Optimizing For Local SEO Best Practices
Local SEO Marketing is a great way to get the most out of Google’s various search tools. Local SEO is also called local search engine optimization, or local SEM, for short. Local SEO encompasses everything from web content optimization and page optimization to how you use keywords on your website to get the most out of Google’s natural search results. Here are some of the most effective ways that local SEO can help your business:
Content Optimization: Content optimization is one of the most important elements of local seo marketing. There are many different approaches to this strategy, including content analysis, testing, and manual optimization. Basically, content optimization is an effort to discover what sets your website apart from the competition, so you appear higher in Google’s search results. Local SEO experts will work with your web designer to create high quality content around your specific industry and region. Content optimization can also incorporate elements such as social media marketing (Facebook, Twitter, etc), online advertising, search engine submissions, and more.
Google Rank Factors: Google ranks websites based on certain factors, which include their popularity and current rank in the search results. Keywords in your meta-tag or title tag, relevant links to your site, and internal linking structures can all play a role in how well your site ranks among search results. To keep your ranking up, make sure you pay close attention to how your site is ranked with Google. There are several ways to improve your Google rank, including improving how you use keywords, submitting your site to Google’s supplemental index, making sure you get plenty of backlinks, using content optimization to your advantage, and more.
Backlink Building: Getting backlinks to your website plays a key part in local SEO marketing strategies. These backlinks are vital for improving your overall ranking with search engines and can be extremely helpful in boosting your web searches among specific geographical locations. In fact, Google uses links from outside the actual Internet via “backlinks” when it comes to determining where a site should rank higher within the search results.
Local SEO Marketing Strategies for Service Pages: For many small to mid-size businesses, creating local SEO marketing strategies for service pages can prove challenging. If you own a service business, it’s important that you optimize your website to benefit both your customers and the search engine spiders. One way to do this is to take advantage of your service page’s location within the Google Places business profile. Google has a new location-based algorithm that places greater importance on locations within a business’s local area. As a result, optimizing your service page within the Google business profile can prove extremely beneficial. For example, on the left hand side of the Google search results page, there is a new section that displays a list of Google’s “Best Places,” which includes your service or specialty business’s location.
Local SEO Marketing Strategies for Image Via Reviews: As mentioned above, Google places greater importance on reviews that are submitted within the last 12 months. This means that you want to take advantage of posting positive reviews on your Google Places business listing. However, don’t forget to use a picture as well. When people see your listing, they want to know more about what it’s like to work for you. So, always make sure to include a picture of your desk, or have your lunch with your group of coworkers. This will not only show prospective customers that you are real and have nothing to hide, but it will also show them what a great place you are to work at, as well as adding some much needed originality to your image via reviews.
Creating a Local SEO Best Practices Strategy for Service and Reviews: Now that you understand the importance of location-based optimization within your business, it’s time to start implementing some of the basic rules that you learned in the previous lesson. If you find that customers are still leaving your reviews with a few simple corrections, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t satisfied. So, make sure that you address any problems as soon as possible, in order to rank well. Remember, a little correction is all that is needed to rank well within Google! You should also make sure to follow up after each review, in order to keep things moving along and to avoid making your customers run away in panic.
All of these strategies for optimizing for local search engines are really quite simple. The biggest challenge is just making sure that you always follow through with the plan and never stray from it, no matter how tempting it may be. Remember, if you try to do too much, it will just have the opposite effect, and you will be left back where you started, wondering why nobody is ranking well. As long as you stay on course, and utilize the basic SEO techniques, you will be able to optimize for local search engines in no time at all!