How to Develop a Local SEO Strategy?

Are you a small business wanting to attract more customers? Are you looking for an effective local search engine optimization(SEO) strategy for your local business website? You've come to the right place. I'll tell you why local SEO is important and what to consider across the web when developing a Local SEO strategy.

Why Optimizing Local SEO Strategy Is Important?

Since most consumers look for local businesses nearby, small businesses need to develop a local Search Engine Optimization(SEO) strategy to market their products and services to local customers. According to a survey conducted in the United States, 21% of daily searches on google are local.

An effective local SEO strategy means gaining organic traffic to your local business website and ranking high on search engine results. Now the main question arises, "how to develop a successful local SEO strategy?". Let me guide you.

10 Effective Tips To Consider While Developing Local SEO Strategy

1. Set Up Your Business Profile On Google

The first thing on the consideration list is to create a Google My Business Account and verify your business account. Then provide all the information, including your Business motto or hallmark, Products or services details with attractive images, store's working hours, available payment options, location, and Q&A regarding your business.

Regularly update your profile, for example posting about a new product or deals. This helps your business to be visible on google Maps and SERPs and boosts the chances of your local business website ranking high on local SEO.

2. Optimize Contact Us and Location Pages

Make a Contact Us page with NAP(an abbreviation for Name, Address, and Phone number). Add different location pages on your business website if you have multiple branches. Each page should have information according to its location:

• Name, Address, phone number

• Operational hours

• Parking information

• Positive Reviews from local customers

• Distinctive description

Considering all these things will help you rank on Google search according to location-based results.

3. Positive Reviews From Costumers

Local business websites should survey to get to know their satisfied customers and ask them to review their products or services through email. Also, respectfully responding to a customer's complaint is a key to gaining happy customers.

4. Voice Search Optimization

The Voice search feature is frequently used nowadays. When a customer uses a voice search, they intend to know a specific piece of information; that's why the SEO of your content should be optimized for the exact information a user is asking for.

5. Posting Local Content On Website

You should publish such content (videos, blogs) on your local business website to which your local customers can relate. For example, write a blog post about an upcoming local event to show how your services can benefit customers. You can also attract them through discounted offers specifically designed for that event. It's one of the effective strategies to improve your rank in local Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

6. Mobile-Friendly Website

Your website should be mobile-friendly with bigger fonts to be easily read by customers. Make sure to design UI according to the users' experience. When it comes to building a website, a lot of website developers prefer Wordpress to build from basic to integrated websites for clients, but the problems start when it comes to maintaining your website.

As Wordpress is purely HTML and code-based website, it makes it difficult for clients to manage content and funnels all by themself. Hence why we suggest looking for broader choices such as Wix, which comes with an easy interface and live support to navigate you with issues. You could even hire expert developers and content providers to incase your developer is out of the station.

7. Local SEO Audit

Perform a local SEO audit to address on-page SEO issues such as:

• Appropriate contact information

• Website Architecture

• Under-optimized pages

• Checking if the website is shareable on social media sites.

Building a business website to making keyword research, it could be time-consuming and tricky if you have no idea of collecting information from related sources, which is beneficial for your business. An agency is the best choice to consider if you want to hire experts to build your business presence and avoid hiring multiple people and spending extra. Hiring an agency benefits you by saving time in making all research to help you deploy the best strategy for your business.

8. Local Keyword Research

Local keywords help your potential customers to find your business. For your local business website to rank on local SEO, your keywords should be exactly what your targeted audience searches for. But how to find that? Google search bar is one of the best ways to find local keywords for your business.

Type a relevant term about your business, and it will show you a list of suggestions (that are prevalent in local searches), providing you with an idea of what local keywords to focus on. Now when you have a list of local keywords, go for the ones with high search volume, and to find them, you can use keyword tools like Ahref or Semrush.

9. Getting Backlinks

Getting backlinks is considered to be one of the most important factors that help boost your local SEO. For that to happen, this is what you should do:

• Produce high-quality content ( guides, videos, ebooks). If anyone finds it helpful, they refer to it on social media sites by linking your content to their page.

• Guest posts on authoritative sites can get traffic to your site, and your rank on SEO improves.

• You can also collaborate with local public figures to get backlinks.

This strategy shows Google that you're a legitimate business/site. If you provide valuable content on your website, you could easily approach other website owners for backlinks exchange or guest posting with a backlink on your website. If your website covers any of the niches listed below, you could connect us for guest posting and backlinking.

• LGBTQ

• Digital Marketing

• Lifestyle & Relationship

• E-commerce and Affiliate

• Personality development & counseling

10. Get Listed In Online Business Directories

Online business directories can help your business to gain more customers. Google, Bing, Yelp, and Foursquare are a few online directories where you can provide your business information (phone, Address, location, backlink).

This way, an online business website can gain visibility and improve its rank on local SEO. Make sure that your information on all directories is consistent so that Google shows your business website in search results.

Friendly Conclusion

These are some tips to improve your local SEO strategy. Even if new SEO features get introduced, these tips would still be effective. So, which one of them are you going to implement first? If you're looking for an expert to guide you through the basics and help you establish your local business, feel free to connect with our team at Team@infinitecosmostudio.com or Quote your project by clicking here.