Local businesses need the correct type of web traffic. If your brick-and-mortar business website draws visitors from faraway locations, they will not convert into sales.
The good news is that more people are searching for local businesses, so there are probably plenty of potential customers looking for you. Google has found an 80 per cent year-on-year increase in users seeking nearby services or products. The challenge for business operators is to tap into this trend using the right local SEO strategy.
In 2022, local SEO involves balancing search engine optimisation best practices with the correct location-based keywords and well-planned business listings.
Local SEO can be challenging, so you may want to enlist the services of an expert to ensure you check all the necessary boxes to rank above your competitors in your location.
If you want to start building a local SEO strategy for your business, here are the things you need to consider.
Choose optimised URLs
You should always strive to create concise URLs for your pages and blog posts. These should explain the page content and offer an opportunity to add a location. Google crawlers look at web page URLs when assessing your site. In addition to using keywords in your addresses, you can add the location or variations on place names.
At the same time, you should avoid URLs that search engine crawlers could label as spam. For example, do not use keywords unrelated to the topic of the page and do not stuff too many locations into the URL either.
Use the correct keywords
The Google Keyword Planner can help you see what people are searching for and which terms aren’t worth including on your pages. This research can help you focus on the right terms and avoid those that are not going to bring you new customers. SEO can be time-consuming, so you want to streamline the process as much as possible and not waste energy on terms that no one uses on search engines.
Focus on your Google Business Profile listing
Your Google Business Profile listing allows you to add location, contact information, images, and a homepage URL. How important is this listing? Sixty per cent of searchers who looked for businesses based on location contacted a company directly through the Google Business interface.
The listing can also appear when people search for nearby businesses using Google Maps.
In addition to filling out all the fields to give searchers as much information as possible, you can also use your profile as a marketing tool. Google places reviews and ratings for your business under your profile information. You can request that your customers or clients leave reviews on your profile. Not only will you get feedback and be able to interact with customers, but it will also make your business profile more legitimate.
Ensure your website is fundamentally sound
You do not want to focus so much on local factors that you forget about SEO fundamentals. Google can penalise you if you ignore site quality.
Loading speed remains an important factor for search engine ranking. Large image or video files, poor design, or a subpar server can create lag. Lag leads to slow loading, which will frustrate users and earn penalties from Google that can hurt your ranking. To avoid this, you should create a simple site with properly formatted and compressed media.
Google also rewards mobile-friendly sites. You need to ensure your site has a mobile version that works with different smartphone operating systems like Android and iOS.
Site navigation is the final fundament trait to check on your website. The site should have a clear structure, making it easy to navigate. You should also add internal links so that relevant pages are connected. For instance, you should link to applicable service or product pages from posts on your blog.
These fundamentals are important for SEO and are also necessary for a good user experience. For example, 42 per cent of visitors will leave a site based on poor functionality, so failing to have a good user experience could cut your potential customer base almost in half.
Ensure proper citations
Google assesses citations, which include a business’s name, address, and phone number. Therefore, the number of citations can help your search engine ranking. While volume can be important, the first step in improving a citation rating is to ensure uniformity and consistency. For example, you should have a single phone number and always use the same format for your address.
You should check citations on your website and business profiles, social media accounts, and third-party sites listing your business online. Depending on your industry, you may use other sites, such as Yelp, for reviews and listings. These should have the exact same citations and format as your other listings.
Give information to search engine crawlers
You can take two more technical steps to ensure that the search engine crawlers pay proper attention to your SEO efforts. The first is to ensure you have an XML sitemap. Why is this important? It gives Google web crawlers an outline of your entire site and helps them find specific pages. This will help your individual pages rank on search engine results, which can be useful for people who are searching for a specific product or service instead of a type of business. Your page for that particular item or service will get listed on the results. SEO or web design services or software should be able to help you create this feature.
The second item you want is a robot.txt file. These files tell crawlers which pages to assess and which to ignore. For example, you can list customer-facing pages on robot.txt files while leaving admin pages off the list. You can also leave off any e-commerce functions, such as shopping cart pages and internal search results pages.
Get help with your local SEO efforts
There are a lot of moving parts to a successful local SEO strategy, and some of the more technical aspects may seem intimidating if you are not an IT expert. Amire offers strategic digital marketing services that include search engine optimisation.
Contact us today to see how our marketing services can improve your local search results.
