Enhancing Local SEO

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Local SEO is essential for small, local businesses who want to rank well in local search queries. Many general SEO principles apply to local SEO as well. However, there are additional steps that businesses can take to rank for web users in their area.

Local SEO is becoming increasingly important. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, many businesses have gone digital – and many local people want to support them. An Accenture survey found that 84% of respondents plan to continue shopping in neighborhood stores or buying more locally sourced products than before the pandemic once it’s over. 

And, according to a Moz webinar: “Local brands that ‘get their digital house in order’ can benefit from the massive rise in ‘near me’ searches that Google has been tracking, and the 70% rise in ‘in-stock’ searches that illustrates how shoppers are using the web to fulfill their needs at local stores.”

Importance of a physical address

Local SEO allows local businesses to promote their services to customers in their area at exactly the time they’re looking for their type of business. It removes the guesswork from local marketing. So, for example, instead of doing leaflet drops or putting an ad in a local paper – which may or may not be seen by someone interested in your service – your site can appear for people in your area who are searching for products or services that you are selling. To show up in local searches, it’s important that your physical address is on your website.

If your company doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar address, you can still optimize your website and landing pages for local SEO by including your service locations in page titles and body copy. 

NAP consistency

NAP is an acronym for:

• Name
• Address, and
• Phone

NAP consistency means your business’s name, address, and phone number are consistently listed the same way across all social media profiles and directories within your niche. 

As local results will be served based on a web user’s location and IP address, it is crucial that a business establishes its physical address. This can be assisted through NAP.

You need to ensure that you have your full NAP across your whole website. You must use the exact same details or format when you mention your address on other websites. Furthermore, relevant citations from other websites that reference your NAP details is a strong local SEO signal. Similarly, collecting backlinks and building up an NAP presence across local listing sites can positively influence local SEO performance.

If you’re not consistent, search engines may find conflicting information about your NAP. As a result, they won’t be sure what your business does or where it’s located, and they may lose confidence in your listing. Similarly, if users see your business listed under multiple names or using inconsistent phone numbers, they might get confused or think your business is unreliable. They may choose to do business with a company they consider more trustworthy.

Local optimized content

For a local SEO strategy, it’s also important for the content of your website to be localized. 

The idea in a localization content strategy is to identify what content segments are unique to each geographical area and highlight those at a state, city, or even micro local level by building dedicated pages for each of these audiences.
Some variables that may differ by location and, as a result, warrant individual pages include:

• Shipping rates and warranty information
• Local information such as attractions, news, and events
• Local customer reviews, and
• Dealer and repair locations

By building bespoke pages that cover all this information for customers in each of your target locations, you will improve localized rankings. 

• Here are some additional tips to help you create a winning localization content strategy:
• Be sure to include locally relevant keywords in the page content, title, description, heading, and image tags. 
• Mention your geo-location in your content, as well as in headers and titles – but do this in a natural way, so it sounds authentic. 
• Write content that’s relevant and valuable to a local audience. 
• Create content about local events. 
• Collect as many local reviews as possible. 
• Use local map embeds.
• Link to localized service pages.
• And finally, use social media to engage and grow your local following.