How Do You Improve Your Local SEO: The Ultimate Guide?

Customers want to know the best products and services quickly in their area. Will people in your area be able to find your business when they are looking? Will they choose you from the other local companies that sell and provide the same things? Local search engine optimization is different from general SEO because it needs to be planned and focused.

If a brick-and-mortar business wants to beat its competitors, it should ensure that all the local signals across Google’s local search landscape are correct and consistent. We put together this detailed guide to help local SEO professionals learn more about how local search works today.

Who does Local SEO?

Local SEO, which stands for “local search engine optimization,” is for any business with a physical location where customers can visit or serve a particular area. Local SEO should be used by local brick-and-mortar stores like restaurants, bars, laundromats, doctors’ offices, law offices, and grocery stores.

Local SEO can also be used by service-area businesses, like plumbers, construction workers, locksmiths, and other professionals who go to their customers. These businesses will similarly benefit from local SEO.

The list doesn’t end there! Local SEO tips in this guide can help any business close to its customers and serve them.

Here are six ways to improve your local SEO.

Now let’s get to the most critical part, which is how to improve your local SEO strategy and rank higher in local search results. There are many parts to this, but here are the most important ones:

1.Claim your GMB listing and improve it.

GMB, “Google My Business,” is essential to your local SEO techniques. You can make free business listings with this tool from Google, and it’s one of the most important things Google looks at when ranking businesses in organic local search results and snack packs. Start by going to Google My Business and claiming or making your listing.

Your GMB profile will improve if you regularly share business updates and new content. Sprout Social makes it easier with a new feature that lets you post directly to your GMB profile. Use the Sprout GMB feature to keep your customers updated on what’s new and let them know about upcoming events. It gives you a better way to connect with your customers and makes you more visible in local searches.

2.Keep mobile in mind.

Since smartphones are now part of our everyday lives, it makes sense that many people will use them to look for local businesses and information. Eighty-two percent of the people who took part said they had used their phones to do a “near me” search, which shows how much people use their phones to find things nearby.

So it’s essential to ensure your website works well on mobile screens to reach these searchers. Make a website that works well on mobile devices so that people using them don’t have trouble getting around or finding the information they need.

3.Get as many customer reviews as you can.

According to the Moz study we just talked about, review signals are also a big part of how well you rank in local search and snack packs. So, having a lot of honest reviews, especially positive ones, could do a lot to help you show up in local search results and improve your reputation. That means you should try to get more authentic customer reviews for your business.

 

Keep your attention on sites where Google thinks businesses should have reviews. So it will get reviews from your website, your GMB listing, consumer directories, and social media. That means you should concentrate on getting reviews for Facebook and other apps that are similar.

4.Focus on making local connections

The most important things that affect your ranking in local searches and snack pack results are link signals like the linking domain authority and the number of links. So, just similar to the regular SEO, local SEO also requires building links to improve your link profile. But the domains you link to should be more relevant to where you want to go.

That means you should focus on authoritative websites in the area you want to reach. It could be anything from the Chamber of Commerce to.edu websites.

Partnerships, scholarships, guest posting, and other similar things could be great ways to get backlinks from local sites worth having. For example, on the “Attractions” page of the Connecticut College website, there are links to several places.

5.Ensure NAP/citation consistency

Also, Google found that it considers citation signals like the number of citations and how consistent the NAP (name, address, and phone number) is in local search results. Your information should be on significant citation sites like Bing Maps, Yelp, Facebook, and GMB. Focus on directories with higher domain authority than on smaller listing directories.

More importantly, ensure your business’s NAP is the same on all websites and platforms. Look for misspelled words, different addresses and phone numbers, duplicate listings, and fix them to improve your local SEO.

6.Use social listening as much as you can.

You may have used social listening mostly to get ideas for marketing, but it has many other uses. It could even help your local SEO strategy if you know what to look for and how to use the information you find.

Using social listening, you can find out what people in your target location are saying, whether it’s about your business or something else. You could even use it to find out what people like, what they care about, etc. Then, use these new ideas to figure out how to change your strategy, product, or service.

For example, you may have heard people talk about how your café doesn’t have enough seating outside. Maybe it’s time to start doing it so that even more people can enjoy it. Then, you can improve your GMB SEO by, for example, telling people about your new seating arrangement. Or maybe you’ve heard people say they wish your hair salon also did manicures. You could add more services and let people know about this on your GMB profile.

As a result of your efforts to monitor social media, you may be able to discover your target audience’s interest. Then you could make a local solid content strategy to meet those needs. Plus, you might be able to find long-tail keywords that you can use in your SEO strategy.

Are you ready to go local?

Here are the most important things you need to know to make your local SEO work better. Remember that your local SEO efforts can cover more than one place. And if you want to target more than one area, you can use these ideas for SEO in more than one place. So use them to grow your business and make it more visible online with the help of the best Local SEO Consultant.

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