How does your quiet business, sitting on a small corner of a giant city map, get itself noticed?
In this era, every small and medium business owner needs the digital impetus to market themselves in their local area.
A website. Social media accounts.
It’s inevitable. It’s unavoidable. You know it. I know it.
And every digital enterprise needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to aid in their brand awareness, and to facilitate customer outreach and marketing.
Call it real estate on the digital market street.
And one of the most useful aspects of the SEO process, that aids SMB owners in reaching the closest customer base in their local area, is Local SEO.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a process through which you can optimize your business website and social media accounts for search engine queries in your local area.
This means you can enable your business to be found by local people searching for business-related stuff known as enterprise content optimization.
If you’re a tuition teaching business in Vellore, this means you will want to be found by concerned parents conducting Google searches for “tuitions in Vellore” and other closely-related keywords.
How Do You Enable Local SEO For Website Content?
There are several, smart methods to optimize your online content for Local SEO purposes.
Should you be unable to master these, given their moderate complexity, you can always contact a local SEO services company to make things easier. There are lots of local SEO companies that offer these services but you must also know how much local SEO costs.
Even if you are looking to hire one, it’s always good to know the logic of the Local SEO process, so as to familiarize yourself with the subtleties.
1. Sprinkle Local Flavor In Your Content Writing
The core idea of Local SEO content writing is embedding relevant local keywords in your content. This gives writing a familiar tone to readers of your content.
There are a tonne of ways you can do this.
- Location, location location: Foremost, try narrating content from a geographical perspective. Mention famous spots, landmarks, and localities, and discuss something related to those spots and your business.
- Use related topics that interest local people: For example, if you’re a music equipment seller in Mumbai, you can create blog content aimed at would-be clients, that discuss the best music resources in Mumbai. Given that your clients are often looking for places to perform or listen to music, list out relevant ideas.
“The best places to celebrate music in Mumbai,” is one example. Or “The best jam rooms in each of Mumbai’s suburbs,” discussing where bands can meet to play. - Trust the local lingo: Using locally relevant keywords increases the chances for Google’s spiders to crawl through your website for local searches. This could be in a local language or could just pertain to a particular manner of writing.
Should you have difficulty understanding how to do this, again, hire a local SEO services company, who employs teams with an intimate knowledge of the peculiar business lingo of the region.
2. Use An LSI Keyword Generator to Find Related Words and Topics.
How does Google pinpoint the differences in your article with a meta tag of “Cricket”? Is it the insect or the sport?
Google is smart.
It crawls your article and will find related words. So if your article is about the sport, it will notice the sport-related keywords like “bowler,” “batsman,” “wickets,” etc.
Note that Google doesn’t use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). LSI is often misappropriated to Google when it is an older system of indexing that is no longer used.
But you can use online LSI Keyword Generators to help you differentiate your content more thoroughly, and even help you find new blog topics.
If not, you can always use a regular keyword research tool like Ubersuggest to find high-volume keywords that can perform for your content too. These can be calibrated to your country, if not the city.
Thus, step 1 becomes easier.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting is the act of writing a blog post for another company’s well-known website with the intention of forging a symbiotic relationship with them.
- Create Backlinks: You can use their superior page authority to create backlinks to your own website’s content within the post (if they permit so), while you can create backlinks to their website from your website. If it is a “dofollow” HTML link, this will help your domain authority.
- Trust Nofollow links: The company may add the “nofollow” HTML to ensure their page authority is not spoiled by your lower authority page, but a “nofollow” link is still beneficial to you. It enables your name and your content to garner more attention.
- Create an Author Bio: In case the company doesn’t permit you a backlink to your website within the blog post, you can include one in your author bio. This is the only sign that readers will have on your website. Make sure your article kicks ass, as it might compel readers to check out your bio
- Include Calls-to-Action: Make sure to persuade your readers into commenting on your blog post, sharing it on social media, or perhaps taking them to a purchase area. When readers comment and share, their activity improves the visibility of your post, which leads to awareness of your name and website. If you reply to their comments in a timely and responsible manner, it further improves your digital presence.
Write with the objective to inform, help, and entertain.
Do not get too promotional.
That tends to put off readers.
To find opportunities to guest post, google “your location” + “your industry name” + “Write For Us.”
You will find the results of websites which you can contact for more details.
4. Optimize URL, headers, title tags, and meta descriptions
Each time you create a web page on your website, you have a new opportunity to optimize it for the search engine results pages (SERPs). Each page’s metadata can be calibrated for geo-targeted keywords, if logical, along with the other relevant keywords.
Do not overdo it, though.
If you don’t seem confident enough that your pages will be optimized for local SEO, there is always another step that will help…
5. Use Location Pages Wisely
Whether you have a single location for your brick and mortar store or multiple, you need to create location pages to enable local SEO.
Location pages store some of the most specific data related to your business.
This includes:
- Owner’s name (you)
- Address
- Visiting hours of the store
- Phone number
- Store descriptions
- Parking info
- Directions information
- Reviews and testimonials from customers.
If you have multiple location pages, do not duplicate content. If you have a single location, create a detailed About Us page. Always add a Google Map location on these pages. It is paramount!
Remember that your name, address, and phone number should be consistent, so as to not cause customers and search engines a problem.
To make things simpler, set up your NAP (name, address, and phone number with area code). This should be embedded as crawlable HTML text on your website. Keep it in the footer or header of the website.
6. Register On Google My Business and Optimize It
This is an external aspect of your digital footprint.
But it is one that is unavoidable.
Google My Business (GMB) helps local businesses to register themselves on Google Maps and Search, so as to be visible to local search queries. As such, it is one of the best resources available for businesses looking to build a local profile. The findings come within the Google sidebar, where customers can access it.
- After you have verified your business on GMB, fill in the relevant details, and make sure to be as accurate as possible about locations, URLs, hours, and other info.
- Add pictures, since pictures increase the social proof of your business, which, in turn, improves traffic to your website.
One of the most important aspects of GMB is responding to the reviews. It can be tricky when responding to negative reviews. Be courteous, but also be thorough in case of a mishap. Mention the address of a store they can pick up a refund or replacement. In the case of positive reviews, be thankful, and maybe even playful.
If you conduct this side of GMB responsibly, your ratings will improve, which will further improve your local SEO.
7. Optimize online directories and citations.
Map data aggregators provide most of the map data for Google, Apple, Bing, Trip Advisor, and more. Find these data aggregators out for your local or national area.
The main objective is to verify that your citations are consistent across these many aggregators online. Wrong phone numbers, misspellings in addresses, abbreviations, etc. can be problematic to the searchers. If Google can’t understand which of your information is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results.
You can use certain paid tools to check this online. Or, as we said above, you can hire a local SEO services company to audit all your citations online, so as to streamline the issue.