The sole aim of the SEO is to increase a business’ visibility to a targeted audience on the web, especially in search engines, but local SEO takes this specific targeting even further.
Local SEO is very effective for local businesses like restaurants, clinics, departmental stores, car dealers, retail stores, cafeterias, spa, hotels, gym, salon, bar & lounges, or any other business types having local customers.
By focused target on the local SEO, the customers and prospects of a business in a specific area see that business prominently when they search online for the services or products these businesses offer.
People hire services and buy products from the businesses which they can find quickly. Local SEO also helps drive traffic to websites and physical establishments.
This makes it possible for a local business to gain an edge against local competitors.
Why Local SEO?
- For Gaining Prominent Position on the Search Engine Results Pages: 95% of people don’t go beyond the first page of the search engine result pages when they are searching for something. The businesses which appear on the first page of the Search Engine Results pages get the clicks from the searchers and drive business from these searches. Local SEO gives you that place where people find you on the first page of the Search Engine Results pages. And then people do business with you or make a visit to your store.
- All the Benefits of Organic SEO: Getting found in Search Engines is much easier if you have done Local SEO for your business. However, getting found in SERPs is hard when you haven’t done anything specific for your local SEO.
- Higher Success Rate and Faster Results: An effective local SEO work requires a combination of geo-targeted optimization and content marketing. It also need to have business listings and backlinks, and user-generated reviews.
How to Do Local SEO to Attract More Customers?
Doing local SEO is not very much different than the regular SEO practices, but it has few things which you need to take care to get better results. Below are the techniques to do Local SEO to attract more customers and generate more business:
Managing Business Listings and Social Pages
One aspect of local SEO is maintaining brand consistency across all online properties, and this includes listing your business on the websites. Claim, verify, and manage your business listings on Google My Business, Google Maps, Facebook Places, Here, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter, Local Directories, Google+, and YouTube if you have a YouTube Channel.
Create Vanity URLs for all your online properties with your business name. This helps people easily find your business on every channel with the same unique url. Also, use the same imagery and colour scheme throughout the channels. This will give people seamless branding experience on every channel they interact with your brand.
Don’t forget to mention the Business Hours, Physical Address, Google Map Directions to your local store, Phone Number, Email Address, and any other way your customers can contact you.
Facebook Business Pages, Google My Business & Foursquare, Trust Pilot, Yelp offer Review option for your business.
Ask your customers to write reviews for you so that other people can trust your business by reading those reviews. The reviews are kind of social proof of your excellence and serviceability.
I have written an article earlier “How to Supercharge Your Local Social Media“. This article would give you complete information on how you can supercharge your social media to get better results in your local market.
Optimizing Websites For Local Audiences
Local SEO uses the same elements as traditional SEO does, but it requires a few specifically targeted elements as well. And this is more focused on the website and not much for the social media channels your business has listed upon.
Google Algorithm has changed and now Google favours the local content and local places to show them in the search engine result pages.
Most of the searches nowadays happen on mobile phones with very specific GPS coordinates. This allows Google to show the results from the very vicinity of the searcher’s location.
For instance, if someone is looking for a fine dining family restaurant in Nehru Place, New Delhi.
Google will show results from the places near Nehru Place, even if the searcher has not specifically added Nehru Place as a keyword.
Contact Information and Business Hours
This is the information search engines, listings, or directories, and customers often look for when they first visit local business websites.
A business’ operating hours and contact information, which includes its physical address and phone number, should be displayed on every page of its website.
The best idea is to either keep it on the top (header) of the website or at the footer.
It’s best to give your customer click to call option or Give Us a Missed Call. Or an integrated Google Map for easy navigation for them to reach you if they want to visit your store physically.
Hyper Local Keywords
Keywords and phrases containing the business’ location should appear in title tags, meta descriptions, and content.
Simply targeting a city or state may not be enough to drive local traffic to your website or visitors to your local store.
Going hyper local by targeting even more specific communities within your city can help get more customers through your doors.
For example, if your Restaurant is located in Vasant Kunj area of Delhi, you should use that in your keywords, titles, meta descriptions, and content.
This will help you rank better in the search engines and hence bring you more customers.
Targeting Local Markets With Content
Content marketing for local audiences requires the same amount of creativity and quality as any other SEO campaign.
But, there needs to be a stronger emphasis on calls to action, relevant information, and topics relevant to the locality.
Create Brand Advocates
Word of mouth marketing was always the king of marketing techniques, and would always remain the king. People trust people, and they trust their recommendations.
Hence, the best way is to create word of mouth marketing is to deliver the best of your service and delight your customers.
They become your loyal customers and refer your business when someone requires the same services in their influence circle.
Establish Business Identity
Use schema markup to make sure your website’s local content is correctly identified by search engines.
Correct schema markup shows correct results from your website to your audience.
- Local Business Information (Phone, Address, Business Name, Email, Opening Hours)
- Map Schema
- Language Schema
- Product Information Schemas
- Images and Logo schemas
Build Quality Backlinks & Citations
Quality backlinks are very significant for SEO, but citations are even more significant for local SEO.
Citations are simply the brand mentions made by customers on social media, reviews, discussion forums, or on third-party websites.
These brand mentions or citations are key ranking factors in local search.
How to Get Citations for Your Business?
Below are some simple yet effective ways to get Citations from your customers and clients:
- Participate in the local discussion forums
- Offer solutions to your customer problems
- Respond to your customer queries
- Show gratitude for the reviews your customer writes for you.
Manage Customer Reviews
As we discussed earlier that the customer reviews are social proof of your excellence and serviceability.
Humans trust humans when it comes to making a buying decision.
Reviews are social proof of your business excellence.
Customer reviews will go a long way in making people trust your business. Encourage your customers to write reviews for you.
Integrating links to your social media pages and business listings on your website, publishing press releases about your new products, services, and engaging customers through interesting online content can also get them to share their thoughts about your business, services, and products.
Conclusion
As we know that mobile is the most powerful device in the consumer’s hands nowadays. Over 90% of people use mobile phones to search for information, places, products, services, etc.
Hence, it is necessary that local businesses adopt a local SEO strategy, and optimize their websites for mobile viewing.
This will help them to showcase their business to where their customers are.
It’s not just to increase traffic to your business website, but it is also about staying geographically relevant to your customers and not losing out to your competitors.
If you need professional help to supercharge your Local SEO, get in touch.
