If you’re like many business owners, you’re trying to find better ways to use technology to promote your product or service and attract more customers. While traditional SEO practices will increase the overall visibility of your eCommerce website and allow you to attract customers on a global scale, anyone with a physical business location should be adding local SEO to their marketing. It might be better to look for a digital marketing company to help you do this; you might end up going here for example, but there are plenty of these companies all over the web. Read on to learn how to do it successfully.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO incorporates many of the same components as standard SEO to improve ranking on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The difference is that you’re adding location-specific information across of all your online marketing platforms to direct people in your community right to your door. Companies who use local SEO have a distinct advantage over those who don’t, especially since search engines are placing a greater emphasis on local information when deciding how to rank companies in search listings.
How Can I Implement Local SEO Successfully?
Implementing local SEO doesn’t require a complete re-tooling of your current content. There are five elements to local SEO, and they should be used consistently across all of your online platforms. The first is to include your physical location in your domain name, page titles, and somewhere within the content on every page of your website. Your NAP (company name, address, and phone number) should also be listed clearly on each page; this is typically applied to footers or headers.
Once you’ve added this information, you should also create a local business listing for your company and submit it to the Local Pages section of all major search engines. This should include information like your NAP, a contact name and business hours. Be as specific as possible when filling in your profile and use both a general business category tag and an appropriate sub-category tag.
Perform a search for your company to make sure that any existing mentions of your business contain correct information. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all the information a customer needs when they are researching your company which is why digital knowledge management is so important. Many people will even hire professionals to help with this. If your company doesn’t have listings on local third-party business directories, create them. These directories are usually free to use and essential for community-based advertising. The use of online tools like these that are used to help with advertising is still relatively new, so there may be a possibility that you don’t have the knowledge needed to perform such tasks to the highest standard. Luckily, places like Reputation.com (view them here) are able to give you an extra helping hand in this area, as the sooner you can list your business online, the quicker you can establish success. So in addition to your company information that you’re going to be sharing, your listing should contain relevant keywords that occur naturally, using a keyword density of about 1 – 3 percent.
After you’ve optimized your domain name and URLs, created business pages for search engines and registered your company with local business directories, you can interact with other local businesses online to widen your exposure. This is best done by creating links to related services and by asking local business owners to create a link back to your website in return. You can also use practices like guest blogging on industry blogs to reach a wider market. If your business is mentioned in news articles, receives a favorable review or is frequented by a notable local figure, use links to these resources as well as providing a snippet of the mention on your website itself.
Now that you know the basics for a successful local SEO campaign, you can start putting some of the practices into use yourself. If you want a more intensive and focused local campaign, there are marketing professionals who specialize in creating and implementing robust SEO marketing plans for community-based businesses of all sizes. A quick web search will help you locate a web designer near you.