Due to Google’s update on local listings, it has become more challenging for webmasters to be included in the listings. Regrettably, there is no simple method to achieve this, thus every business must rely on a strong local SEO performance to enhance their online visibility.
Due to intense competition, local search engine results pages (SERPs) have become highly competitive, leading Google to make adjustments to paid ads that overshadow organic results in the lower sections of the SERPs. Consequently, SEOs must exert double the effort to achieve their desired results.
There is some good news, thankfully. SEOs simply need to implement a few enhancements to their local SEO strategy to significantly impact their organic search rankings.
Sure Tips to Improve Local SEO
1. Local Search Simulation
To compensate for the removal of Google’s location search filter and the complications it has caused in simulating local search results in different locations, many SEOs choose to employ one of the following options as part of their great SEO strategy:
To ensure accurate results, SEOs add the “near” parameter to the URL after entering a query. By including “&near=cityname” in the URL, the search will display outcomes that are relevant to the designated location’s proximity.
The “uule” parameter allows you to append a base64 encoding of a location’s “canonical name” to each search query.
c.) The use of an algorithm is the easiest and most accurate method for geo targeting keywords when it comes to softwares that focus on GPS coordinates.
After identifying the desired keywords, it is time to begin taking action. You need to create content that focuses on keywords that have minimal competition and keep in mind that it is recommended to incorporate them into your HTML tags and anchor text.
2. Link Building Opportunities
It is widely recognized that a successful SEO campaign requires a strong link building strategy. Hence, it should also be a top priority for local SEO endeavors. Regrettably, the process of building and acquiring organic links is time-consuming. To gain the trust of influencers and ensure credibility for your published content, it is necessary to establish yourself as an authoritative source.
If an influencer considers your content to be of high quality, you can make use of this opportunity for link building. While it may be challenging, leveraging your content to obtain links from influencers will ultimately prove to be beneficial. Concentrate on collaborating with influencers and exploring additional methods to enhance your brand’s online reputation.
To obtain high-quality backlinks easily, you can assist webmasters in identifying and substituting broken links within their content. Analyze successful posts within your niche to check for any broken links. Then, reach out to the webmaster, informing them about the broken link and proposing your page as a replacement.
3. Research Your Competitors for Link Opportunities
To obtain information about the websites that are linking to your competitors, visit your preferred competitor tracking tool. By utilizing this approach, you can acquire additional backlinks that can effectively contribute to your local SEO campaign. Follow the steps outlined below to proceed:
- Find out which websites link to your competitors, but not to you
- Determine their domain authority
- Compile the most influential and relevant domains
- Execute Link Outreach to the compiled domains
4. Ensure NAP Consistency
In order to ensure consistency, it is crucial for you to verify that your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is the same on every website where it is displayed. To monitor your citations, you can employ a rank tracking software. If you come across any discrepancies, promptly reach out to the owner of the specific domain and request them to rectify the inconsistency.
Given that NAP contributes to on-page signals, it holds significant importance for both local listing rankings and local organic rankings.
5. Google My Business Listing
All you need to do is acknowledge that your Google My Business page is the primary factor influencing your local list ranking and, consequently, it is crucial to optimize it.
- Add or claim your listing
- Verify your account
- Update your business details. From opening hours to category listings, make sure that they are all correct
- Link to your website
- Upload recent and high-quality images of your business
As time passes, a listing is generated for your business and multiple duplicate listings are accumulated. It is crucial to take ownership of all listings associated with your business name, eliminate any duplicates, and guarantee that the information provided in the remaining listings is precise and current.
Although it may appear overwhelming to find all of these listings, there are excellent tools available that simplify the process for anyone. An effective tool to identify all the listings linked to your business is Moz Local.
Enter your business name exactly as it appears on your website, including capitalizations and abbreviations. Choose your business from the list of results, and Moz will provide you with the full, partial, conflicting, and duplicate listings associated with your business.
To optimize your page, all you need to do is gain customer reviews and obtain citations for local listing, after you have set it up.
6. Encourage Customer Proof
Social proof, which includes reviews, case studies, and testimonials, ranks as one of the most crucial indicators influencing customers’ decisions to use your services. These documents typically assist customers in evaluating whether or not to make use of your offerings.
Improving the rate of receiving customer proof requires effort, and to do so, here are some ways you can obtain and encourage it.
- Give them link building opportunities – Your customers also want to build links as much as you do, and many of them will take you up on your offer if you give them the chance to build links. It will mean free publicity for them and more engagement for you.
- Encourage customers to give reviews – Include a QR code on your business cards and receipts, give out some brochures, and personally ask customers if they are in your store.
- Request reviews – Not everyone you request from will give you a review, but you just need few positive feedbacks to get the ball rolling and slowly build up a great reputation.
7. Attain Reviews
Reviews are extremely important. They serve as a crucial factor in determining local pack rankings, as well as helping your listing to appear more distinctive. By encouraging your happy customers to leave a Google review as a way to express appreciation for a positive encounter, it can yield significant results beyond almost any other local SEO strategy.
Adding a review not only improves your ranking, but it also increases the space your result occupies on the results page. To maximize your business’s presence, you can employ various strategies such as incorporating schema markups and sub-pages for pages that are not included in the local pack.
Gaining reviews provides a significant advantage in terms of social proof. When searchers come across five-star ratings, they can quickly deduce that your business is highly recommended by others. Therefore, obtaining reviews simultaneously addresses ranking, clickthrough rate (CTR), and conversion rate optimization (CRO), thereby impacting all three vital aspects of conversion.
8. Create Local Content
By creating content specifically tailored to your niche, you will have a positive impact on your local search rankings. To gain further knowledge about effectively publishing content, you can download our blog post SEO Checklist.
9. Take Advantage of Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This tool is a fantastic resource to utilize for identifying your local SEO keywords. It is offered at no cost and assists with researching keywords that yield the greatest search volume but have minimal competition. Furthermore, it aids in discovering related terms that are frequently searched by your local audience.
10. Acquire Backlinks from Partners and Sponsorships
Start by targeting the easiest and most accessible tasks. Create a compilation of the companies and institutions with which you have established partnerships or extended sponsorship. This should encompass any philanthropic or fundraising events in which your business has participated. Initiate contact with these contacts and brief them on your previous collaborations, while kindly requesting a reciprocal link to your website.
11. Utilize Social Media Platforms
Given that social media platforms are free, it is not surprising that they can serve as an effective means to maintain visibility among your target audience. It is worth noting that Google will utilize these platforms to extract search results, including Facebook profiles and reviews, LinkedIn or YouTube for your business, as well as your Twitter account and recent tweets.
12. Add Location Pages to Your Website
Search engines are examining your website and discovering the most relevant matches to display in the search engine results page. By having a dedicated landing page for each of your business locations, search engines can easily find your listing and present the relevant location to the searcher.
When writing your location information, it is important to consider how it will be presented on these pages, as it will determine how you update your information elsewhere. This includes including suite numbers and deciding whether to write “street,” “avenue,” “road,” etc. in full or abbreviated form. Please keep this in mind while choosing how to format your location information.
