Local SEO Guide: How to Dominate Your Local Listings

Looking for ways to improve your local SEO?

Want to make sure that customers can find your business in local search engine results?

If you want your small business to succeed it’s important that you improve your website in the eyes of search engines. It’s important that you use a few simple search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and strategies to make sure you’re getting plenty of new website traffic.

Below is our local SEO guide that will help you get more local visitors to your business website.

1. Optimize Your Google My Business Page

The first thing you need to do to improve your local SEO is to claim your Google My Business (GMB) page and then make sure it is well optimized. You’ll want to ensure that all the info on the pages is correct. Ensure that Google has the right data on your business’ operating hours and contact information.

Additionally, add some high-quality images to ensure your business looks great on Google services.

2. Use Online Directories

It’s important to add your business information to online directories like Yelp and Foursquare.

Google favors these directory sites, so optimizing your business information on these sites can also pay off and work to improve your SEO. By being on these sites you can get a bit more local recognition for your business website.

3. Get Those Citations and Backlinks

It’s also important that you’re working to get backlinks and citations for your website. By adding your business to online directories you’ll be able to get a few more citations for your site on the web.

However, while you can get citations by using online directory sites such as the ones listed above, you can also get these citations and backlinks in other ways.

Look for opportunities to get external links back to your website from any locally relevant sites or sites related to your industry. You may be able to get some of these citations by offering to guest post for another website. Creating a relationship with another local business gives you other opportunities.

4. Encourage Online Reviews

It’s also important that you’re encouraging your customers and clients to leave reviews for you online. Online directory sites, some social media sites, and search engines such as Google let people leave reviews on local businesses.

Needless to say, you want to have as many positive reviews on your business as possible on these websites. Ask your customers to leave reviews when you see them in person or when you’re using social media.

Additionally, if there is a negative review online you may want to respond to it in a graceful manner to repair the damage done.

5. Use Local Keywords

It’s also a great idea to use more “local” keywords on your business website. This may mean using keywords that include your city name or region along with your particular service or industry.

Keywords such as “dentist in Atlanta” can be a great help in helping search engines understand what your website and business are all about. This will help search engines to send only the most relevant search traffic to your business website – people in your local area.

6. Stay Consistent With Contact Information

When optimizing your Google My Business page and your local directory listings, it’s important to make sure that contact information and business information is accurate and consistent.

Your Google My Business page, Yelp, Facebook, and other websites that list your business need to have a correct address. Search engines scour these listings for inconsistent information. They may not be sure how to best show your business to search engine users if the information is inconsistent. You may miss out on some traffic as a result.

You also want to make sure that your website features the same contact information as well.

7. Optimize Your Site For Mobile

Another great way to improve your local SEO is to optimize your site for mobile devices. Google recently switched to mobile-first indexing and now prioritizes websites mobile-optimized sites.

Make sure you use a website design that is responsive and will look great no matter what size or type of screen your website is being viewed on.

8. Start Blogging and Keep Doing It

Maintaining a value-filled blog is one of the best ways to make sure that your site is getting plenty of local search traffic. A blog allows you to have a lot of content on your site in which you can use the locally optimized keywords mentioned above.

By targeting your ideal audience’s questions and concerns when writing blog posts you’ll get the most relevant traffic. A blog can help search engines and visitors understand your business better. At the same time, it can allow your business to reveal its expertise.

9. Optimize Technical SEO

One more thing you need to do for your website is to optimize certain technical parts of your site, also known as technical SEO.

Doing this includes optimizing your title and meta description tags and formatting content. It may also include boosting the overall loading speed of your site.

Search engines take notice of titles, description tags, and image alt tags to understand your site. It’s important that they are well-optimized. You may want to hire a company such as Green Street Technology Solutions to help you handle some of these more technical aspects of your site.

10. Use Schema Markup Tools

If you want to have the best results with SEO and local SEO it’s also important that you start using schema markup tools.

These tools allow you to go in and manually teach Google about the design of your site and how it’s put together. It allows you to show Google the importance of your data, rather than hoping that it understands.

Use these tools to show Google how to better understand your site. If you do, Google may decide to send more traffic your way and you’ll have a leg up on your competition.

Making the Most of This Local SEO Guide

While there are plenty of tasks to do to make sure you start getting more local website visitors, it’s worth the effort. Use the tips in this local SEO guide to make sure you’re getting the best online results for your local business.

Looking for more business and marketing tips? Check out our business resources blog now for more great ideas and articles.