Local SEO – How to Boost Your Visibility in a Small Town
Local SEO is an effective way to increase visibility for your business and establish trust with potential customers.
Utilizing local keywords is key to successful local SEO. In addition to targeting city names, neighborhood names and any relevant terms that pertain to your niche area.
Keywords
Keywords are one of the cornerstones of local SEO, helping search engines identify relevant businesses to users and return relevant results. To get started, a free keyword tool can help identify terms that relate directly to your business.
Once you have a list of keywords, it is possible to optimize your website content using them. A great way of doing this is adding location-related details into the text; such as including your name and phone number in header/footer areas as well as Contact and service pages.
Ubersuggest is an invaluable tool to use when looking for local keywords that are currently trending. This will enable you to pinpoint those that are more likely to convert and narrow your search terms further with keyword modifiers; for example, type “best portland dentist” into Ubersuggest for a list of possible local keywords.
On-page optimization
To increase local SEO, it’s essential that your on-page content is optimized. This includes optimizing website navigation and including relevant local keywords into your copy. Using relevant images and alt text makes your site even more searchable, as does creating articles that answer commonly-searched-for questions. It is also vitally important that you monitor results so you can adjust accordingly.
Citations building can also help your local SEO, but be mindful to ensure that all online directories and social media accounts contain consistent NAP (name, address and phone number). According to Moz’s 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors study, mismatched NAP accounts for 41% of local pack and snack pack rankings issues.
Local SEO is an essential tool for brick-and-mortar businesses seeking to draw in more customers. It can increase online visibility and drive in-store traffic while even helping improve omnichannel sales.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization is a key part of local SEO, comprising all activities taking place outside your website and includes link building strategies. Simply put, off-page optimization involves expanding brand recognition across the web so search engines recognize you as an authoritative source.
Off-page optimization involves submitting your business to local directories and citation data aggregators – essential steps towards building your local search engines’ credibility while building up NAP (name, address, phone number) citations.
Focusing on creating high-quality content that search engines will find useful and engaging is equally essential to optimizing for SEO success. This can be achieved through writing blogs, guest blogging and leveraging social media channels such as Twitter or Facebook. Furthermore, participating in question and answer sites such as Stack Overflow or Quora to build authority can be particularly effective; you could answer industry related questions while including a link back to your website as a do-follow link – these do follow links pass along authority directly to its destination page.
Link building
Local SEO link building has long been shrouded in mystery and misperceptions. People mistakenly believe it to be either ineffective or impossible for small businesses. But in truth there are several strategies available to them which will help their business achieve success, including targeting niche directories, finding unlinked brand mentions, and reclaiming old links.
Success with local SEO requires building a solid online presence for your business, including optimizing Google Maps and NAP (name, address, phone number) information as well as developing localized content. Doing this will increase its search results visibility – typically taking seven brand impressions before consumers take any meaningful actions against it.
Maintain a keen eye on your competitors with a competitor analysis tool, providing an idea of their local link acquisition efforts, so you can compare their progress against your own and assess where each of you stands in comparison.