Given that everyone searches for products locally, it seems obvious that Google is quite interested in local SEO! While local search engine optimization is undoubtedly a wise investment, you should also be aware of other digital marketing opportunities for your brick and mortar or retail store. While some people find local SEO to be rather mysterious and difficult, we have compiled a list of the top 10 methods for optimizing your website for local search engine optimization for your perusal!
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Make Your Home Page Shine.
It should be extremely evident on your site who you are, where you work, and what you do. Make these aspects of your company simple for Google to comprehend. This information should be stated explicitly in your header tag, meta description, and page title tag. You may quickly alter your website's page title tag if it was built using WordPress by going to Settings > General in the left navigation menu. Which leads me to my next point: the Yoast SEO plugin makes it simple to load your page meta data.
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IMPROVE THE META DATA.
The continued relevance of meta descriptions and page title tags has been hotly debated. Page title tags still play a major role in the initial impression that a potential visitor receives of your website, regardless of whether they are still a ranking component (in which case they will take precedence over meta descriptions). The name of the city you wish to concentrate on should be included in your page title tags if you're optimizing for local SEO. Make sure that the name of the location and the service or product you provide are included in the title tags of your pages. This will help by explicitly stating "and this is what I do in this location," in addition to telling search engines "here is where you can find me." Which brings us perfectly to our next conversation topic...
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CREATE A PAGE FOR EVERY PRODUCT, SERVICE, AND LOCATION Using Yoast SEO Plugin
Give up trying to combine; it won't help with local SEO or SEO overall. Each of your distinct product/service offers needs to have its own page in order to apply the product/service schema to them. Thus, this is not just a general SEO best practice, but it also makes your sitemap more understandable for search engines and improves the ranking of your product/service pages for that particular offering. Moreover, it makes customized schema applications possible. Our sitemap has a list of all the services we offer, which are listed below. Would you believe that we could ever rank for Local SEO, Social Media, or Web Design with a page titled "Our Services" if we only had one page that said that and no other unique pages? Uncertain.
Site Overview
Likewise, make a page for each of your locations if you have more than one. If your Phoenix location is on the same page as your Chicago and Tampa locations, how do you think it will appear in search results? That's right. It won't. Give each of your kids a room instead of trying to force them to share bunk beds. They will have more room to mark their territory and be found when needed, although it may need a little more work. What did you say about schema, now?
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APPLY LOCAL PRODUCT & SERVICE, ORGANIZATION, AND BUSINESS SCHEMA.
To optimize your website for local search engine optimization, you need, at minimum, include structured data markup, or local business schema, to each and every page. Without this, it's practically hard to get into the dreaded Google Local Pack. Additional code known as "local schema" can be added to your website's pages to help search engines better grasp your company's identity, mission, location, and potential relevance to users looking for similar goods or services.
Enhancing your website with product and service schema concentrates more on the specifics of each of those goods or services. Once more, the idea of schema is to talk to search engines like robots and understand them in their own language. Make things easier for them. Although English is their second language, individuals may grasp it nonetheless. For best local search results, converse with them in their native tongue.
You can test a URL on Google's Structured Data Testing Tool to check the breakdown of different schemas on your website, even if you're not sure if your site has schema or not. This is an illustration of the schema found on our website design page that includes reviews, local businesses, and services:
Brainstorming, Studios, Schema
5. DELETE YOUR BUSINESS PAGE FROM GOOGLE MY.
We've had several difficulties with Google My Business (GMB), so you're not the only one who feels like you're up against a wall. To optimize your local SEO listing, though, you must claim your company listing and complete its information. This is very important for your Google Local Pack and SERP results. Try your best to locate the match that makes the most sense for your business, even if there are over 2,000 categories. If your business category isn't featured, don't give up. As you fill up your content, make use of both primary and LSI keywords as much as you can, since this will increase your chances of appearing in the Local Pack by over 20%.
Google Places
Once more, please do yourself a favor and claim each of your GMBs if you have numerous locations. It won't be too hard to update them all with a single login, but you do need to own each actual location for your company.
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CHANGE YOUR WEBSITE'S NAP CITATIONS
Name, Address, and Phone Number is referred to as NAP. Examine your company's entry on Google My Business and confirm that all of the pages on your website have the EXACT same information about it. This is frequently done in a website's footer, but for the full effect, it must be built so that the footer's code loads on every page.
NAP Reference
As previously indicated, if you have several locations, make a page for each one and add the NAP that is pertinent to that place to it.
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INCLUDE YOUR COMPANY IN LOCAL DIRECTORIES
Although creating citations and adding local directory listings to your website can be time-consuming, there are a number of solutions available that, for a little fee, can help to lessen the difficulty of this process. Ensuring that each entry is identical is crucial in this case. Thus, once more, be sure to put your organization in your local directories exactly as it appears on your GMB page, including the identical layout and representation. A brief and cost-free evaluation of your present standing in a few significant directories is offered by Moz Local. If you are willing to pay extra, services like WhiteSpark and Yext may offer more possibilities.
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SET UP SIGNALS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
You ought to create a Facebook business profile right away if you don't already. Another advantage for ranking well for local SEO is having social media signals pointing to your location. Even if you don't need to do much with it, having the page even exists is still preferable to nothing. But if social media is important to your organization, then ideally you will have a strategy that will enable you to manage material for many places.
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GIVE REVIEWS PRIORITY
As your company expands, you'll need "votes of validation" to confirm that you are who you say you are, what you say you do, and where you say you are. If customers are raving about your goods and services, that's an added plus. But reviews are a fantastic method to accomplish this. The amount of reviews you have on Google, Yelp, and Facebook will all be taken into account by search engines as they employ an algorithm to determine which results could be most relevant for a given search query.
Reviews on Google My Business
Yelp will consistently show up on Google's top page. Play the game, then. Focus on enhancing both your Google and Yelp reviews. Yes, it's always a good idea to accumulate evaluations on the world's most popular search engine. Moreover, when people search for your brand on Google, your Facebook page probably comes up on the first page, so increase the number of reviews to assist provide a favorable image of you! Reviews are an excellent approach to improve your website for local SEO, even when they might not appear on your actual website.
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USE SEO CODE BEST PRACTICES ALL OVER YOUR WEBSITE
Yes, this may seem apparent, and it is, but it is disregarded much too frequently. Ultimately, putting band-aids on a holed boat could make it sail better, but it won't get the boat across the ocean. If it is not properly cared for, it will sink. The same is true with websites. This is your online residence. Give it some tender care. Additionally, you'll automatically generate more high-quality in-bound links the better your blog articles, content strategy, and website are optimized for search engines.
Additionally, you should work to build high-quality backlinks since they play a significant role in both your organic SERP results and local SEO rankings.
Having said that, we are aware that this may seem a little overwhelming. Remember that local SEO is only a small portion of an all-encompassing digital strategy. Please contact us if you would like to discuss brand optimization on the internet!
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