16 Local SEO Tips for 2022
Developing your business’s local search engine optimization requires more than just building your website. Developing local SEO requires work on your website, a Google My Business (GMP) page, an entry in Bing’s business index, a listing in Google Maps, and for all of the location data to match exactly.
What Is Local SEO?
The term local SEO refers to the optimization of your website and other internet properties using your town or city and state plus your mailing or street address as a set of keywords. You also use the city and state location abutted to the ranking keywords used on your website.
In cases when a business serves multiple populations, such as small towns or townships within a larger metropolitan area, this requires multiple landing pages, each of which focuses only on a single location. The homepage of the website would mention the metropolitan service area and each of the locations once or twice. Retail businesses with more than one location should also offer a store locator on their website.
What Are the Benefits of Local SEO?
When you implement local SEO in your content marketing plan, you leverage the power of the search engines to vault you above the competition. Corporations may have more money to advertise, but search engines prioritize local SEO and local businesses. If your website and other web listings properly utilize local SEO, the search engine offers your local website as the top result over even national or international competitors.
When smartphones became prevalent, consumers started using their phones for conducting web searches instead of their computers. This resulted in the search engines amending their algorithms to prioritize local results first.
That change in SERP results benefits your local business because 76% of consumers who did a search for a local service or product visited the business they found through search the same day. Out of all local searches, 28% resulted in a purchase.
How can your business tap the power of local search? You effectively implement local SEO.
1. Research and Set a Local SEO Strategy
It won’t work to tack on local SEO to an existing SEO strategy. You need a specific local SEO strategy that targets the area in which you operate your business. Simply working with an SEO agency puts you far ahead of other local businesses because 70% of small businesses lack an SEO strategy. While many businesses target SEO website development, most miss out on local SEO.
2. Create and Optimize a Google My Business (GMB) Listing
You must create and optimize a Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business (GMB) profile, to rank locally in the top spot on the search engine results page (SERP). Doing this puts you ahead of many other businesses because, according to SEO Clarity, only 5% of businesses adhere to GMB best practices.
Of all the search engines out there, Google gets used the most often. It ties the use of its GMB pages to its search product and its Google Maps product. A business cannot rank in the top spot without registering with all three.
Essentially, GMB acts as the 21st-century yellow pages. On the upside, while yellow page listings cost a mint, GMB pages cost nothing.
Google’s search algorithm prioritizes a properly formatted GMB page as the top-ranking factor related to local SEO. Notice that properly formatted part because Google gets fussy about things. You must fully complete the profile, and the business name and address information must match exactly how you write it on your website.
If you don’t already list your business name and address in the footer of your website, you’ll need to add it. Every detail must match exactly, including the commas and periods. Google reads 101 Main St differently than 101 Main Street, but unlike the postal service, it won’t prompt you with a more appropriate option. This is referred to as your name and place (NAP) information, and you must make it match perfectly.
Besides the exactly matching address, you’ll also need to list your primary and secondary business category and all of your products and services. You’ll choose these from preset options, but you can help your business do better than others by setting the secondary category. Many businesses forget to do this, but if you do it, Google has added context on which to rank your business, and you improve your Google Maps rank. Also, use the Google Posts feature in GMB to actively use your profile and improve its Google rank. You can share these posts on social media, too.
3. Create Your Google Maps Listing
As a task related to the GMB listing but separate from it, you need to create a listing for your business in Google Maps. Here, you also need to check the address for your business to ensure it matches exactly. Google shows the top three results for a local search on its map in the search results. Perhaps you work as a plumber in a town with 10 plumbers. You create all of your local SEO listings, though, something only one other plumber does in town. The two of you will appear on the Google Maps result, but the other eight won’t. Google prioritizes the local businesses that take the time and effort to create their profiles, maintain them, and add to them when they expand services or add products.
4. Create Other Business Directory Listings
GMB offers the best-known and most frequently used business directory online, but that doesn’t make it the only game in town. You need to list your business in the other online business directories, too, including the following:
• About Us
• Angie’s List
• Best of the Web
• Bing Places
• Facebook
• Foursquare
• Hot Frog
• Yelp
Also, search for any local online business directories, such as those run by the Chamber of Commerce or the local affiliate of a national industry organization. These directories also provide SEO signals to the search engines. When listing in these directories, make sure that your information matches your GMB information exactly. Bing Places makes this simple by letting you import your GMB information.
5. Update Your NAP When Your Business Moves
This quick, simple tip keeps your business in GMB and on the map when you change offices, expand, or move to a new building. Prioritize updating your website and all of the business directories on the day of your move. As soon as your address or phone number changes, your listing needs to update.
Why? Google, Bing, and the rest of the search engines don’t experience a delay; the internet functions in real-time, and your customers receive prompts every day on Facebook, Bing, Google, etc., asking them if the address and phone number for your business match the information shown. If you don’t update your information immediately, Google will turn off your profile.
6. Be Sure That You’re Optimized for Mobile
Most businesses host a nice-looking website, but how does your website look on mobile? Does it automatically scale itself for any sized screen? If not, you need to have your web developer create a mobile-friendly version for your business.
