Local SEO is must for smaller businesses that operate on a regional, as opposed to a national level. While national SEO focuses more on ranking in searches across the country, local SEO prioritizes appearing on SERPs in a specific location. Here I am going to share some tips to improve your local search. This strategy relies on marketing your brand, products, and services to local leads and customers.
1. Create and Optimize Your Google My Business Account: This establishes your presence, for free, on the search engine, and it means your business will also show up on Google Maps. For this you need to claim your business on Google My Business. For this your business will not appear in search results on all devices, but also if Google authenticates your business as legitimate, it could also surface in the valuable sidebar space of a Google search.
2. Get Regular Reviews from Happy Customers: For this you need to ask for a review in person after the close of a sale. You can ask send a post-purchase email or text asking customers to write a review. Also respond to existing reviews in a professional way, thanking reviewers and addressing complaints in not-so-favorable reviews.
3. Optimize for Voice Search: At present voice search is growing rapidly. Therefore, in local SEO, it’s vital to optimize for how people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches. The concept of voice search started with smartphones then quickly escalated to smart speakers and voice assistants worldwide. Today we are experiencing a voice search revolution with almost every generation welcoming voice search with open arms.
4. Optimize Your Website for Mobile: According to a report desktop trends found that the shift to mobile is occurring faster than expected. Mobile visits to websites grew from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 2017, and the overall visits to websites from desktop shrunk from 43% in 2016 to just 37% in 2017. Another study from Acquisio determined that traffic from local searches can be especially lucrative, with a remarkable 75% of all mobile searches that exhibit local intent actually producing in-store, offline visits within 24 hours. So that you have to optimize your website for mobile to be a player in local SEO.
5. Get High-Quality Backlinks: Link signals are the first- and second-most important factors for local pack (or snack pack) results and for localized organic results, respectively. Link signals are backlinks pointing to your site. It’s vital to get links to boost your local SEO, but their quality is important. Here are some tips on getting high-quality backlinks:
- Create high-quality content on your site so others want to link to your content
- Guest blog on reputable sites with a high domain authority
- Engage with local influencers on social media or by email to get them to link back to you