How To Optimize Your Website For Local SEO?

Running a small business in this internet era is challenging. They have to face tough competition from big brand names. Making a place among well-established brands is strenuous. However, Google is providing the opportunity to local businesses to create a space for them on the internet. LOCAL SEO. Businesses who does not have a nation-wide presence and run on a regional level needs to take local SEO very seriously. Did you know that over 40% of the Google searches are regarding local businesses? So, if you want to grow the presence of your small business on the internet, make local SEO an important part of your online marketing strategy. You must optimize your website for local SEO. This article will help you understand how you can optimize your website for local SEO.

Let’s just begin with the blog post

Optimize your Website for Local SEO using the following ways

Website for Local SEO

Local SEO is crucial for a small business that operates locally as it focuses on ranking the site in location-specific SERPs. This will help you market your brand and products to local potential customers. By optimizing your site for local SEO, you will be able to draw more quality traffic, generate more potential leads and more conversions.

Below I have compiled some ways you can optimize your website for local SEO

✏️ Google My Business Account

Not having a Google My Business Account is the biggest mistake you could be making. A Google My Business Account enhances your business’s online visibility very quickly by displaying it in listings where you otherwise wouldn’t show up. So, if you don’t have a GMB Account, claim it today and start availing its benefits. Merely claiming GMB listings is not enough, you have to fully complete and optimize it as well. Once you are done completing and optimizing your GMB listing, do not leave it unattended. You have to consistently check and update the details in the GMB listings such as address, contact details, opening and closing hours etc. It is important to have 100% accurate information in your GMB listing.

✏️ Feature customer reviews in your website

Let’s face it! Nobody dares to buy any product online without having read the reviews. Customer reviews are really crucial for businesses as well as for potential customers. Let me tell you that they also help with local SEO. Thus, you have to have customer reviews on your site as well as in your GMB listings. They will work like personal recommendations. You must encourage your customers to rate their experience with your services. Moreover, you must monitor the reviews as well because you are running a business on a regional level.

Reviews will have a direct impact on your brand image. Nevertheless, reply to the positive reviews and monitor and resolve issues of people who posted negative reviews. While dealing with negative reviews keep in mind that your replies will be in the public eye so try to be diplomatic and professional. If the negative review is genuine, you must apologize as well.

✏️ Promote your brand on social media

Social media is the place where you get myriad of opportunities to promote your business and its products. There are many social media platforms out there that you can use to spread your brand online presence. You should start by choosing a social media platform for your brand promotion. You can choose the platform where majority of your customers hang out. Also, some social media platforms also aid your local SEO efforts. For instance, Facebook allows its users to geolocalize their posts whenever they visit a local business using the FB check-in feature. This will help the business become more visible to all the prospective leads in their friends list. And of course, Facebook will provide you reach to a maximum number of people as it has the largest user base.

Instagram is a photo sharing platform which you can use for the promotion of your products. You can utilize this platform to celebrate your products and services.

✏️ Engage with customers

Making your customers feel included is the best way you can attract and retain them. And there is no better way than engaging with them directly in order to make them feel included. If you are using social media to promote your brand, you must interact with your audience on a regular basis. You can directly ask them questions or ask them to share their feedback. Another thing you can do to keep them engaged with you is through running contests or through giveaways. Your social media platforms need to be active and updated.

Read also: How to employ Artificial Intelligence for Digital marketing?

✏️ Voice search optimization

Just like local SEO, voice searches are on the rise as well. We don’t see voice searches exiting the market in the near or far future. So, this is something that you need to focus your effort towards. As you may already know that voice searches uses more conversational tone that the conventional text searches. In the conventional text searches, users will type a particular keyword which is usually short whereas in voice searches users use long-tail keywords while they speak to search something on the search engine. This means that voice searches can be more specific so you need to ensure that the specific details about your business are readily available for the users. For instance, when a user asks where your business is located the answer should be promptly available.

✏️ Identify local keywords

Since we are talking about local SEO, the keywords must be relevant to the local customers. Research on local keywords by filtering the keyword search based on location. This will help you get keywords that are relevant to your local customers. Once you are done doing the research, you must feature those keywords in your content, URLs, meta tags etc.

The bottom line

SEO is always changing. You can’t rely on one strategy for long-term. However, every strategy has its importance and that’s why it is important to add local SEO in your online marketing strategy. It will allow your local business to get more visible in the search results while also driving traffic and generating potential leads.

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