If you’re a local business targeting your customer online, then you need a local SEO strategy.
Let’s talk about the importance of local SEO and three tips on how to improve it.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is an SEO technique that helps your business appear in the local search results on Google.
Let’s say you’re a pizza takeaway in Altrincham. You’ll want to appear in the search results of people in your local area searching for pizza.
Google’s algorithm is smart enough to know that somebody searching for a pizza takeaway is likely looking for a takeaway in the local area. The user doesn’t actually need to specify their location, or “near me”, for Google to use its local algorithm and local ranking factors to choose which page to rank first.
If you want Google to display your page in the search results, you need a local SEO strategy that’s targeting Google’s local algorithm.
Google My Business
The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have a fully optimised and complete Google My Business Profile (GMB).
Your Google My Business Page is essentially your business listing on Google.
It allows your website to appear in the Knowledge panel and on the search results.
Your GMB provides all the relevant information you’d expect to find on your company homepage.
When you come to create your GMB listing, the first thing you want to do is claim your location.
Make sure you fill in every single section and that your Google My Business page is as complete as possible. You want to use your accurate business name and ensure your phone number, address and business hours are correct.
You also want to make sure that you upload high quality images to your GMB page.
Localised on site content
Our second tip for a solid local SEO strategy is to ensure that your on-site content is localised.
If you want to rank for a local keyword, you need to make sure that landing pages or supplementary pages like blogs are also targeting that same term.
When you actually write this content; you want to make sure that your text mentions local landmarks, local events and city names. It should be the same for your headings, subheadings and the body text; including localised terms here is really beneficial. Instead of “SEO Agency” you might choose “SEO Agency Altrincham” as a heading on your landing page. Simple but effective you see.
Local links
Our third tip is to acquire local links with some savvy Digital PR.
In traditional SEO you might focus on acquiring links from sources that are relevant to your industry and have a high domain authority.
For a local SEO strategy that’s not quite as important.
Instead, you need to acquire links from local sources, even if that website has a lower domain authority.
To acquire these links you want to target local publications and local news outlets. You might even want to consider sponsoring a local event or a local team and asking them to link back in return.
Do the local-motion
To hunker down on what we’ve already told you, local is the aim of the game. It doesn’t matter if your business is a global affair with ping-pong table offices across hemispheres, local people might still want local services. On the other end of the scale, if you have a small biz you need to stand out in your local area. To do this:
- Create an exhaustive Google My Business listing
- Write localised landing page or blog content
- Acquire local links
Then measure and track the effectiveness of these efforts to see where you can improve and what you can capitalise on.
If you need any further help with your local SEO strategy, speak to Dark Horse.
