Local SEO Strategy
Are you looking for a restaurant nearby? Do you need quick information about a service in your city? The process of local search begins when you use Google and enter a search query.
Suppose you are the owner of an eCommerce store; In that case, your main goal should be the development of an effortless customer journey, taking into consideration speed and convenience as well as the needs and objectives of the end user.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the optimization strategy for the company, a product, or service for local search results.
Google and other search engines consider a user’s location when determining which results to display. On desktop, search results are based on the user’s IP address, while on mobile devices, the location is taken into consideration.
So when a user performs a local search for a dentist, car wash, or locksmith, the search engine will showcase the local businesses (website and/or Google My Business profile) near their location.
Users can also search for results for other locations by adding a location reference directly to the search query, such as “hotels in London”.
Either way, your local search engine optimization strategy should consider both the current location of the user as well as their customer intent.
Here are some of the most important factors to improve your local SEO:
– Google My Business
– Reviews
– Citations
– Onpage SEO
– Page load time
– Link building
1. Google My Business
The first step would be to make sure you have filled out all fields in the GMB listing and that you are following the guidelines.
Choose the main category that best describes your business while adding as many relevant categories to your listing as possible.
If your business is seasonal, choose the main category that fits the current season and change it accordingly for the next season.
Lastly, add high-quality images that showcase your business and its products/services in the best possible light.
2. Reviews
Reviews directly affect your GMB rankings and are a great way to convert prospects into actual customers.
Even though collecting reviews on your GMB listing is important, you should consider using Facebook or another third party to do so. This platform should rank well for your desired keywords in search.
For example, for the term “plumber Seattle”, Yelp is ranking towards the top; hence you could utilize the power of the platform for your local SEO strategy.
3. Citations
Although their impact on rankings has diminished over the years, you still have the opportunity to build citations.
Citations are essentially mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number on a third-party website.
It is advised to limit yourself to the top data aggregators and highest-level citation sources and distribute your company data to ensure ensuring your information is consistent across all listings.
4. On-page SEO
Usually, internal links are not utilized to their full extent. The home page often passes on most of the link juice to the subpages.
These internal links often have “Learn more” or “Read more” as their anchor text. Such anchor text does not convey any information about the page content to the search engine bot.
Consider using structured data and the FAQ schema markup, which can significantly increase your visibility.
5. Page load time
Although the influence is minimal, you can take care of your website’s load time to positively influence the ranking algorithm.
Check your Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console to see if some URLs are slow to load and need improvement.
Additionally, if your e-commerce store offers multiple products, a user-friendly search function in the navigation bar, as well as the implementation of the right filters, will help your visitors find the product they have been looking for easily and quickly.
6. Link building
As not all links are equally strong, a solid backlinking strategy from local websites can positively affect your organic search results and GMB listing.
Local press (newspapers, news sites), business directories or influencers, and bloggers near your area can all help you implement a successful local link-building campaign.