Increase Customer’s Footfall Through Local SEO

The digital world is ever fast evolving leading to dynamic changes and consistent growth. What is gaining prominence noticeably is the growth and rise of Small or Medium Business Enterprises. The continuous growth has lead to the rise of digital marketing strategies for better rankings in SERPs. Dominating the search results with content is certainly not possible as you need certain strategies which can boost your rankings.

Say for example, your business is in a physical location and you want people to know about it. To take advantage of the search engine, more small businesses are now opting for optimizing the search engine.

Every second of the day, as per estimate 40,000 people sent queries of search on Google. Different people are shopping for goods, services, restaurants or various other products.

What Is Local SEO And Why It Is Important?

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With the growth of competition, the importance of local SEO is considerably increasing. The main motto of using optimizing the local search engine is to help people easily find your website online. This service is highly beneficial when it is the question of acquiring walk-in customers. Each and every business is investing in general SEO in the recent years but with SEO strategies to solidify the business as a reputable local asset.

Most of the search engines are paying much more attention to various local searches. That is reason why local search results are considered to be relevant for various local searches. Local SEO can work excellently making your brand page rank higher in the search results inviting more walk-in customers. Here are some of the reasons why this is important for business.

• With Local SEO, There Is Higher Conversion Rate

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Optimizing the local search engine can help in gathering traffic to provide better rate of conversion. There are users who look for a more local term or content will surely convert more on average. There are also higher chances that they will easily convert in 1 out of 3 leads providing 33% conversion rate.

• Local SEO Can Create Your Brand

Local SEO usually target people in your local area mentioning all the services. One can upload more images and recent updates right about the business. It can give more authenticity to the business.

• Local SEO Can Help In Extending The Business

The website is surely vital for any business. This services can surely make it easier for users to interact with business. Users can provide reviews right on services. People prefer to see reviews of customers giving suggestions and certain ideas.

• With Local SEO, One Can Build Long Term Networks

When you are in competition with niche seller and marketer, Local SEO can help in selling same products as yours. You can create potential partnerships between two business providers. Interact with website owners initiating business idea.

Checklist of Local SEO

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Keyword Research

To effectively run any successful SEO campaign, proper keyword research is certainly very necessary. Analyzing the terms and phrases which people can actually type in the search engines to find the local business is very important.

There are hidden codes and text on website which could optimize a website around certain keywords which people are actually using. In case of local business, geo-modifier can be made use of. In case of local business, making the keyword location specific can surely increase your SERPs.

Discovering The Keywords Which Should Rank

The best way to start will be to get an idea about the keywords which people in your circle search with a business like yours. Put your list in Google’s keyword Planner to get new keyword ideas and the right traffic for those keywords. At least find a set of keywords which nearly hundreds of people are searching every month.

Title Tags

To maintain the on-page SEO elements, title tag is very important. The title tag is the text which comes to view in the SERP and also when one is bookmarking a particular website. The title should include the keyword which one is searching for, telling Google in details what the page is all about.

There are certain guidelines while writing the perfect title tag. The title tag should be under 55 characters so that the brand is properly displayed in the SERP.

Take the example: Web Development Company Miami

Meta Descriptions

A Meta description is usually a brief synopsis of the page as provided to the search engine. Usually a descriptive Meta description may increase your click on the search results.

The unique description should be under 156 characters in length.

NAP Information

Three most important letters in any local search are N-A-P or Name, Address and Phone Number.

It is very important to let Google know where the business is located. Google can easily pick up NAP information on your website or other web sites. The information in NAP can act as a ranking factor for local search.

The more business information is found on the web, the better visibility will be there in local search.

Customer Reviews

Whenever we are finding local businesses and services, we usually gather feedback by reading online reviews. Usually the minimum rating which people usually look is 3 out of 5 stars. That is the reason why getting positive reviews surely matter the most in the present times.

To gather more positive reviews, creating an amazing customer experience is very necessary. Do not forget to ask for feedback.

Some of the places where one can get great feedback are Google My Business, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, and Angie’s List.

Image Optimization

Optimizing image is art of SEO world. To optimize image, one certainly need four aspects.

• Filename: By this name, the image file is saved right on the computer. Just ensure that the file-name has the target keyword right on it.
• Title Text: Usually this text is displayed when the user right over the image. It should include describing the image and keyword.
• Alt Text: Usually this text is displayed when the image fails to load. This is usually for those who are visually impaired. This should certainly have the keyword describing the image.
• Size: The size of the images should be compressed and effectively sized. One can use a Photoshop or free web tool like Compress JPEG.

Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor text usually refers to the clickable link text in the hyperlink. The anchor text of the link is to understand what the page is all about. Hyperlink keywords and help Google to relate to home painting.

Mobile Friendliness

The website with all its necessary services should certainly be very much mobile friendly with certainly not a slow loading time. The responsive design should fit to the screen of the device as they are easier to manage right from SEO perspective.

Social Profile

Social profile is certainly unique, trustworthy and customizable in various social profiles are LinkedIn, Pinterest and Facebook.

To increase the website visibility, promotion on social media is very important.

Basic Local SEO

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Step One: Setting up your Google My Business Listing

Make your local business popular by setting up your claim in Google My Business Listing.

• Decide on the N-A-P which is name, address as well as phone number. This should be consistent right on the web. The NAP here should be same as what appears on website and various other business listings.
• Using a local number is surely the best possible advice.
• Choose the category or categories carefully. Google surely prefers choosing the best one for business. There are tools which may help when one is choosing the right category.
• It is necessary to fill the profile completely. Include various product and services along with location-based keywords in the profile.
• Try to implement photograph of employees, logo, and building. Try using quality photographs.
• Put accurate and up-to date business hours.

Step Two: Setting up your business on various other secondary search sites

• Yahoo Small Business: They still allow you to add the business for free while there is still work.
• Bing Places
• For Business Owners- Yelp
• Apple Maps
• Right in the local search, Facebook is bigger player. Here consumers can give reviews with Facebook business page appearing in search results.
• To effectively deal with other business, LinkedIn is the best option.
• Social Media sites fitting the audience and interest.

Step Three: Establishing Citations for Business

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Citations can be defined as listing your business name and address on various web-pages even if there is no link. Citation works very much like online yellow page directory.

Some of the sources of citation for your local business are:

• For local businesses, there are four primary data aggregators. These include Infogroup, Neustar, Localeze, Acixom which gives more than millions of business locations in United States.
• Local blogs are surely the great place to get the business listed. They obviously vary based on the search engines as well as geographically based locations.
• Local Directories are very well indexed by search engines and are highly associated with a particular city or region. Local directories are less susceptible to spam.
• Directories and blogs which are industries focused. Local engines count as citation sources getting your website listed.
• Removing duplicate citations so as to prevent the search engines from confusing.

Step Four: Gathering Reviews and Testimonials

Gather as much of positive reviews and testimonials as possible. Whenever one is searching local for brand, reviews and testimonials play an important role. Yelp reviews are surely a priority in many cases.

Step Five: Webpage With Content Mark-up

Efficient use of content mark-up tells the search engines what the page is all about. The maximum links and citations are usually pointed towards the home page which has highest domain authority. To make a strong impact on the audience, a minimum of 300 words is required.

To target the local market, category + city should be in keyword phrase. To effectively impact the search engine, the keyword + city should be there in the title tag, in page title, and also in the content wherever applicable.

Step Six: Adding Location to The Website

• In each and every web page, be it header, footer, the address should be provided in details.
• For each and every location, there should be a separate webpage which should be created.

Step Seven: External Linking

Linking to various external websites is very necessary. This will demonstrate your relevancy as well as linking out to community websites in the best way possible.

Step Eight: Testing the Loading Speed of the Site

As per statistics, nearly 40% of the people expect a website to load faster in less than 2 seconds and abandon the website if it takes long to load.

Step Nine:Â  Making Sure That The Website is Mobile-friendly

As per the different rules, creating a mobile friendly website is very necessary. If your website is not mobile friendly, it will drive away your target audiences from phone.

Step Ten: Creating High Quality Unique Content

Local SEO also works by creating high quality content be it technical content which can keep the target audience engaged. Creating content about the industry, common client question with events in the community is very important.

Step Eleven: Optimizing for Voice Search

For local customer, voice search is certainly very necessary. The reason being that typing keywords is certainly the most difficult tasks instead sending a voice query is necessary.

Step Twelve: Acquiring Backlinks to the Content

Be it local SEO or any other form of SEO, acquiring backlink is certainly very helpful. Simple steps can help provide quality backlinks to one and all. These steps include:

• Effective linking to various other quality areas and content
• Creating content that is shareable as they attract target audience
• Quality blogs or guest blogs

Step Thirteen: Adding Google’s Accelerated Page

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Google Accelerated Mobile Pages is available to one and all by February 2016 and these AMPs make mobile page load faster. AMP pages listings makes the whole process of mobile experience better. AMP opens up new level making the search option better in the best possible way offering new advantages with AMP local results.

Do you wish to optimize your brand with Local SEO? Get in touch with our Local SEO experts to attract and gather local customers inclined towards your brand.