Any business running online should have a local SEO strategy. Best SEO Services give businesses an opportunity to get high-intent qualified leads, especially if you want to target customers in your locality. By locality, I mean town or city. This is critical if you want to get a high ranking of your website in that particular location. SEO, whether local or not is a tricky aspect and you can’t put up a strategy and expect to remain effective for years. Reason being, the website market world is not stable and keeps on changing almost every year. An SEO strategy that was effective last year may not work this year.
For this reason, you need to make calculative moves regularly to strengthen it. If the implementation is done properly, you’ll surely get effective results in your site traffic, leads and conversions. You will have an upper hand when competing with your competitors. I have done extensive research and came up with this list of effective local SEO strategies that will help you secure high domain authority in your locality. Go through it to see what will work for your business.
1. Optimize your “Google My Business” page
This strategy works every time although it has been neglected by many businesses. Many businesses assume since they are running an international business, there is no need to focus on your local area. This is not true. Before any business becomes successful worldwide, it must first conquer the local area. By optimizing Google My Business page, you make it visible for your local audience who want locally available products and services. There is no need for local customers to look for products elsewhere when they could just walk down the street to access the same products. Your business will also show up on Google Maps whenever visitors search for related businesses. It will also help you with your ranking.
2. Optimize your local business listings
When visitors want to look for certain products or services locally, the first place they run to is the local directory. Therefore, make a point of including your business listings to all local directories that fall in your niche. Directories usually rank high in Google search results, in locally done searches. If a visitor conducts searches in these directories he will be redirected to your website if you have an optimized listing. Besides increasing your site traffic, it will also help you generate qualified leads. For effective results on an optimized listing, ensure you update your contacts including your name, address, and phone section. These are critical in your Google My Business listings as they allow your potential clients to reach you for inquiries. Don’t use abbreviations or wrong spelling that may confuse your visitors. Changes should be applied immediately.
3. Optimize your website content for local keywords
Create a list of targeted keywords that are relevant to your business to help you with your local SEO. To check whether the keywords are effective, you can use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner with your local filter. This tool is perfect for creating keywords that are highly used by visitors looking for similar services. When you have gotten these keywords, incorporate them in your website content, titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. To know their competitiveness, you can use a tool like SpyFu to see whether your competitors are also using them. By spying on your competitor’s keywords and establishing the same keywords which are working for them, means that they will work for you too. You should restrain yourself from overusing keywords as they make your content look spammy. They should be distributed naturally and placed in the content naturally without loss of meaning.
4. Ask feedback of happy customers to give positive online reviews
To apply this strategy, you also must also produce quality products that clients will love. This helps you to get possible reviews from clients. Nowadays, customers want to find out if the product is worth it by checking different reviews from customers who have already used the product or service. In fact, 66% of customers will count on reviews for informed buying decisions. These conclude that if you get positive reviews, you are likely to convince visitors to buy your products, especially if you are selling digital products such as apps and plugins. Positive reviews also help in strengthening your brand’s reputation and make it look trustworthy.
5. Create a mobile-responsive website
And why would anyone create a website that is not responsive to mobile devices nowadays? Majority of Internet users access their information on mobile devices for convenience. This means unresponsive websites will not get your business anywhere. Google favors Mobile-first websites when ranking websites. With the availability of the high-speed Internet, mobile devices are perfect in accessing information anywhere. You should also know that mobile devices contribute 52.2% of website traffic. This is very huge and if you can’t tap into this platform, you are killing your business.
6. Strengthen your social media presence
Social media is the most powerful marketing tool of this age. Both local and international businesses rely on it to reach a massive audience. A strong social media presence makes brands look trustworthy. If you are providing great services it’s quite obvious that you will attract loyal clients or followers. Social proof is also generated from social media. For high-quality traffic and backlinks, you need a strong social media presence.
The buttons should be red hot from constant interactions with your audience. Create groups and forums that discuss topics related to your services or products. Inactivity in your social handles is unhealthy to your website. Social media is a great platform to promote your marketing campaign for greater brand awareness and reach. Thanks to it, the world is now a global village and people from all corners of the world can interact and transact businesses effectively.
7. Optimizing affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is also a great way to strategize your local SEO. Affiliate marketers will help you market your locally produced products by placing ads on their website. These networks and programs can reach other potential customers that you are not able to reach. When picking affiliates, ensure that they are dealing with products that belong to your niche.
Final Remarks
Without proper research, it’s impossible to implement effective local SEO. Trends are changing by the day and what worked for you last year, will not work this year. Depending on the type of business you are running these strategies will be helpful in your marketing. This should be at the back of your mind when seeking local SEO services.
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