It can be difficult to compete with big names online for a local company, but if you are tactical in your strategy and have the proper tools, you can easily enhance your brand’s visibility by improving your local SEO and raising your profits.
The following are Five Keys That Can Help with Local SEO:
- Take Control of Your Online Presence
- Optimize Your Website
- Improve Your Visibility
- Track Your Results
- Report Your Success
Take Control of Your Online Presence
Let’s s start with a basic but important thing that is ignored by many business owners — Digital Knowledge Management.
Putting the details about your company on your own website is not enough — you have to make sure that the accuracy and consistency of the information are exiting across the many search engines, applications, charts, social networks, voice assistants, databases, and other smart tools that customers use to search.
The key is to have a consistent business listing information and keep it updated. However, it can take some time to do it manually, in particular, if your business has multiple locations. Furthermore, a lot of these maps, applications, and databases are also constantly searching for the latest information.
First of all, let’s figure out:
What is Digital Knowledge?
Digital Knowledge is made up of the company’s shared data. This contains proximity-specific information such as name, address and telephone number (also known as NAP data), as well as more complex information such as operating hours, and whether you are pet-friendly or not.
It seems that not only on your website but also across all the search ecosystems like (Google My Business, Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yahoo, Bing, etc..)
Optimize Your Website
Most people are looking for local businesses on the go, so it’s important to have a good mobile experience on your website.
Things that will hold the user’s attention for longer:
- Good-looking pictures
- Short descriptions
- A clean and simple look
Then you should review your website’s interface:
- Are all the necessary buttons reachable?
- Is the purchase complicated or is it a simple two-click experience?
- And make sure that all the fill-in forms are clickable and large enough to use on any screen.
After that, you can go back to the thematic reports.
Begin with Crawlability — you need all the essential pages of your website to be accessible for the search engines.
Now move to the Performance report —your website loading speed always matters, and it is significant for the quality of the mobile experience.
The Internal Linking is also important, but it is about the informational architecture of your website — your website users should get the information they need in the fewest possible number of clicks. The correct structure of your website will also help its rankings by spreading the internal linking.
Improve your visibility
We’re not going to talk about keyword research here, but it won’t fade away in the near future. A lot of local search traffic comes from mobile devices, as we have already established and mobile SERPs are quite different in terms of visibility.
Even if you rate well in the tests of your browser, being in the top organic results does not mean that you will be seen due to the ads and SERP features that take up the screen space. And it will be even more difficult to see on devices with smaller screens.
For instance, when we take a look at a mobile SERP, here is the result:
in the top, there’s an ad with site links and an app, then another ad with extensions as well, then a regional pack with a map and the three tests, and then you’ll get the first organic result.
As you can see, getting into the Local Pack is the best way to gain visibility.
In addition to actively managing your digital expertise, ensuring accurate data across the search environment, and improving your website on-page, you can do a few more items to increase your chances of breaking into the Local package:
- Try to get backlinks from local websites that write local news.
- Encourage your customers to leave reviews online.
- You can check out custom markers on Google.
- Start creating posts in Google My Business.
Track Your Results
Finally, it’s time to sit back and celebrate the success when you’re done with the hard work in order to improve your local SEO. Well, it’s not. Never sleeps in your race. To stay on top, you have to keep working.
In this sense, there are many tools that can help you track and monitor your website’s rankings daily.
Report Your Success
Reporting is a necessary and important part of the job, and if it is approached incorrectly, it can become really messy and tedious like any task.
Google Analytics, Google Console and Google My Business Insights to let you build the most comprehensive presentation of your results.
In conclusion, if your running or willing to start a local business, you must have an online presence. On the other side, your competitors are taking customers from you.
By following the above-mentioned key steps; get started with your local SEO and share your success stories in the comments below.
