Last year, We heard a lot about the #ShopLocal movement. Especially during the holidays, people focused on purchasing gifts from the community to support small businesses.
The Retail Council of Canada (RCC) found that 90% of Canadians intended to shop at local stores during the 2020 holiday season, and 83% preferred to purchase goods made in Canada.
Now that the holiday season is past, small business owners need to think of ways to move forward locally in 2021. If you run a store or provide service in a specific geographic area, it is essential to focus your marketing efforts to drive local traffic to your website.
What is LOCAL SEO?
Local search engine optimization is a form of digital marketing strategy that helps customers find common locations based on organic Google results.
Local search engine optimization is not for small businesses such as plumbers or electricians. National and international companies with thousands of employees such as hotels, restaurants, retail stores, real estate agencies, and financial services companies also require foot traffic.
Think about it: When someone in India searches for “Best SEO agency near me” on Google in Texas, they will be presented with many locals’ options. Your local SEO activity will help you appear on the first page.
Signals affecting local SEO include local content, links, citations, and online reviews. For organic SEO, the rules are E-A-T (Experience, Authority, Trust). The main factors influencing the ranking at the local level are:
- Proximity: How close your business is to a search engine
- Relevance: How well does your product or service meet user needs.
- Information: The presence and number of reviews on your company’s site.
Fortunately, there are many things that you can do to increase your visibility and reach your target audience. To help you reach your 2021 goals, how to get local rankings:
1. First, Prepare a list of the areas you have to target.
If you live in India, you can include keywords like “India,” “IN” etc., in your website content.
Include your city, the nearest major metropolis, and your province. Now start making long key phrases for each. Let’s take an example of “Best SEO Agency” Instead of using this keyword phrase, you can target “Best Palm Coast SEO agency” and “Best Digital Marketing Agency in India.”
2. Create a webpage or blog post dedicated to each local key phrase.
Now you have a list of keywords to target; it’s time to start writing! To optimize your website for local searches, add keywords and geographic location to your website text so that search engines are ranked first in their search results. Remember not to place your content with keywords.
3. Post and create new local content regularly.
Adding new content to a website, especially in value-added messaging, is essential for every website.
When you create new content based on your location with keywords, it creates what you call even more valuable – whether it’s a press release about what you’re doing in the community or a new local Review of the service.
4. Add your legal address in the footer of your website in plain text.
If you are wondering how to rank locally, be sure to include your address on your website! This not only serves as a sign to show Google that you are a local business, but it also shows visitors to your site that they are in the right place.
Better yet, embed a dynamic Google Map to help customers find your location, display your location with images, and build trust and confidence.
5. Use Google My Business.
Google My Business helps your small business to stand on search engines. Whether it is a search result or a map request, more than five billion searches are conducted on Google every day worldwide.
This means that a large audience can find your product or service quickly and easily. This increases your visibility and allows you to optimize your site for local searches for free.
6. Take photos of local people and share them.
When optimizing your site for local search, think about more than text. Take your company photos to present and share authentic photos instead of stock photos.
Get information about how your business is doing in the community. Then name those pictures when you post them on your website or blog with the file name, including your local keywords.
Why? Because all the images used on your website have local names with key phrases and alt tags.
So, if someone goes on a Google Photos search and looks for the “Best SEO agency in India,” if you have a photo with that filename, your image will be on top.
7. Take advantage of review sites.
Create free business accounts on some of the big review sites like Yelp, Google, Yellow Pages, Insider Pages, Angie List, etc., and encourage your customers and repeat customers to write reviews about your company.
Good reviews can go a long way for both your customers and search engines. As you optimize your webpages for local search, it is also important to pay attention to third-party methods to increase your results, but that’s another story!
Take time to browse your site and follow these SEO tips, and you will be on your way to reaching more repeat customers in 2021 and beyond!
8. Conduct local keyword research for SEO.
Keyword research for local SEO is generally more straightforward and more comfortable than non-local keyword research, where some locations and cities are more competitive than others, on the other hand, there is usually a much smaller pool of competitors for local keywords than pools for non-geographic keywords.
