A bad business website is comparable to a TV channel whose broadcasts are shown exclusively at night. Few people will see its advertisement, even if it looks very creative. Similarly, you may have an amazing business idea, but your customers won’t find you if search engines don’t display your site in search results.
With the right local SEO strategy, you will achieve a significant increase in site traffic, brand awareness and profit in the end. You are probably reading this article because you don’t know how to increase the number of leads and pass them through the sales funnel. Below you will find some effective local SEO strategies for small businesses, applicable in any industry.
The higher the position of your site in the search results, the faster your business will develop. You will not be able to achieve everything overnight. But by putting into practice the tips presented below, you will be able to achieve significant results.
Sign Up for Google My Business to Improve Local SEO
Have you already created your Google My Business account? If not, then what are you waiting for? Create an account right now — it’s absolutely free!
According to a study conducted by Think With Google in 2015, almost a third of requests made from mobile devices are requests that take into account the user’s current location (for example, “coffee shop next to me”). But this data refers to 2015. User behavior changes dynamically from time to time. The number of similar search queries without the words “next to me” has increased by 150% recently. Google sets priorities for the displayed search results based on the intentions of users. For example, results that take into account the user’s current position are considered the most relevant. For this reason, having an account in Google My Business is an integral part of a successful local CEO.
First of all, create a free profile and enter data: your company’s phone number, address, opening and closing times (business hours), and other information that may be useful to users. This data will be displayed in Google Map search results.
One of the key advantages of Google My Business is the ability to share impressions (leave feedback) using a special tool. Notification of each new review will be received in the form of a letter to your email. You can give an answer to any review, start a dialogue with the user. This is a great way to turn a “reviewer” into a regular customer.
The second important feature of Google My Business is the presence of a section with questions and answers. According to research, most people do not want to call company representatives, preferring to conduct a dialogue using the tools for sending messages on the site.
After creating a Google account, add your company information to other local directories. Thus, you will further expand the audience of potential customers and will improve your local SEO.
If you are ready to improve local SEO, Optimize The Performance of Your Website and Ensure its Compatibility With Mobile Devices
Use an original design, attractive fonts and a nice color scheme to make your website look amazing. But, if it loads slowly, you will lose some of the traffic and rating. Before launching a campaign to build up the link mass and develop content, do everything possible to ensure maximum performance of your site.
If the site has a good structure and its pages load quickly, search robots will be able to quickly scan and index its pages. Eliminate any technical problems that have arisen, for example:
- Duplicate content.
- Duplicate title and description meta tags.
- Invalid sitemap.
- Non-working links.
- Unoptimized images.
- Incorrectly used canonical tags.
- Images of incorrect format and resolution.
Using Micro Markup To Structure Data Will Help Improve Local SEO
Local micro-markup helps search engines identify individual components of pages, for example:
- Company name.
- The local address of the company.
- Contact phone number.
- Rating of the quality of goods and services provided.
- Working hours and so on.
JSON-LD is the preferred micro markup format for a local CEO. All data is displayed in a substring in the search results.
To Improve Local SEO, Place Information About Your Business In Special Catalogs And Local Profiles
The success of a local business is largely due to the accuracy of the contact data provided by you, such as the company name, address, phone number. It is extremely important to ensure the accuracy and consistency of contact information in all quotes, as they are online mentions of your business, making it easier to find it. Correct quotes contribute not only to an increase in the rating of your company in directories, but also to an increase in the rating of your site as a whole. The best way to create high–quality quotes is to use a special tool that distributes information about your company.