Local SEO checklist for your business.
If you want your business to have a higher local profile on Google, then the following are some great tips for better local SEO rankings.
According to the National Retail Association in their article, New insights reveal Aussies prefer shopping locally, you can see the importance of local SEO and how it can dramatically improve your bottom line, especially if you offer a professional service or are a tradesperson.
1. Become active in your online local community.
Do your homework, look for websites or blogs in your local area, and start engaging with them. Become involved, and offer advice in your related field or area. If people see that you are genuinely interested in the local community, they will be more likely to engage your services when the need arises. The search engines will pick up on this and rank your site higher for local SEO searches. This is conditional if you include links to your website be sure not to overlink or try to spam the system. This will be detected and will not benefit your local SEO marketing. Search Engine Digest has a very good read titled 10 link-building techniques that are harmful to your SEO that will go over the importance of proper link-building techniques.
2. Prioritise your contact information
Pepper your website pages with your local contact details. Making sure that these are easy to find will allow easy access to your contact details and trigger the search engines when indexing your content. Large phone numbers concerning Google maps are a great start for your contact us page.
Also, sign up to Google My Business and register your business. This may take a few weeks to get you verified but will work well for you in the long run.
For example, if you are a plumber in North Sydney, your website should appear in Google Maps when users key in these words in the search. Similar to the way Yellow Pages used to work, but heaps more powerful.
3. Make sure you do your research
Entering your main search phrases or keywords into the Google search and checking this with what is displayed is a great way to work out what works and what doesn’t. There is no point in implementing a local SEO campaign for words that are not high on the search. If you are unclear about this part, you should speak with a Local SEO professional to help you get a clearer understanding of this.
4. Look at Local Directories
Location directories can pay huge dividends for your local SEO marketing campaign. Think about adding your business name and website to some local directories and see the results. You may just get a surprise.
People like to support the local traders; if you are not there, you may miss out.
5. A Google map on your website is a must.
This has the double benefit of letting Google know where you are and making it nice and easy for clients to print the map out and find you. If they are using handheld devices, they can easily find you on the go. If you do not have a map on your site, you are making it much harder for people to get in touch with you. In their article, How to improve your local ranking on Google, Google has more on this topic.
6. Social Media is Awesome for Local SEO.
Become active on all the big social media platforms ( Facebook, Instagram and Google+).
Social media marketing is an awesome method to target local businesses and people. Plus, it is a vital component in enhancing your local SEO campaign.
A great tool is Facebook because it has Google Maps integration, which allows your customers and clients to get directions to your business. You can build on your local SEO campaign by bringing these two together.
Don’t forget about Google+ as it has this feature as well.
Not only can customers find you easier, but it has the added advantage of triggering signals to the search engines giving a MASSIVE boost to your local SEO profile!
7. Target local suburbs
A great way to dominate local search is to create separate landing pages for various suburbs. You can’t target the whole of Sydney but look at key important suburbs where your customers are located and create new pages for this. A key point to note here is that each page should have unique content and never duplicate each local suburban page and create hundreds of suburban pages with the same content. Implement this slowly and wait to see the results before you publish the next suburban page.
Boosting your local SEO value is easy if you follow these steps. Again, if you are unsure about any of these Local SEO tips, it might be a wise idea to speak with some SEO Companies in your local area who do this all the time.
If your business is in Sydney and you want to reach out to more customers online, then why not call us here at Hopping Mad Designs on 02 9360 8514.