Think of the last time you searched for a pizza delivery service, and the results showed all the pizza restaurants near you? Local SEO services in USA have proved to be a game-changer for small business owners. It is worth investing in, especially in 2020, during the COVID-19 outbreak, when your consumers are trying to reach you more often online than offline. According to Google, 46% use search to find local information. That suggests that if your business is not optimized for local search, you could be missing out on 80% of your possible customers, and we are sure that this is not what you want! Google’s local search algorithm includes a proximity factor that takes your location into account even when you don’t mention your city name or ‘near me’ in your search. Local SEO helps you ensure that your local audience is just a Google search away! And by hiring Google My Business management services.
, outstanding results will make their way in no time. Keep in mind that what’s worthy won’t come out of thin air. Success will require reasonable amounts of time.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO, also called local search marketing, is an effective way to promote your local business online. Local SEO is pretty much the same thing as organic SEO but with the addition of a geographical component. Optimizing your website is a way of ensuring that your business appears in top results when customers in your area search for the products or services related to your business. And with the growth of cellphone internet access, people now search a lot for local businesses on their phones. The primary goal of Local SEO is to list your business in the Google Maps Listings on the first page of search results. Local SEO helps you reach your target audience, rank higher in search engines, and expand your business’s reach.
So how do you get there? Here’s a simple guide to perform local SEO for your small business:
Optimize Your Website
Your website is your most important and valuable online asset, so ensuring that it is properly optimized to appear high within search results is vital. The first step to climb up on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is to optimize the website content by clearly mentioning your business’s name, address, and place (NAP) on the contact page. We recommend you to make the site optimized for mobile and the phone numbers clickable, as 76% of local searches result in a phone call. Don’t forget to add the Google Maps Location of your business as the whole point of local SEO is to help your audience reach you.
Google My Business
Since Google feels comfortable sharing content that is verified, filling out your profile on Google My Business is the first step to perform professional SEO services for your business. It allows you to manage your presence on Google Search Engine. You will need to add keywords relevant to your business to your profile, just like you’d do on your website. In addition to your company’s pictures and logo, make sure you add all the details related to your business, including physical address (if you have), phone numbers, opening and closing hours and website URL, etc. Google My Business really is your friend if you want to rank in your specific geographical area, so get your details right! Not only that, but the tool also gives you an enormous amount of options to manage and improve your listings.
Add Local Business Schema Markup
Schema.org makes it easier for search engines to acknowledge what your website is about by creating a common language between major search engines. Any business can benefit from Schema Markup and boost its ranking on SERPs. You can let Google know that you’re a local business by adding the right schema markup for local businesses to your website. If your company has multiple locations, you’ll have to add schema markup to each location page.
Back Your Website With Local Links
Whether it’s traditional organic SEO or Local SEO, link building is an essential SEO ranking factor. If your business does not appear in local consumers’ searches, you are missing out on sales. To begin with, creating locally pertinent content is an excellent place to start. Mentioning local news and happenings on your website will boost the local SEO and provide useful information to the viewers. Also, looking up to ways to pay back to your community give tons on link building potential for your local SEO.
Encourage Customer Reviews
Now that the internet has given more power to the customers, everyone can straight away check whether you’re as good as you declare to be! As 81% of people check online ratings, reviews tend to affect most customers’ purchase intentions. Local SEO takes into consideration the amount of positive and negative reviews your business gets and how many of them use relevant keywords and images. You can ask your customers to leave a review as their feedback after the product or service is delivered. Make sure to respond professionally and on time to both negative and positive reviews.
Wrapping Up
Mastering the art of climbing on SERPs seems to be hard when your local business is small with limited resources, and competition is tough. You will be soon on your way to boost your business’s ranking when you implement the tips mentioned above, along with focusing on building the best business. After all, your target audience relies on the reviews; if your product or service is not worth recommending, then the reviews will be negative. But suppose you feel that your local business is doing well but not correctly optimized for local search. In that case, you can check out our professional SEO Company, SEO ProHub, for guaranteed results.