Churn out your keyword list using a simple formula: [product or service] + [location]. For example:
- SEO Services in India
- Best Local SEO Services in India
- Digital Marketing Company India
- India Digital SEO Marketing Agency
You have to combine each of your products &nd services with all of your targated locations – and off you go! Now you have a list of seeds.
Generally, however, you do not have to worry about an exact match for keywords like “accountant from my side.” This is because Google can change the user’s location from “near me.” Instead, focus your seed list on real locations.
Google is complicated. Regardless of whether someone is browsing in private or incognito mode, search engines know where they are. In other words, someone in Palm Coast can type in “Hotel,” and Google displayed several listings of hotels in Palm Coast.
Optimize your listing so that Google has local signals that it needs to show its location to search engines in the right area.
9. Conduct a competitive analysis.
For competitive analysis, enter competitors’ websites in tools like SEMRush, Spyfu, or Ahrefs to see which keywords your competitors are ranking. You will see that your competitor ranks higher in the [product] than the main query like [product or service] + City”. Use these results to create a list of long keywords that your site can target with additional content.
Compare your results on Google My Business with local competitors using tools like BrightLocal to get an accurate picture of your local performance in areas such as accolades, testimonials, and more.
Take a look at the backlink profiles of your local competitors. Pay attention to local resources, media, and blogs where they are mentioned. Add these capabilities to your list of link building goals.
10. Optimize Google My Business
As you might expect, Google My Business Lists play an important role in local search. Google My Business helps search engines check if your business is legitimate so that they can avoid providing their local search audience with unwanted search results. When you optimize and claim your profile on this platform, you will likely appear in local search results, including Google Maps and reputable local packages.
The data you enter in Google My Business can also create a Google SERP Knowledge Bar that is displayed on their screen when people search for your brand.
To optimize Google My Business:
- Create and submit the Google My Business page and fill it in as fully as possible.
- Keep your information to return to your profile to correct it if you change the workplace or location.
- Encourage customers to leave your company reviews online and respond to all customer reviews.
You can post welcome offers and messages to your local audience through Google My Business, increase sales in search results and differentiate your listings.
11. Check and optimize your citations.
Citation signals are one of the most critical factors for ranking on local search engine result pages. Citations represents your business on the Internet, including its name, address, phone number, or NAP. Yelp, Angie’s List, your Facebook profile, and local business directories are examples of all websites with a local link.
If you have multiple brand names, be sure to combine them. This helps not only potential customers, but also search engines in better ranking. A consistent business profile across all your citations is essential to local SEO for two reasons:
- It leverages Google’s information for your site (via your GMB list), increasing its credibility with the information.
- People use these quote sites to find companies directly. And this can increase traffic and sales.
To optimize local links, you need to check them first. (See the equipment section below to speed things up with some automation).
Enter NAP that you want to use in a tool like BrightLocal, and they will bring all your local links to you, which contain incomplete or incorrect information. They will also show you which sites you are not yet listed on. You can then customize each profile individually, adding information where necessary.
12. Improve On-Page Local SEO
Armed to find keywords in your area, optimize the content of your website pages. You will also implement many best practices in other SEO areas, such as optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions. However, some local SEO tips go a step further, such as Google My Business (GMB).
13. Optimize homepage
Chances are you are not optimizing your homepage for local keywords. Instead, focus on keywords that apply to your entire customer base. Optimize your homepage for the most profitable keywords that represent your market on a large scale.
Then optimize your metadata, H1, and page content for those homepage keywords.
14. Optimize Your Local Landing Pages Accordingly
You must have to set up a local landing page for each location. Optimize each page for a set of local keywords and add NAP information to your content.
Write geo-targeted content for each web page, identify the features that make each location unique. Share local customer success stories or uncover positive reviews. Add driving and parking directions and other location-specific information. Make sure that each local landing page is as unique and useful as possible.