For a majority of small businesses, local customers can be the difference between thriving and not making it. Unless you are an e-commerce business or provide digital services, getting local customers to call or come knocking at your door is the majority of your clients. We will go over the most important steps to optimizing your content for local SEO.
Keyword Strategy for Local SEO
It all starts here with your keyword strategy. If you want to rank locally for a keyword, it is important that your keyword has intent and search volume. Some keywords that have great search volume nationally, might not have the same volume or any searches at all locally. For finding out what keywords have the best volume in your respective city or zipcode, Google ad planner is the best place to start. You can narrow down your geographical location. Don’t forget to make sure your keywords have intent. Do you want someone finding you that already is looking for your service or trying to find how to do it themselves? You can only rank for so many keywords, make sure they count.
Local SEO Content
Once you are able to find the keywords you want to rank for, you can take those ideas to your on-site SEO and blog.
- On-site content – Make sure each area you are focusing your efforts has its own page and unique content related to that area. Don’t forget that your titles should match that content respectively.
- Blogging – Blogs can be helpful to your local SEO and not because people will be reading them. We always say you should be blogging it least once a month but it is important to have intent behind your blogging. You can use answer the public to see what your customers are asking. You can then write a blog around that topic and link to other pages on your site that is dedicated to that service. This will tell Google that you have great supplemental content surrounding that service.
There are differences and similarities to how you will be optimizing each type of content. Learn more here.
Use your Google my Business for Local SEO
Without having a profile on Google it could prove to be very difficult to rank on the local level and since local search and the map pack is directly related to your Google My Business page. Although this is not directly related to your content optimization, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this important part of local SEO.
- Map Pack – In almost all cases when someone searches for a local business the map pack shows up first right after the ads. Without having your business listed, you will not show up in the maps, thus losing out on potential real estate on the first page of Google.
- Near me Searches – When someone wants something quickly, a “near me” search will most likely take place. Most search engines will then ask the searcher if they can pull their location. This will get you to the top of the list if you are located in or right next to the zip-code that the search happened in. “Near me” searches have grown by leaps and bounds of the years. You can also dedicate pages on your site to this keyword.
- Reviews – Positive reviews can be a form of link building. A positive review can be looked at by Google as a vote of confidence and of course a good way for someone who wants to look into your services before giving you a call.
Rank Local
Local SEO can be a great way to grow your business quickly. 88% of searches for local businesses on a mobile device either call or visit the business within 24 hours. Make sure you are optimizing your content for local SEO.
