Local businesses rely on local SEO to get more business from people within their communities. While SEO focuses on increasing your national rankings on results pages, local SEO allows people to find service providers and companies they’re looking for that are close to where they live and work. If you want to boost your local SEO, follow these guidelines.
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Create And Optimise Your Google My Business Account
Google My Business is a fantastic resource for small businesses. It establishes your presence on Google’s for free, gives you brand authority, and helps people find you on Google Maps. By creating and optimising a Google My Business account, your business will appear on SERPs across all devices. If Google recognises your account as a legitimate business, your website will be more visible to people near you who are searching for your services. To optimise your account, you need to verify your listing, update your information. You should also include vital data such as your logo, contact details, product or service information, payment methods, working hours and more.
Get Regular Reviews From Satisfied Customers
The power of a glowing review can be the difference between people trying out your services or not. It’s straightforward – all you need to do is provide excellent service to your consumers. People often write reviews for businesses, whether they have positive or negative feedback to give. Positive reviews don’t just optimise your Google My Business listing; they also encourage others to utilise your services.
To encourage customers to leave reviews, do the following:
- Ask them to post a review in person after you have finalised their sale
- Send a post-purchase email asking your customers to review your service after you’ve screened them – you don’t want to request a review from an unsatisfied customer
- Respond to reviews and address unfavourable posts in a way that is professional, honest and sincere.
Optimise For Voice Search
Voice search is now one of the most popular ways that people are performing searches, which is why companies must optimise their local SEO according to how people search. That means that if your target audience uses voice search to look for your products or services, you need to make sure that your local SEO is optimised to respond to voice search so that you rank well. Adjust your SEO content to fit conversational tones of people speaking. Your information should also be readily available for simple voice search queries. For example, if someone is baking, they could ask their Amazon Alexa to convert measurements to the metric system. Their search results should be quick and to the point. Your local SEO efforts should produce the same results – readily available.
Create Relevant Content
What’s going on in the world around you? More importantly, what current events are your target audience interested in? It might be that popular brands that are similar to your product are using more ethical manufacturing processes, or that new technology has surfaced which changes the products you use or sell. Having a blog that includes content which is relevant to your audience will also improve your local SEO. Write blogs, create videos, and set up location-specific webpages on your site with relevant content that certain regions will be interested in.
Local SEO is more crucial than ever before, and it changes rapidly. You seldom know when Google is about to introduce new features or updates which can change how you approach SEO. But these updates are inevitable, which is why your local SEO needs to be optimised regularly. If you implement these changes in how you approach your local SEO company’s, you’ll see more traffic, interest in your business, and an increase in conversions.