your industry.
- Bing Places
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- Angie’s List
- Foursquare
- Yellow Pages
- Better Business Bureau
- Alignable
Spend some time researching some of your competitors to see if they’re featured in any directories your business isn’t, and figure out how to get yours added.
Add Location Pages to Your Website
This is particularly important if you have more than one brick and mortar location for your business. You can provide your visitors with the specialized information for each location including phone number, business hours, and any other pertinent info that makes your locations different from one another.
Scull Construction has two different web pages for their separate locations. Their Rapid City, SD website features a striking overhead image of the entire city and a quick blurb at the beginning establishing how it is they came to originate their business in this city.
If your business has only one location, create an About Us page that’s locally descriptive. Adding a Google Map to your page helps a lot, too.
Produce Local Content
As search engine algorithms evolve, it becomes continuously more important that you create content for your local audience rather than search engines.
You can promote your newest employees, industry happenings, or otherwise educate or entertain people in a slightly more generalized way than focusing specifically on the products or services you provide.
A great way to generate fodder for promotional content and buzz for your business is to put on an event. Check out this blog to learn the essentials of marketing a successful event.
Post and Engage on Social Media
Sharing your local content on social media will get more eyeballs on your content. If it includes mentions of partners, sponsors, influencers, or other local entities who might link to it, that will also help boost your Local SEO. It’s a great way to boost traffic to your website in general.
Check out this blog to get some clarification on which social media platforms your business should be focusing on.
Apply General SEO Best Practices
It should be no surprise that what’s good for overall SEO is also good for local SEO. Mobile-friendly responsive design, fast load times, a solid user experience, quality content, and effective titles and meta descriptions are among the basic SEO principles you’ll want to be sure you’re implementing across your entire website.
Check out this blog to learn more about these Critical SEO Tips to Boost Your Organic Web Traffic.
These tips are a great start to ensure your local SEO is helping you capture your nearest and most motivated traffic, but to fully cultivate your local SEO, as well as your entire digital marketing strategy, you maybe want to consider enlisting the help of experts.
The team at Robert Sharp and Associates in Rapid City can help you from logo and website design all the way to creating a multi-pronged digital marketing strategy that’ll ensure your business shows up no matter where somebody is looking for it.
Contact the digital marketing professionals at Robert Sharp & Associates at 605-341-2226!
Our team stays up-to-date on the latest industry trends and spends the time to get to know your business in order to maximize your ad potential.
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