Amazingly, local searches make up 46% of all Google searches. Is your website tactically geared toward regional search? In that case, you’re in the right spot! If your business has physical locations, you must constantly update and optimise your website for local SEO as part of your marketing and SEO strategy.
The following essential elements will guarantee that your website is optimised locally:
Take Control Of Your Google My Business Page
If you haven’t already, you should claim your Google My Business listing because, according to a 2016 study, 56% of local retailers haven’t done so. Next, it’s time to ensure your listing is fully optimised after you’ve claimed it. The final step is to regularly check your business listing to ensure that all the information is true and current (and this will be ongoing). Anyone can suggest edits and make changes to your listing on Google, so your company’s information must always be accurate.
Add Schema Markup To Your Website
SEO Company Sydney enables Google to connect local searchers with your company. Even though schema doesn’t directly affect rankings, it does help Google organise your data and makes it more likely that your data will appear in pertinent search results. What’s best? To use schema markup, you don’t need to know how to code or be a developer. You can use this excellent resource to learn how to implement schema markup for your neighbourhood business. Anywhere on your website where you describe your company, use schema markup. For example, if your company operates in several cities, you should add schema markup to each city page.
Include Your Company In Local Directories
There are countless directories available online for almost every industry you can imagine. In addition to helping with SEO (hello, backlinks! ), adding your company to relevant directories will help make sure that wherever your searchers are looking for local businesses, you’ll be on the list. The important thing is to make sure that every listing exactly corresponds to what is on your website and GMB (Google My Business). This process is incredibly quick and effective, thanks to tools like Yext.
Obtain Testimonials And Post Them On Your Website
Everybody knows that reviews are a crucial and effective marketing tool for every single business out there and aid in local SEO. The second most important ranking factor for local businesses, according to a 2017 study, was GMB reviews. It means that the more positive reviews you can accumulate, the higher you’ll start to rank in search.
Create Local Content By Using Local Search Terms
It all comes down to producing pertinent, helpful content in the end. There are many ways to conduct keyword research, but make sure you focus on a local scale. Then, start incorporating those keywords into your content (blogs, infographics, videos, you name it!) once you’ve identified local search terms.
Even though there are additional tactics you can use to support your local SEO strategy, if you incorporate all of the recommendations above into your website, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your desired local rankings. And never forget: SEO is a long-term endeavour. Sometimes you’ll see quick victories, and other times you’ll be perplexed as to why you aren’t getting results immediately.
Improve Your Home page
Who you are, where you are located, and what you do should all be very clearly stated on your homepage. Make it easy on Google to understand these elements of your business. You should make sure to make this information clear in your page title, header, and meta description tags. Under Settings, select General in the left navigation. You can easily change the page title tag using WordPress to create your website. The Yoast SEO plugin also makes loading your page’s meta information simple, which brings me to my next point.
Perform Metadata Optimization
The continued usefulness of page title tags and meta descriptions has been hotly contested. Regardless of whether they are still a ranking factor (which page title tags will trump meta descriptions), they are still a HUGE part of how a potential visitor perceives your website. Your page title tags should include the name of the city you want to be focused on if you’re optimising for local SEO. Improve your page title tags by including the city name and the good or service you provide.
Make A Page for Each Item, Service, And Place
Stop trying to consolidate; it’s bad for local SEO and general SEO. Instead, each of your distinct product/service offerings needs its page to use the product/service schema. It opens the door to specific schema applications in addition to being an overall SEO best practice because it gives search engines a clearer picture of your sitemap and helps your product/service pages rank for that particular offering.
Use The Local Business, Organisation, Product, And Service Naming Conventions
To optimise your website for local SEO, you should at the very least apply local business schema, or structured data markup, to every web page. Without this, it’s extremely difficult to rank in the infamous Google Local Pack. In order to help search engines better understand who you are, what you do, where you are located, and how you might be relevant to people looking for your type of products or services, you can add local schema to the pages of your website.
Include Your Company in Local Directories
It can take some time, but various tools are available (if you’re willing to pay for them) that can help make this a little less difficult. Local directory listings and citation building are great ways to optimise your website for local SEO. Ensuring every entry is the same is crucial in this situation. Consequently, replicate your company’s representation and formatting exactly as it appears on your GMB page, and be sure to list your company in your local directories similarly.
Social Media Signals Set Up
If you don’t already have one, create one on Facebook immediately. Another benefit of ranking for local SEO is having social media signals pointing to your location. The fact that the page exists is preferable to doing nothing, even if you don’t necessarily have to do much with it. If your business requires it, you should have a social media strategy to enable you to manage content for multiple locations.
Use SEO Best Practices On Your Website As A Whole
It may seem obvious, and it is, but it is so frequently disregarded. In the end, adding bandages to a boat with holes might help, but it won’t make it sail across the ocean. If it is not properly cared for, it will sink. The same applies to websites. It is where you call home online. Carefully handle it. Additionally, your website’s SEO, content strategy, and blog posts will improve.
Conclusion
You realise that this may seem a little overwhelming. However, remember that local SEO is only a small component of a comprehensive digital strategy.
SEO is constantly evolving. It’s impossible to predict when Google will add new features to its SERPs for local searches, but you can anticipate these adjustments. Because of this, it’s crucial to continuously monitor local SEO. By putting the aforementioned advice into practice, you can make sure that your company not only benefits from profitable local searches but also has a strong basis for when new SEO capabilities are added.
