Local SEO is an important factor if you want your business to grow. It takes a little bit of work to figure it out, but once you know how it works, you're golden! This post will show you the ins and outs of local SEO, so that you can use those tactics to find prospects in your area.
The first thing that people usually think of when they talk about SEO is the search engine ranking. But there's also another type of SEO that impacts businesses just as much — Local SEO.
Local SEO isn't just about getting your website ranked on local search engines. It's also about getting your business in front of people who live nearby.
If you're a small business trying to grow and aren't using the power of Local SEO, you're definitely missing out.
In this post I'm going to share with you the tactics I use to help clients rank in local search results and get more customers from their area.
Let's get started.
How Local SEO Works
Local SEO is a lot more than just ranking on Google Maps and Yelp. The goal is to get your business found on search engines when someone searches for businesses in your category in a certain location.
For example, if you're a plumber in San Francisco, you want to show up when people search for "plumbers in San Francisco".
Here's how it works:
Local SEO is a combination of off-page factors like citations, local listings, and review sites plus your on-page SEO factors like your website's address, phone number, and hours of operation.
The goal of Local SEO is to be found in search results when someone searches for businesses in your category in a certain location. Your SEO strategy should include both on-page (on your website) and off-page (citations and local listings) strategies.
But how does that work exactly? Here is the diagram to explain:
Local SEO Factors and How They Work Together to Rank Your Businesss in Search Results for Local Searches
Here's an example of how this works. Have a look at the picture above — what appears at the top of Google Maps is based on off page factors, like a website's address, phone number, and hours of operation.
The address, phone number, and hours of operation are on-page factors on your website that Google uses to determine where a business is located.
But even if you have all of these things in place, it's not enough. You also have to engage with the outside world by creating local citations and review sites about your business so that search engines can find them. This helps prove to Google that your business is real, and well-known in the area that you're trying to rank for.
When someone searches for local businesses, they need to see yours in the results.
How to Use Local SEO to Find Target Audiences Near You
The purpose of Local SEO is to get your business listed on search engines when someone searches for local businesses that are in your category. But how do you find local keywords? Well, it can be a bit tricky.
Here's how I did it.
First, I analyzed the keywords that my client was already ranking for in search results. For example, my client's website was already ranking for the keyword "San Francisco SEO Company".
This told me that Google had recognized their site as one of the best SEO companies in San Francisco. This meant I could start to look at other local businesses and use what they were doing to come up with new ideas for how my client's business could rank.
To do this, I got three things:
A list of local keywords (a Google spread sheet with all location names and keywords they were ranking for) A list of all the top 10 ranking sites that are showing up in searches for the particular keyword. An idea of how many reviews these top ranking sites have — and what their Google My Business page looks like.
Once I had these items, it was time to get started. Here's what I did:
1. Built out my client's Local Citations
A citation is a piece of information that shows up in search results about a local business. They're the data that search engines like Google use to figure out where your business is located. This data helps them to know you're a legitimate business, and have been around for awhile.
To get started, I built out my client's citations with the help of the local SEO tool, BrightLocal . It was super easy to find the citations they needed. I just searched for the keywords they were ranking for in search results and found a list of all the businesses that were currently ranking.
We then got Optimizely to help with social media to help them boost their rankings on these sites.
This helped us to create highly targeted local citations that showed up when someone searched for keywords that the business was already ranking for.
2. Built out my client's Review Sites
After I had created all of the citations, it was time to focus on the review sites.
The reason why I wanted to focus on review sites is because they were a great way for us to show that our business was well-known in the area and get reviews. These reviews would then show up in search results and make us look more credible to potential customers.
I did this by creating an account with Google My Business . I used this service to find all of the websites that we needed to create a profile on.
For each website, I created a profile for my client and got them to respond to any questions that were posted there. This helped with their local SEO as it showed Google that they are an active, well-known business in the area.
3. Used Local SEO to Find Target Audiences Near Your Business
After I had all of my client's citations built out, and their review sites optimized, it was time to dig into the data. I wanted to figure out what keywords they needed to focus on next.
The next step for me was to go through all of the data and split it up by location. I did this by getting a list of all the locations in Google My Business that my client was listed in.
Then I used BrightLocal's keyword tool to generate new keywords from the ones that my client was already ranking for.
I then took these keywords and cross-referenced them with Google My Business profiles for businesses that were already showing up on the first page of search results.
This allowed me to find out which businesses were already ranking for the keywords we wanted. Then, I took a look at what they did right and wrong, and figured out how I could do a better job than them.
I used this process to come up with a few keywords that we could rank for and show up on the first page of Google's search results. I then took these keywords, and created profiles for my client on sites like Yelp, Superpages, and Yellowpages to get these keywords ranking in search results.
This gave us a boost in terms of organic traffic and leads. It also gave us a huge advantage over the competition.
How to Get a Free Hour-Long Consultation With One of Our Local SEO Experts
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The results we saw from using these strategies were pretty amazing. Within a month, I had managed to rank three of the keywords on the first page of Google for my client!
I used local SEO to get my client's business noticed. Now, they have a significant amount of visitors from local search engines. This helps them rank higher in organic search results which causes more organic traffic and leads.
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