When you run a small business, performing well on local Internet searches is essential. Potential customers will often find you when conducting a search for a business in a specific geographic area. Let’s explore our Local SEO checklist.
Along with setting up a well-designed business website and creating pages on social media platforms, you have to adopt powerful strategies that strengthen your local SEO (search engine optimisation).
7 Point Local SEO checklist
- Use local listings
- Welcome opportunities for people to write about you
- Make your website responsive
- Provide your full business contact information on your site and social media pages
- Offer detailed directions to your business
- Post content that includes local geographic information
- Stay active on social media
The following are 7 important small business SEO tips for local success.
1. Use local listings
Make sure your business appears on sites like Yelp, the Yellow Pages, the White Pages, and Google Business (this last one ensures that your information turns up accurately on Google Maps and in Google searches). Stay consistent with the information you provide, including business name, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact details. Make separate listings for each of your business locations.
2. Welcome opportunities for people to write about you
When other people write about you online, you’ll receive more search traffic, especially if they mention your business name and location and provide a link back to your website. You may show up in blog posts or in local media coverage for an event in your town. If you’re mentioned along with your geographic area, your performance in local searches improves. Reviews and testimonials are another way to strengthen local SEO. Although you can’t tell people what to write, you can encourage reviews, host or participate in local events, and reach out to local media representatives and bloggers. Posting a press release online to announce something new and important about your business may also attract positive attention.
3. Make your website responsive
People often conduct local searches from mobile devices. For instance, when they’re going about their day, they wind up looking for local restaurants, shopping venues, or car mechanics. You’ll perform better on local searches if you use responsive web design, meaning your site looks good and works well on different computing devices with different screen sizes.
4. Provide your full business contact information on your site and social media pages
On your website, make sure people can easily find your business contact information. You also don’t have to confine the information to one page. Your name, address, phone number, and email can appear on every page on your site, in a consistent format. Make sure they also appear on your social media pages, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Keep the information the same from one site to another.
5. Offer detailed directions to your business
On your website, make sure there’s a page devoted to describing the best ways to get to your business location(s). Include local roads and, when applicable, landmarks. Add a Google Map to your website as well.
6. Post content that includes local geographic information
Let’s say you maintain a blog on your business website. You can refer to your geographic area in the title of a blog post or in headers and other content within the post. You can write posts that include information about your region. For example, if you work in air conditioning repair, you can write about a heat wave affecting the locations where your business operates. When you write about special discounts, new products, or special events, remind people of your location and contact information. In general, make sure your site strategically uses keywords for your business location.
7. Stay active on social media
Share content that other people will like, re-tweet, and re-post. Engage with your followers, replying to the comments they leave on your Facebook page and on other sites. Highlight positive reviews and favourable social media posts they make about your business. If they write something negative, remember to reply in a courteous and professional way. Regular online activity will help keep your business and its location more prominent.
Be sure to contact us for further advice and assistance with improving your performance on local Internet searches.
Local SEO strategies increase the chances that you’ll appear prominently on Google and other search engine results.
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