Boosting Local SEO – 8 Ways To Improve Your Local Business SEO

When looking for a bookstore to sift through your preferred genre, a dentist to get some dental work done, or simply looking for a restaurant that serves your favorite food, the first instinct customers get is to conduct a Google search.

Google is the leading search engine with 93% of searches conducted with local intent. 50% of those searchers visit the store physically, out of which 18% prospects convert into a customer in a day! These statistics are proof of how important local SEO is and how it can result in increased awareness and sales.

Following are 8 ways you can ensure that your business gets listed locally and attracts more prospects.

1.    Build Links

When Google’s spiders start strafing the internet, they look for links to determine your site’s credibility. That’s where the quality and quantity of links impact Google rankings – the most impactful of them being external links leading to your website.

One way of boosting this locally is to ask other associated product websites to link to you, and you link to them. For example, if you sell television sets, you can link to a DVD seller, and they can link to you.

2.    Make Your Site Responsive

Local businesses usually don’t focus much on their website architecture. They only put effort into linking to and from the main page and the website’s footer. You should be careful that there are no broken links in your website to ensure better Google ranking.

3.    Manage Reviews

There are a lot of sites and apps available that people can use to review your business, the most widely used being Yelp. However, Yelp doesn’t allow soliciting reviews. Businesses must be on their toes at all times about their online reputation, especially on the Google My Business page. Google notes high-quality reviews and ranks them higher, increasing a business’ chance to be featured in its 3-pack.

4.    Add Keywords

Keywords are important for making your brand visible to Google’s spiders. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to look for appropriate keywords and insert them across multiple listings.

5.    Add More Content

It is no secret that content brings traffic, and the more traffic you have, the better your chances to convert prospects. Content, optimized for local SEO, containing adequate keyword density is critical to allow websites to rank better.

Optimized meta titles, meta descriptions, and heading tags can work wonders in making your site seem more relevant to people’s searches. Keep updating your content to make your site more authoritative and important.

To make it locally relevant, make sure you embed a Google Map link to your website.

6.    Establish NAP Consistency

NAP is the acronym for business’ Name, Address, and Phone number. This information allows people to interact with your business. Focus on Consistency. Make sure that wherever you list them, they are the same and without fault.

When someone searches for a business, Google’s bots sift through all of the site’s text. Even the images are presented in the form of text, showing only the image’s name. To see if you’re locally relevant, the spiders will need your NAP data. Make sure you don’t write it in an image but type it.

7.    Make Official Local Business Profiles

As mentioned above, there are a number of review websites available to customers to properly analyze your reviews and decide based on customer satisfaction whether they want your service or not. You can also make profiles on social media to cater to a local area. While you might have a general page for your whole business, a profile specific for people in, say, Seattle will give social proof of your authenticity. This is a big plus for your Google ranking and a great opportunity for you to generate external links leading to your website.

8.    Maintain Your Google My Business Profile

This is by far one of the simplest things you can do to improve your local SEO. By claiming your Google My Business Profile, you tell Google all about your business, your location up to your street address, category, business hours, and so on. This will give Google a chance to create a page with your name and address on it and a separate page where customers can leave feedback.

Before any other feedback website, Google considers reviews left on this page. After claiming Google My Business, you should start claiming your business with Yelp, Bing, Infogroup, Acxiom, Factual, etc.

Following these 8 tips, you can work your way through Google’s local 3-pack and start attracting more clients towards your business, whether you’re starting up or are already established.