Because 30% of all mobile searches include location-specific information, most people using local searches do so from their mobile phones. They’ll want to visit your website from their phone using the search results they just got on Google or Bing. You’ll lose a customer you almost landed if your site won’t load on their smartphone or they can’t access the information they needed from it because your mobile version doesn’t contain all of the information that the main website does.
7. Research and Target Local Keywords
Research long-tail keywords related to your location and use these on your website in relevant blogs and landing pages. Targeting local keywords includes targeting neighborhoods and towns or in an area as large as New York City, a borough.
8. Optimize Your Website With Local Keywords
Optimize your website using the target local keyword phrases you locate. This means adding them in a natural, relevant way to each existing page and integrating them into new blogs. You can add new life to an old website by updating its keywords and optimizing it for local search. This means updating the following areas at a minimum:
• Headings
• Title tags
• Meta description
• Body
• Footer
Incorporate the main local keyword phrase in your business’s URL if possible. As with typical SEO, avoid keyword stuffing.
9. Incorporate Local Content Into Your Website
Write local content for your website’s blog. Also, create short posts for your GMB page that you post a link and introduction to on your blog. This drives traffic both ways and raises your traffic on your GMB. That helps elevate your rank in SERP.
Mix the non-local and local content on your blog. Write and publish both. One gets you a wider audience, while the other nets your business local customers.
Link local content to topics with wide-ranging audiences. For example, a makeup artist might write a blog on prom makeup tips two weeks before the local high school prom. This gets local readers interested and perhaps some visits for the MUA, but a wider audience also reads this content because high schools throughout the country hold proms around the same time of year.
10. Optimize for Searches Using Voice
Along with mobile search and local search, users increasingly turn to voice search. You need to optimize your website for voice searches, such as those conducted through Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. Mobile voice searches have local intent 300% more often than text searches.
12. Build Relevant Inbound Links
Inbound links help with traditional and local SEO. One of the easiest ways to get inbound links is to contact your existing business partners, distributors, and vendors and ask them to co-link to your business. If each business links to the other as a blog source once per week, then within one month, both businesses’ SERP improves. You can also do this by guest posting on another business’s blog.
13. Create Landing Pages by Location
For businesses that serve a large metropolitan area or multiple locations, create a location page or landing page for each. That means a business in Los Angeles that serves the metro area would create a landing page for Beverly Hills, one for Oxnard, one for Burbank, one for Malibu Beach, etc. This helps you rank higher in local searches for each location.
Rather than writing clunky copy that includes every location on one page, you divide the information and conquer the SERP. You’ll need original web copy for each page because although they all cover the same services, the wording needs to differ so that the search engines don’t ding your business website for plagiarism.
14. Integrate Location Landing Pages Into Your Site’s Architecture
Many businesses treat their landing pages like second-class web pages. Each landing page deserves a link to the regular site architecture. Your business does itself a disservice if you don’t link to each landing page because you make it too hard for the search engines to crawl the landing pages.
The search engines recognize site architecture and follow each page that links to the homepage within that architecture. If you don’t link the landing pages to the home page, the crawler, also called a spider, cannot follow them. Without following them, it cannot catalog them, also called indexing them. That means the search engine doesn’t count the many hits to each of those landing pages in indexing your website as a whole. You hurt, instead of help, your SERP.
15. Manage Your Business’s Online Reviews
Don’t ignore your review on Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, and other sites. You can change a negative review to a positive experience by replying with class and good manners. Apologize for their experience lacking what they expected. State what your business has done to rectify the situation, so other customers don’t go through the same issue. Offer the customer a discount on the same service or product if they return to give your company a second chance.
Why do reviews matter so much? More than 88% of consumers consider and trust reviews in making buying decisions. Positive reviews work great but how you handle criticism shows how you would treat a customer. That means when you respond with respect to criticism, you can change the negative review into a positive experience by showing all the potential customers who read it how respectful and understanding your company treats its customers. You also show that you remain open to improving your company and your business practices.
15. Study Your Local SEO Signals to Improve Business Processes
The keywords behind the SEO only inform the potential customer of the existence of your business. Local SEO ensures that they find your business, but what happens when they email your business or phone it remains up to you.
If your website data tells you that most potential customers make contact via telephone, then dedicating an employee to answering the phone can help you land more customers. If your website data tells you that most potential customers email your company, then you should ensure that you set up an auto responder that addresses emails automatically and hire someone to respond to valid inquiries.
Set up spam protection software to work with your website so that you don’t get inundated with junk emails. You can also set up a captcha to weed out bots from sending automated messages.
16. Remember That Local SEO Isn’t the Only Thing That Matters
Finally, don’t only focus on local SEO. You also need to work on your overall SEO, also referred to as traditional SEO. Creating a comprehensive SEO strategy helps you reach the top of the SERP by creating a large volume of visitors both locally and globally.
When you need to rank higher, implementing these 16 tips can help you do it quickly. In terms of SERP rank, “quickly” means up to six months for a significant movement in rank, so don’t expect overnight results. If you do everything listed in this article, you should see monthly improvement in your ranking, and that should translate to better lead generation and more business. If you want help with your SEO strategy, Unique Visitors can be your marketing partner. Our team combines effective SEO strategies with high-converting web design for proven results. Reach out to us today for more information.