Local SEO is a hot topic, and businesses should optimize their products and services. Customers are looking for products and services around them. For this purpose, local SEO makes sense. When customers look for things physically near them, local SEO will help them find your business, if you are near them. Local SEO is no doubt a great investment, but at the same time, you should not ignore other ways. Local SEO is a bit confusing compared to standard SEO.
Local SEO may also seem like a black hole to some communities. However, we go over a few tips to optimize your website to help you with local SEO. Local SEO gives browsing pleasure to your visitors.
- Optimize Meta Data -There has been an ongoing debate over whether meta and description are still relevant. They may or may not contribute to ranking; they are still a considerable element to establish the first impression of your webpage. Meta Title and Description are the first things that a visitor sees when they visit your webpage. If you are optimizing your web page for local SEO, then you should consider including the name of your city in your title tag and meta description. It will clearly state to the search engine what you do and in which city.
- Use local business, organization, product, and service schema – Applying local business schema is recommended on every web page. Structured data markup can also help to optimize your website for local SEO. Optimization for local Google Pack is nearly impossible without these settings. Local schema is an additional code that is added to the web page of every website so that search engines can have detailed information about your business. It will contain information regarding who you are, where you are located, what you do, and other relevant details. The product and services schema on your website focuses more on the features of products and services.
- Optimization of the homepage – Ensure that your homepage contains clear information about who you are and what you do. It is easy for Google to understand the key elements of your business. Make sure that your header tag, title tag, meta description clearly states such information. If you use WordPress for your website, then changing meta details is very convenient. All of these will prove beneficial to help you with local SEO.
- Claim Google My Business – Claiming your business listing with Google is crucial to appear in local search results. Filling out the content is also essential to rank better in local search. There are over 2,000 categories listed on Google. Moreover, don’t get disheartened if you are not able to find your business category listed. There are numerous categories listed, and some weird ones as well. So try and search for more categories to fit your business in a category that makes the most sense. Using LSI and primary keywords is recommended to fill out your content. It counts 20% chances of getting ranked in local search results.
- Update NAP Citations on your website – The full form of NAP is Name, Address, and Phone number. Observe how your business looks like in Google search. Look at how it is listed in Google Business listing as well. Ensure that it is exactly listed in the same way on every page of your website. These details are generally provided in the footer of every website. However, the construction of it should be done in such a way that the code loads for every page and has a true effect. If your business operates from multiple locations, then consider building a page for every location. Apply the NAP details of your particular location to the page of that location.
Adding to local directories is a comprehensive option if you are looking to rank better in local SEO. Local SEO tools will help you drive quality links that are highly converting. Customers search for products from local businesses when they are genuinely looking for something. With all this, we know that local SEO is overwhelming.
For people who are unaware, optimizing, and claiming your Google My Business listing is the cornerstone that helps with local SEO. However, there is much more to local SEO, and you can optimize your local presence skillfully.