How To Properly Do Local SEO

The Best Way To Implement For Small Businesses

When you search for your company online, do you wonder why you don’t show up on the first page of search results? Maybe your business doesn’t even appear at all, or it appears all the way down to the 10th page of the Google SERP. If you do have a website, you might see the number of page visitors is not near the number you want. Sharp Tack Media is one of the best web design services you can hire with years of industry experience involving local SEO optimizations click here to learn more.

This has all to do with your local SEO strategies, which is similar to traditional SEO except for the extremely heavy focus on optimizing your site to pop up on location-specific packs. This means when doing local SEO, you should put a strong focus on location when optimizing content, link building, and your web design. Improving this allows Google to display the best search results on a local level and will include your business at the top of the search results.

Link Building

You won’t need as many inbound links, or backlinks, to your website as you would in traditional SEO strategies. Much of your competitors likely have 15 to 25 backlinks, and you only have to match or outdo them. You should be getting these backlinks from other local businesses, organizations, and local websites. You will find the task easier by forming strong relationships with people or businesses in the community and by sponsoring events in that local community.

Content

As in traditional SEO, you still have to put a strong focus on the topic of the content. However, now you will need to provide the audience (customers, readers, and web crawlers) with relevant locational context, too. Your content should organically have the location/community in different instances of the copy. Blog posts can be about community events you have participated in or sponsored, how the topic affects the community, or even how the community has helped your business grow.

Extra Local SEO Tips

  • Don’t worry if you are slightly outranked when searching in different areas in the location. Proximity is one of the strongest weighted factors in local SEO and that cannot be optimized in search and web design.
  • Reviews and review sites play a critical role in your ranking. Make a profile page on each site and encourage positive reviews from your users. Respond to negative reviews as well. The response should address the complaint, but also show future customers you hear them, and you can handle negativity with grace.
  • Make sure you have set up a Google My Business with all the correct information (if you have a location in that area)
    • If you don’t have a physical address in the location you are optimizing for, do not fake your address
    • Add UTM tracking parameters to the website link on your Google My Business page to get mobile traffic attributed to your web page (set medium to organic)
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