How to Use Local SEO to Increase Sales and Conversion Rates
Local SEO helps you reach customers who live nearby and are actively searching for products or services like yours. This can increase sales, conversion rates, and repeat business.
It includes tasks such as claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing, adding location-specific keywords to content, and building citations from local directories. It also involves accumulating customer reviews and boosting your online reputation.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a key part of local seo because it helps you find keywords that are relevant to your business and potential customers. It also helps you determine which keywords to focus your marketing efforts on.
Using local keywords in your content can improve your ranking on Google Maps, which can lead to more traffic for your business. This can help you generate more revenue for your business.
If you’re just starting out with keyword research, it’s a good idea to start with broad keywords and finetune them as your strategy progresses. You’ll likely want to revisit your keywords at least once every six months to identify new opportunities.
The key to successful local keyword research is focusing on words and phrases that your target audience uses when searching for the services or products you provide. This is important because it will ensure that your website is optimized for search engines and that you’re targeting the right people.
On-page optimization
On-page SEO focuses on the things that you can control – your website’s content, headlines, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), and images. These factors help search engines better understand the content on your pages and rank them accordingly.
Creating high-quality, valuable, and relevant page content that matches user intent is the foundation of on-page optimization. It’s also important to ensure that the content on your site is easily accessible and read by humans – this can be done through a variety of techniques including smart keyword targeting, and providing users with a great user experience.
Another important part of on-page optimization is setting up your NAP (name, address, and phone number) data so it’s easy for people and search engines to find your business online. This NAP is crawlable HTML text and should be displayed consistently on your website for Google to display it in local search results as part of your business profile.
Link building
Link building as a part of local seo is a powerful strategy that can help improve your website’s rankings and attract relevant traffic. It’s a long-term process, but it’s well worth the effort.
One of the most important local SEO link building tactics is to find and partner with other businesses in your area. These local business partners can add their links to a dedicated page on your website, which can help increase visibility and boost SEO.
You should also make it easy for customers to leave testimonials on your website or other popular review platforms. These reviews are great User Generated Content, and can boost your search engine results.
Another great local link building tactic is to find broken links on other websites and offer to fix them. This is a great way to build links for free and gain valuable content from someone else’s site.
Social media
Social media marketing (SMM) is a powerful and inexpensive way to increase brand awareness. It can also help drive traffic to your website and enhance your SEO.
Local SEO is crucial for any business, especially those that have a physical location. Having a Facebook page that provides accurate contact information and hours of operation is a great way to improve local search rankings.
Google Places is also a valuable resource for local search rankings, as it allows businesses to set up precise location data. This can include latitude and longitude, which is an important element of Google’s algorithms when determining local search results.
Instagram is another important platform for local SEO, as it’s a popular place to share photos and videos from your business. Adding geotags to your profile, along with hashtags related to your business, can help you get more visibility on search engines.