Google and other search engines are now focusing more on localization than ever before. Local search engine ranking in 2021 will be a more deciding factor as to how much business and customers you get. Hence, online businesses need to include local search engine optimization in their SEO Plans for 2021.
Every day there are billions of searches on Google, and most of them are local searches. The reason for the increasing local searches is the increasing number of mobile searches. As you know that mobile uses GPS and based on the user’s location Google shows them local businesses near the user. You might have seen yourself while searching on Google that you see the local results on the top and that are near to your location.
Now you understand that it is imperative to get your website and SEO optimized in such a way that it shows up on top of the search results. It is important to make sure that your website is aced up with all the relevant factors for the local searches. There are a lot of different factors that help make a website show up in the local search results. So, if showing up on the top of the search results is important to you, then here are the top-secret SEO factors for you to implement this year. These are going to help boost up your local search engine ranking for sure.
Quality of Content
Good quality content is always the king among all other search engine ranking factors. Content is always going to be the most decisive ranking factor for better search engine rankings in 2021 and after that. Hence, make sure your content is always of very high-quality so that you have better chances of making it up to the top of search engine results. The content that comes from an authoritative source, has credibility and value for the users that stand the highest chance of getting into the top search results.
Establish authority in your industry by providing valuable and meaningful content to your audience.
Frequency of Publishing Content
There is no hard and fast rule for this but more frequently you publish content on your website and blog more eyeballs you get. More content you publish more is your chance of getting your audience to read your content.
Also, the search engine bots will keep crawling your site and indexing your content in the search engines to show up content from your site in the search engine results. But, again out of desperation do not publish low-quality content.
Content-Length
There is a lot of argument in the online community as to how long should be the content to make it to the top list of the search engine results. Earlier a 300-400 words content was considered good for the purpose but with the increasing number of sites and increasing volume of competition to get top positions into the search engines that strategy doesn’t work.
Now you need content of at least 500-1000 words. That means you shouldn’t be compromising on the quality of content to increase your word count. Make sure your content is of very high quality and provides value to the readers.
Mobile-Friendly Website
As mentioned earlier about the increasing number of mobile searches, so make sure your website is optimized for mobile users. If your website is not mobile-friendly you may find it difficult to make it to the top positions despite everything right.
Google introduced mobile-first indexing a few months back and changed its algorithm to make mobile-optimized sites show up in the top results. Hence, in 2021 and in coming years this would be a decisive factor in search engine rankings.
The need for having responsive websites that can easily open up on cell phones is necessary to make it up to the top search results.
Need for Speed
Don’t worry this has nothing to do about the popular video game of this name. Need for speed here simply means that your website should be faster to load on all device browsers including mobile browsers.
Cellular data is slower as compared to broadband data. Since most of the users browse the internet on their mobile phones so sites need to loading faster. That way mobile users can consume the content on their mobile devices faster.
Simply putting if your website is slow in loading users will not wait for it and switch to the next site. That way you will not only lose a potential customer but also lose the trust of the search engines and might find your rankings dropping faster.
The Proximity of Your Business
If you have a physical store, a garage, salon, bakery, or anything for that matter it would be in a specific location. People searching for the products or services you offer in your area would see your website. For instance, you have a gym in Houston, then your website and the business listing will be visible to people searching for a gym in Houston.
People closer to your location will see your listing at the top. Now if someone in New York searches for a gym he will see results from New York unless they enter location detail. For instance, if someone in Seattle searches for “Gym in Houston” then they will see your listing as they have entered “gym” (your business) and location (Houston).
Country-specific TLD (Top Level Domain), Google Business Listing, right keywords in your content, and pointing your domain to a specific country in Google Search Console will help you get better results in terms of local searches.
Reviews
Around 91% of people read online reviews before buying products or hire services from any company.
It is quite obvious that those people would not buy or hire from the companies that have negative reviews or no reviews at all. Positive reviews help people looking to buy products or hire services from the companies having the most positive reviews.
Reviews are considered to be a factor for trust. Thus, it is important for your business to earn positive reviews for your website. It can help other users to place their trust in your business. But keep in mind that do not try to make fake reviews as in such cases Google might ban your site. Always try to have honest reviews for your business.
For earning honest reviews, you can do follow-ups with your buyers and clients. Ask them to share their thoughts and feedback on your website or Google Business Page. Better reviews also encourage the search engine bots to crawl and give your website a better local search engine ranking.
Use Right Keywords
Keywords play a crucial role in ranking a website higher on search engines. If you choose the right keywords you can generate high-quality leads and higher conversion. Keyword research is of paramount importance in selecting the right keywords for your business.
