SEO is all the rage for local businesses these days. It makes sense, too. When 46% of all Google searches are now local in nature, you can’t afford not to have an SEO strategy.
If you’re struggling to get local SEO for a small business right, this post will help you refine your strategy. Follow the seven tips for local SEO marketing below to rank higher on Google.
1. Use Google My Business
The number one priority for anyone involved with local SEO marketing is to get on Google Maps. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t automatically place your business here like it ranks your website for search terms. You’ll need a Google My Business account if you want to show up on the map results.
Sign up for an account and tell Google your business information. Once you provide your physical address, you’ll get a postcard from Google with a PIN code. You’ll use this code to finish setting up your account.
Once you confirm your account, you can set up your business information. Include photos, store hours, pricing information, and every other piece of information relevant to your customers.
2. List All Your Services
People who search for local products and services do so by typing in the service they want in Google and will add their location in the search. If you’re going to show up for those searches, your site needs to reflect what you have to offer customers.
You’ll need to add service and product pages to your results. Take an HVAC company, for instance. You’ll need to include the following pages:
- HVAC Repair
- HVAC Replacement
- Heating repair
- Cooling help
- Ductwork
- Air quality check
Of course, the pages you add will depend on your industry and what you offer. If you want to see what you should include, check your competitor’s websites to see what service pages they have that you don’t.
3. Invest in Content Marketing
Creating your service and product pages will get you far in your local SEO strategy, but there’s more to the process. There are countless phrases people use to search for local services.
You can’t cover all those phrases with service pages. You’ll need to create blog content that targets those terms.
Use a keyword research tool to find local search terms in your community. Your goal is to find phrases with low competition and search traffic. You want to build several blog posts and create content clusters to fully inform people.
These clusters will help build your authority on Google and improve your overall rankings.
4. Get Local Reviews
Google wants to put the best companies at the top of the map results. Because of that, it will put the companies with the highest ratings first in most cases.
That makes getting Google reviews for your site critical. Unfortunately, many people don’t think about reviews unless they have a poor experience. You’ll need to encourage people to leave reviews if you want to increase your positive feedback.
Of course, don’t try to bribe people to leave reviews. That’s against the Google terms of service and can hurt your site rankings.
5. Build Backlinks
The best on-site SEO strategy isn’t always enough to rank on Google. Local results have gotten competitive over the years, so you need an edge to beat your competition.
One way to do this is to create backlinks to your website. A backlink from a reputable website acts as a vote. The more votes you have from reputable websites, the more authority your site has.
That authority will help you rank higher than your competition. There are many ways to acquire backlinks, so check into all your options.
6. Improve Page Performance
You didn’t always have to worry about page performance when it came to SEO. Google had a hard enough time judging the relevance of content, so it didn’t make sense to take page speed into account.
Today, Google can more easily measure user experience on a website. Since Google wants searchers to find what they need and have a great search experience, page performance is now considered for search ranking.
Use site performance tools to see how well your site runs. If you get a low score, you’ll need to change your website design to improve performance. The tool you use should show you the page elements causing the biggest slowdown.
7. Use Tools to Help
There is a lot to process when running an SEO campaign. You need to track keywords, monitor competitors, write content, and much more.
This work takes too much time to do manually when running large campaigns.
The good news is that many paid and free SEO tools are available that can help you manage your campaigns. There is rank tracking software that allows you to monitor rankings and scheduling tools to automate blog posts.
Look at your current SEO strategy and search for tools that can help the process. Even if you can remove some of the work you need to do, that’s more than worth investing in local SEO tools.
Local SEO for a Small Business Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
With all the conflicting information about SEO, it can be daunting for a business owner to get things right. However, there are a few best practices for SEO that work. It just takes time to see results.
The local SEO for a small business tips above are all you need to get started with localized SEO the right way. Put them in place today so you can reap the benefits in the future.
Check out the blog for more digital marketing tips that will help drive traffic to your business.