Having your website perform well in the results page of a search can play a vital role on the success of your business. This is why there are a number of companies that invest a lot of money on SEO practices to help them achieve this goal. Because there is now a growing demand for this, it can be difficult for businesses to reach a good SEO spot. Even if you are working at improving your local SEO ranking, it could still not be enough to get you the results you need. With so many other companies vying for local visibility, it’s important to know the things that truly matter in local SEO.
While most SEO practices are still applicable in today’s time and age, it pays to know a few other things. Considering nearly everyone uses their smartphone to help them with their everyday tasks, it helps to know how best you can make use of this medium to have a strong local search presence. Here are 5 things that will boost your local SEO:
Claim Company Profiles and Local Listing Pages
With so many different local listing websites available, it is so easy to improve your local rankings without costing a lot of time and effort. There are a number of websites to choose from, which is why it is recommended that you claim your company page on websites such as Google My Business, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp, Foursquare, and YP.com. There are also industry-specific business directories that you can take advantage of to help your business be recognized by your target market.
An important piece of advice to remember when you are claiming such listings, is that you have to keep your information up to date. This means you have to ensure that you have input the correct location, phone number, operating hours, and any other information that will make it easier for potential customers to find you. Whenever you make a change to one of these, you should also change it on these websites.
Depending on the local listing websites you use, you may need to verify that you are indeed the owner of the business. You will have to either verify your email address or send in the PIN code they send via mail. This helps confirm that you are the right representative of the business.
Optimize Your Website
If you have a website, you need to make sure that it appeals to the algorithm of search engines but remains readable for humans. To improve your local SEO, you need to use the right keywords. However, you have to be careful in how you use keywords as they can hurt your rankings; particularly if they have been used poorly. Remember that through the years, search engines have been modified to recognize websites and pages filled with keywords for the hopes of upping its SEO ranking. These search engines are able to identify which websites do these and penalize them. Apart from that, customers don’t really enjoy looking at websites purely devoted to keywords.
Instead of focusing too much on your keywords, opt for providing quality links, reviews and just a few strategic keywords. You should also make sure your content is suitable so you can have more people visit your page and find it useful.
Make Sure Your Website is Responsive
We live in a time wherein information is accessed through smartphones and tablets. This is how majority of websites are currently being accessed. As such, you have to make sure your website is responsive to mobiles and tablets so you can attract customers to visit it. Otherwise, your customers will look for other alternatives on where they can find a business similar to yours.
Investing in a responsive website can help transform your business and build its success.
Encourage Customer Reviews
One of the best ways you can earn the trust of potential new customers is through your website. You can ask your past customers to leave behind a review of how well they enjoyed dealing with your business. And when you have enough positive reviews, your online credibility and trust can be built for future customers.
A good way you can invite customers to leave a review is to let them know which websites you are on. And while there are other businesses that offer incentives for leaving behind a review, it is not always a guarantee that you will have positive reviews. The things that would are excellent customer service and an even better product.
Make Use of Social Media
Social media has revolutionized how people do certain things. Almost everyone is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even on all three websites. In order to build your local SEO, you need to identify which social media platforms will work best for your business. As much as you can, interact with your followers regularly and upload fresh content. When possible, advertise local events, offer discounts for residents, and even sponsor a local team. These things will help build your brand as people will look for your information online.
These things are organic ways you can boost your local SEO. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on it but with the right techniques and practices, you can be successful with building your brand online. Need help boosting your local SEO? Contact gotcha! today.
