When a marketing company says “local SEO” what do they actually mean? Is this a question for the philosophers or the physicists? Why is this term so vague?
Good marketing is upfront and straight to the point, Nike “Just Do It!”
So when you hear the term local SEO, know that it’s just an umbrella term that focuses on improving your businesses search engine optimization in a radius around your local business.
Even without getting help from a digital marketing company, you can easily start the process of local SEO yourself.
<h2>Steps to Starting Local SEO</h2>
The main idea to keep in mind is search engines need to find you! Now, you might be asking, how on Earth do I do that?
Start by getting your business listed on Google directories. When a person searches for a business in their mobile phone, you’ll get priority simply by being close. You should also look into other search engines maps, like Apple and Bing.
This will typically include claiming your business directly with Google. You will just add a unique description of your business, selecting your industry, uploading a ton of images, listing your local number, and creating a general profile with fun and interesting images. Make sure to include your name, address, and phone number.
Next, focus on SEO both on and off the site. Featuring your address on your website, the contact page, and the footer will go a long way. As long as you feature it on every page, search engines won’t struggle to link your business with a potential customer’s mobile location, if you’re nearby.
If you really want to optimize your local search results, you need to incorporate your keywords with the city and state into the title of your pages. If you want to make it even easier, you can include your keyword in the footer too, that carries it across every page of your site.
For example, if you’re an ice cream parlor based in Phoenix, your homepage might be titled “Dave’s Ice Cream Parlor Phoenix Arizona.” Not the best name, I know, but you get the idea.
You also need to build relationships with other local businesses to help drive traffic to your site. Having links from other reputable sources to your website is a major boost for SEO. This is also where a strong social media presence comes into play. This type of SEO is known as “off-page” because it’s simply not on your own website.
Another way to start ranking quickly is developing your local reviews. Unlike the above items, local reviews refer to more than just Google services.
Adding review options on your site across multiple platforms will help your site gain authority. Another way of looking at it is people will always click the 5-star restaurant with 100 reviews over the 2-star restaurant with only 10. Instinctively, you want the restaurant that had better and more reviews. Obviously, you should be confident in your store’s ability to please if you do choose this option.
When customers need your service and live close by, it should be a no-brainer, they should come to you. The only thing you need to do to make that happen is use the tactics above to ensure search engines know how to find you easily.
