What is Local SEO?
Local SEO helps to optimise your online presence and attract more custom from local web searches. For businesses that mainly serve people face-to-face, local SEO increases visibility, making them easier to find.
Catalogues, brochures and listings in local newspapers are reaching a much smaller audience than they used to, thanks to the internet. Local SEO is a way of replicating these methods online, helping people find the services they need in their community.
Ideally, your company should be showing up in two places in search results:
- The ‘snack pack’ – the box of results that appear with Google’s map above other suggestions. These are driven by location, so will change based on where the customer searches from. It’s important to make sure your website is optimised for mobile to attract customers who are searching while on the move
- Organic search results – these are the results that appear on the rest of the page and are determined mainly by the search term, rather than the location
Set Up a Google My Business Profile
A Google My Business profile is free to create and will display a contact card for your company. The most important information to include is the business’ name, address and phone number.
You should fill out the My Business profile entirely. You can also provide additional information under your business category, offering an opportunity to rank for more keywords and improve your SEO performance further.
Aim for 5* Reviews
Of course, everyone wants to receive good reviews, but it’s important to shout about them. Showing that your customers have had a great experience will increase the legitimacy of your business.
Encourage customers to leave feedback; ensuring they engage with your online presence will (hopefully) help boost your ratings in both the organic listings and the snack pack. You should also respond to any reviews that you receive, both positive and negative, as it provides a great opportunity to display your customer service.
Keywords
Keywords are a large part of SEO, local or otherwise. When you want people in your area to find your business, you should be including your location within your keywords.
Once you have a list of basic terms and phrases that apply to your company, you can use a tool to find multiple variations of these keywords to use across your website. Plus, if these happen to come up naturally in reviews and your responses, that’s another great way to boost your listings.
Website Content
Consistency between your website and your Google My Business page is very important if you want to excel at local SEO. To boost your organic search ranking, it needs to be clear that your website relates to its business listing. Relevant keywords should be incorporated across your web content to reinforce this.
If you’re a business owner looking to improve your local SEO, contact our expert team, today. Alternatively, learn more by reading some other articles on our blog.