Local SEO is the hottest trend in internet marketing right now. Local SEO means specifically targeting the area in which your business operates by fine-tuning your SEO efforts to meet local demands. Going local with your SEO campaign is hardly as difficult as you may think. We have the best tips to help you get started in this article.
Switch to Local SEO Agency
If you are using the services of an international SEO agency, now would be the perfect time to find a new partner based near you. Local SEO agencies have a number of advantages that international companies don’t have. For starters, they have a better understanding of how the local markets think in terms of searching for the things they need.
Local knowledge, paired with local SEO experts, can really help jumpstart your local SEO campaign. If you are based in Toronto, for instance, it would be relatively easy to find the best SEO services Toronto has to offer and get started right away.
Take Control of Your Business Pages
You may already have a Yelp page set up for your business. In order to fully maximize its SEO effects, it is time to take control of those local business pages. You should also set up a Google, Yahoo and Bing business pages respectively. Google Business Page, for instance, will help get your address recognized. This way, when a user from your area searches for products and services you are offering, they will see your business listing along with your address and phone number in the search result.
Once these business pages are set up, be sure to stream content through them as well. Give users reasons to visit those pages even when they are not particularly looking for the services and products you are offering.
Optimize Your Site
Naturally, SEO is about on-site and off-site optimizations. In order to get better local exposure, you need to start optimizing your site for local SEO. There are a few things you can do in this case:
- Add your business address, the name of the city, state and country you are based in as well as your phone number of essential elements of your site. A state name in the Title tag and a complete address at the bottom of each page will definitely help.
- Instead of targeting generic keywords, find long-tail keywords that local users actually search for. The keyword “auto dealer,” for instance, may not suit the local search queries perfectly; you can try aiming for “car dealer” or “used car shop” to get better traction.
- Move your site to a local server and use a country-specific domain. Although these steps may seem insignificant at first, having the site hosted locally will help boost your business’s local SEO performance by quite a long way.
- Local keywords work great, as do longtail keywords; it’s always great to optimize your keyword around a location. Let’s say you are a web designer and want to target the local Birmingham market; you would then look for a keyword such as a web design Birmingham as it contains both the product/service and the location. This will help you rank better locally.
Of course, there are still a lot of things you can do to improve your site’s local SEO performance. For more tips and tricks on how to do local SEO – and a wealth of other SEO resources – be sure to stay tuned right here on this site.