Why is local SEO important?
If you want to get more search engine exposure for your product. In local SEO, there are a number of different processes that you can use, including:
- Local SEO services (those who help you with it)
- Private label SEO services (those who help you with it)
- Social media marketing (those who help you with it)
But the key question is: how do we find the right fit for us? We discuss all these in this article.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the term we use to describe the process of improving your search engine rankings in your local area.
Local SEO is a relatively new idea, but there are many people who have been using it for years. They have found that their local SEO ranking has improved dramatically when they use local SEO tactics:
- Local SEO Tactics
We will discuss the various tools you can use to improve your local SEO efforts and get more exposure.
The first thing you need to do is get your site indexed. This is not a difficult task, especially if you have a WordPress site with no special plugins required. If you’re not yet using WordPress, check out our tutorial on how to set up WordPress for Local Search. Once up and running, you can start indexing yourself by visiting Google Webmaster Tools
If you aren’t already familiar with Google Webmaster Tools (GWWT), here are some great resources:
- Google Webmaster Tools – The go-to place for everything regarding Google search engine rankings and quality assurance
- Google Alerts – A great way to stay informed about new tools and techniques
- Google Places – If you link anything that appears around town, be sure to add it using Google Places
- Google Maps – Get directions or just enjoy the map (as long as it isn’t spammy)
You can also use some of these tools without having any site indexed at all:
- GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – A powerful tool that allows you to see what other websites are ranking for a keyword on your website
- GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE NATURAL RANKING – Another tool that allows you to see what other websites rank for a keyword on your website
- SEARCH ENGINE RADAR – Not just an “indexer” but also displays recent searches made by users and thus shows where they came from
If these show up too often or appear frequently across multiple different types of sites (e.g.: Facebook pages with advertisements), they may be showing an adware programme or malware infection (which is why we prefer not to recommend these).
So before I go into any detail on how to do this yourself, I would recommend getting GWWT up and running first!
The different methods you can use to improve your local SEO efforts
It’s hard to improve your local SEO without understanding what search engines look for, and how they work.
Search engines like Google use a formula called “crawlability score” to determine how well a website is optimised for their search engine. They also consider various other factors such as the presence of keywords and links, number of pages, the presence of content that is relevant to the query, and more.
These factors are affected by:
- The number of users searching for something on your site
- The quality / quantity of content on your site (i.e., it’s not just quantity but quality that matters)
- If you have just one page featuring an image (or no images at all) or if you only have one page selling something (i.e., not selling something on top of selling something else) — this means you are less likely to get a crawl score higher than 10.
So what does this mean for you? You can do several things:
・ Increase the quality of your content (blogs and RSS feeds)
・ Increase the quantity of your pages
・ Improve your link profile (there are many ways to do this)
・ Add more keywords to your content (and also backlink profiles as discussed in another post )
・ Add more web pages that people can click on with no further action needed
The benefits of improving your local SEO
Local SEO strategies are not as sexy as they used to be. In the early days of LinkedIN and Yelp, there was a community of people who would go into local businesses’ Yelp pages and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the worst).
They were pretty unscientific (they didn’t measure any actual quality or even try to understand what was important), but they did have a lot of fun doing it. The community is still around today, but it has matured and the tools have changed.
My approach is different from theirs: when I do local SEO, I use tools that are built for me. I don’t want to get too technical about it: I don’t care how much you rank for each keyword in Google, what you do with the data or how many people like you for your products (whatever else you might care about). What I want is for my business to be noticed by potential customers looking for something similar to what we sell — and then grow organically from there.
Here are some tips on how this can work in practice
Start with your most important keywords
For local SEO purposes, search engines need more than just keywords — they also need context information, user agents and spiders that crawl your site, etc. And these things paint a pretty detailed picture of what users will actually use your site for, so it makes sense that they should be the very first thing we consider when trying to optimise our local SEO efforts.
Get data out of your site in order to make things efficient
We don’t need tons of data points; we just need enough data points so that we can make decisions based on real-world experience or intuition instead of guesswork. You can use dozens if not hundreds of metrics in order to do this.
How to get started with improving your local SEO
The search engines are very much in the dark about your local SEO efforts. If you want to evolve them into an active part of your business, then you need to start doing things different.
You don’t have to be a Google-hired consultant; you don’t even need to do in-house optimization work. You don’t even have to do any SEO work on a regular basis. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t try some small changes, like:
- Backing up and archiving any old copies of your site (that is, if we can find them)
- Using an archived version of the site for guest posting
- Checking in regularly (for example, every week or so) and actively mentioning things going on with your local SEO efforts
The above is just one example of small steps that can be taken each day (or weeks) to improve your SEO efforts. The point isn’t to go overboard and become a full-blown SEO professional; it is rather a simple way to leverage small changes in order to build better business results from the same effort.
As people keep saying, “SEO is not rocket science!”; however, it does take some amount of effort in order for its results to be realised elsewhere (beyond what you spend on it).
The different factors that affect your local SEO
We discuss the different factors that can affect your local SEO. We also get more information on how to effectively implement the measures you’ve taken.
Conclusion
Local SEO is a very complex and highly detailed topic. We’re not going to cover it all here, but we will touch on some of the main points.
You should also consider local search marketing as an alternative business model to selling physical products, since it could potentially be more profitable. Local search marketing is a great way to boost sales and use your time in ways that you can manage more effectively. It’s also a great way to increase brand awareness and give your product a unique identity when it comes to customer services.