3 Powerful Local SEO Tactics for Your Website

A website with good organic SEO optimization would rank high in queries like ‘How to make pancakes in 10 minutes.’ But a query like ‘Nearest pancake shop to me’ is different; it has a purchase intent and is location specific, so it is a local query.

Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo understand that what the user wants is feedback based on location. Suggestions gotten are based on location, and that is what you’ll find in the local Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

To make your website rank higher in these local searches, you need to get into Local Search Engine Optimization. Since a lot of businesses thrive on locality, doing well with Local SEO goes a long way to increase visibility.

In this article, you’ll learn about three important local SEO tactics that can help your website rank well for with purchase intent and are dependent on location.

Here are the three tactics you’ll learn about:

• Use of Google My Business
• Improving Onsite SEO by Website Updates
• Effective Use of Directories and Inbound Links

Use of Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB) previously known as Google local has become one of the best tools for local search. In order not to be complicit in the sharing of content that is not authentic, Google created Google My Business to make businesses meet Google’s needs.

If Google can verify your business as genuine, it will potentially reward your business with the desired sidebar space in Google local search.

To ensure that you are optimized for Google My Business, you should:

• Create and verify your Google My Business page
• Make use of Google Post in your GMB account
• Persuade and influence your customers to share reviews
• Respond authentically to reviews given while defining location.

Response to reviews like ‘We duly appreciate your feedback on [service] in our outlet at [city/state] and look forward to working with you again. Regards, the [business name] team’ are very crucial in taking you one step high in local SEO

Improving Onsite SEO by Website Updates

Improving your onsite SEO through web updates is the second step and is as essential as the GMB process. This procedure entails some steps which will enhance your local SEO.

A good local SEO manager/business owner masters how to improve internal linking structures.

Why does this matter exactly?

Internal linking structures support website navigation, and they help distribute page authority, ranking power amongst pages; they also assist with information architecture and website hierarchy.

Optimization of title tags, headers, content, meta-description, and URL is an essential tool to utilize. Your ability to optimize content for search engines by using high-volume keywords in the title tag, header, URL and meta-description will reflect on your business’ ranking in Google local searches.

Ensuring that your website is mobile friendly can’t be over-emphasized. Nine out of ten smartphones users do local searches on their mobile devices; this is to say that local and mobile searches are not separable. At times, people will look up your site to find directions or search for contact information. This category of users could turn out to be your customers and who knows, excellent customers in the future. Make your site mobile-friendly.

Effective Use of Directories and Inbound Links

Engaging with directories and inbound links entails the usage of NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) consistency and inbound links. These steps have a pivotal role to play in inching your website to the top of a search engine’s local ranking.

Usage of NAP makes it easy for people and search engines to find you and your content. You should make sure this is included as crawlable HTML on your website. Furthermore, since search engine crawlers don’t crawl images in the same manner as HTML, you should avoid including only the NAP with an image. A better location for the NAP is the header or footer of the website.

Getting inbound links with relevance and authority is essential. Inbound links have a powerful influence on a website’s SEO because it verifies you to Google as a legitimate company plus it can also raise your domain authority.

Furthermore, having a presence on social media and adding posts to Google My Business is very paramount. Search engines are increasingly considering contents more on social media because it is basically where your target audience is. It is to your benefit that you share your GMB page on social media, this would help combine search and social powers of the internet in your favor.

Conclusion

By harnessing the techniques listed in this article, you can improve the ranking of your website based on local searched. You can also improve the results by making use of local SEO tools to improve your ranking like Whitespark Local Citation Finder, Moz Local, and Ahrefs.

It will take a while, but consistent application of the tactics will yield huge results over time.