Even if you find the right keywords do not get overwhelmed and start doing keyword stuffing in your content. Stuffing keywords in your content might result in Google’s penalty.
Recovering from Google’s penalty is not easy. So don’t risk that. If you are not sure about doing keyword research and choosing the right keywords and their volume in the content you can hire an SEO agency to help you.
Long-tail Keywords
Short keywords are a little difficult to target and get ranked. Also, Goole and other search engines are now focusing on long-tail keywords. Short keywords are one or two words. Long-tail keywords are like phrases containing four or more words.
An example of a long-tail keyword is “How to Become Digital Marketing Expert.” Even though this is a long-tail keyword but the focus keyword is “Digital Marketing Expert.” Google shows results to users based on the search intent. So if a user is looking for something to learn and become a Digital Marketing Expert then websites containing these keywords would show up in the search results.
Now if the user is looking to hire a Digital Marketing Expert then he will search for keywords like Best Digital Marketing Expert in (City Name) and Google will show results based on that. So, the search results are shown based on the search intent.
Now suppose you are a Bakery and sell cakes and cookies then if a user in your area searches for Best Bakery, Best Cake, Cakeshop, Order Cake, Order Birthday Cake, etc., Google understands that user is looking to buy a cake. In that case, Google will show him bakeries nearby in descending order based on the proximity of the user and ratings of the bakeries in the area.
But if a user searches for how to make a cake at home then Google will show articles and video links explaining how to make a cake and won’t show bakeries. This is because Google understands that user wants to learn about making a cake at home.
So do thorough research of keywords and create content around that to get a better local search engine ranking.
Pictures and Infographics
A picture is worth a thousand words and that’s true. The human brain processes images faster than words. That’s how children from a very tender age are introduced to objects. Even the human brain recalls images and visuals better than the written text.
Including relevant images in your content can help your audience understand your content better. But the problem with the images is that they cannot be broken down into binary numbers. Computers only understand binary numbers.
So in order to make your images searchable and indexable in the search engines you use titles, captions, descriptions, and alt text so that search engines can understand what those images mean.
But again, do not use a lot of images only use images that are relevant to the content and add value to the content. Also, make sure your images are optimized so that they don’t take too long to load on the user’s browsers and slow your web pages.
Backlinks
The next important element of local search engine rankings is backlinks. It is very important to keep in mind to acquire high-quality backlinks. If you get low-quality backlinks your ranking might take a toss. High-quality backlinks serve as authority to your website.
But do not get into acquiring backlinks from paid sources and link farming. It may lead to the banning of your website. Always use SEO best practices to do your local SEO.
Voice Search
With Google’s voice assistant and other AI voice assistants like Alexa and Siri people are using voice commands to make searches on search engines. This has given the power to people who don’t know how to read or blind people who can’t see to use the internet.
But, because it is quite easy to use and people don’t have to worry about spelling mistakes so a lot of people use this for making searches on Google. Obviously, you won’t want to miss this one.
You don’t have to do anything extraordinary to include your website in voice searches. As computers only understand binary numbers they can’t break down the voice commands into binaries.
So they use advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning to decipher voice commands to words and then show up results based on those words. It is similar to searching by text input into the search box.
Make sure that your website is optimized for this and your content is crawlable by the search engines. If your content is crawlable then your website will automatically be included in voice searches for relevant keywords your content focuses on.
Making Your Site Secure
Google and even users prefer to deal with secure websites. Also, if you see on Google secured sites rank better in search engines than the unsecured sites. Use an SSL certificate on your site so that your customers have trust that their data is safe on your website.
Especially if you sell something or capture user data it is important to use an SSL certificate on your website and make it secure and trustworthy. A secure site also helps enhance your site’s ranking.
Provide Best User Experience to Your Audience
It is important that your website is structured well have proper navigation and a user-friendly interface. If your website doesn’t provide good user experience bounce rate increases. Google counts the user spends on your site and how many pages they browse on your site. This all is included in the search engine algorithm and based on that they position your site in search engine results.
Check Google Analytics and see the bounce rate on your website and if you see a high bounce rate then you need to do something to make your user experience better on your site. This will surely help you uplift the local search engine ranking.
If you are not sure how to do that you can take the help of an SEO agency for the same.
Summary
Google’s and other search engine’s algorithms keep changing in order to provide the users best results but a few things always remain the same. We have discussed all the important things here in this post. So, start making the best use of it and grow your site’s ranking in the search engines for local searches. With these, I am very sure you will improve your local search engine ranking.
