Grow Your Business In Your Community Through Local SEO
Are you a small business that is struggling to gain traction in your local area? If so, then this blog post is for you. Local SEO can be challenging to get right, and the wrong decisions can cost your business dearly. In this guide, we will go over all of the basics of implementing a successful local SEO campaign on your website. We will cover everything from creating citations and social media profiles to generating content about town events!
Why Have A Local Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing that is hyper-focused on a specific region is known as local digital marketing. Local digital marketing is an excellent way to drive traffic to your business.
To illustrate, more than 28 million people are living in the United States that will purchase a new home this year alone, and 94% of those buyers start their search online. One out of every four searches on Google contains local intent keywords such as “best real estate near me” or “top real estate firm in Oregon.” This means you miss out on a huge opportunity if your business doesn't have a local digital marketing presence in place.
A successful SEO strategy for small businesses identifies and ranks highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords. This makes them successful in driving more traffic from users searching locally.
What Is Local SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to making it easy for customers to find content on search engines like Google. Meanwhile, local SEO targets locally based customers by ranking highly for relevant keywords specific to your location and niche market.
For example, suppose a business in Chicago offers services to the public. In that case, they should have an online marketing strategy that focuses on attracting customers from their local area. Successful campaigns involve identifying these key phrases or search terms.
Local Vs. Organic SEO
Though it might be confusing, it's essential to know that local SEO is different from organic SEO.
Organic SEO refers to the process of developing a website and online presence to rank highly for general keywords. This can be done by building high-quality content that appeals to your target audience and attracting links from other credible websites on topics related to yours.
But local search engine optimization is different because it's all about targeting specific locations.
Other Important Things You Need To Know About Local SEO
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How To Know Your Audience
To know the audience of your local SEO campaigns, you need to understand your city's geography. For example, if people in your area are looking for a pizza restaurant near them, then optimizing for that type of business would be more effective than ranking nationally or internationally.
It's also important to know what other services and products they're interested in so you can optimize your benefits.
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Improving Content in Your Local SEO Strategy
Like other types of content, optimization is necessary if you want to have a local SEO strategy.
The good news is that there are a lot of free tools to help with your optimization. One device, notably the Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress, offers many features like keyword suggestions and Google My Business settings.
It's essential to have keywords throughout your website's body content so search engine crawlers can find what you're talking about.
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Improving Website For Your Local SEO
Another thing you need to know is implementing a local SEO requires website improvement.
To increase the chances of getting a higher ranking in Google, you need to make sure your site is search engine friendly. One way for this to happen is by following some basic rules like adding keywords and using structured data markup. A professional website designer can help when it comes time for redesigning your site or creating one from scratch.
Takeaways
Many benefits come with local SEO, particularly if you're a small business. However, it takes time and effort to ensure you're following the correct practices for success.
