People find it hard to differentiate local SEO with global SEO. To get the best out of your local SEO efforts, you need to understand what local SEO is and how it works.
Whether you are working in-house on an SEO project or you offer SEO services to your clients, understanding local SEO is equally important for you.
This article explains the right way to use local SEO for growing search engine rankings for local keywords. Continue reading if you want to know more.
4 Steps to be Successful Locally
The concepts behind local SEO are not new and hard to understand. Over the years, the importance of local search engine optimization has increased dramatically.
Today, getting local SEO results has become hard due to growing competition. Using the right steps is necessary to get the best out of your SEO efforts.
Here are four steps that help local businesses in getting great results:
Step 1 – Start from a Small Level
Google is the biggest market player and its search is the core business of Google. They take search quite seriously and ranking for local keywords can be hard. Yet, you have to take a start from a point. In the beginning, you have to take small steps. Adding a listing to a local directory is a basic step, to begin with. Adding your business to Google My Business is a huge opportunity. You will get traffic and leads if you set up and optimize your Google My Business listing.
Step 2 – Time to Get the Ball Rolling
Now that you have started from the basic steps, you should move on to the advanced techniques. For some local businesses, taking the initial steps might be enough but some businesses have to struggle constantly. Getting a subscription of an analytical online such as SEMrush, Moz, and BrightLocal can help you do more with fewer resources. By using these tools, you can check Name, Address, Phone (NAP) presence is across the web and, more importantly, to confirm if it is accurate.
Step 3 – You Need to Think Locally
When doing local SEO, you need to think locally. Mean to say, you should try to get enlisted on websites that deal with business just like you. Specialized business listing websites are often more useful than general business listing websites. Check the website of your competitor and analyze it in an intelligent tool to know the sources of traffic for that website. If that website is getting traffic from a specific geographic area that you are interested in, it means people in that area are interested in the offerings of those websites. It also means that you can also get traffic from that area.
Step 4 – Try Hard to Be Relevant
You should take help from relevant websites if you want to get fast and long-lasting results. Just getting backlinks is not enough. Make sure you get links from reputed websites that also have a small percentage of spam score. When the competition is tough locally, you may also have to get location-specific website pages written. Google needs a mention on your site of your address to associate with local listings even if you do not service clients at your location. Some useful points have been discussed in this article and you can use these points to rank well on search engines.
When to Start Local SEO for Your Business?
The simple answer to this question is: start local SEO if people are finding your offerings online in the area where you operate. If you do not know if people are interested in buying from you, you can check your competitors and take help from an expert to know more about this matter.
You have read some steps to get the best out of your local SEO efforts. In the end, we can say that local SEO is a great option for local businesses because it can help grow business at a fast pace. You can take help from a professional if you do not want to do local SEO or you do not have time to do it.
So what is on your mind? Are you ready to give it a try? You can read more such articles if you need more details. Please feel free to share your feedback in the comments below. Go and get your local market share. I wish you all the best with your business growth goals.