Why Do We Need Local SEO?

Local search optimization is a right way to gain targeted audience to your site. If you’re running local business, consider it meets the needs of many people in your region. Local optimization has the familiar guideline as global, but it also has some peculiarities.

We offer to you TOP SEO Tips for local search optimization.

1. Google Places account. Set up your website on Google Places. Don’t miss the fields which you are to fill with verifiable information about your business. Photos, videos, product offerings, discounts, etc should be fulfilled properly. Insert keywords into description field but don’t be spammy.   
2. Set up your account to Bing and Yahoo Places too. Google is search giant, but the similar functions are appropriate for Yahoo and Bing, so use these searches for claiming your company. You’ll also appear in Local mobile searches.  
3. Describing your website and product use geo-targeted key-phrases. Insert city name into Meta tags, titles, subtitles and content, but don’t overbroad with it.
4. Your WebPages “Contact Us” and “About Us” should be optimized to local terms. Directions, contacts and working hours should be filled properly. Consider the niche of your business.

For example:

If you are a Child center describe shortly those services you are providing for children.

If you are a Gym, represent your coaches.

    5. Encourage users to rate your site. Positive reviews are real advantages for your website. Stimulate your site-visitors to rate your resource and give feedback via Social Media. Use also your mailing lists and involve the user into interaction.

    6. Use Social media to interact with your target customers. It is an effective method for local SEO. You would gain not only high traffic via Social media but using SERP rank checker see the growth of your site positions in search engines.

Your business can have different locations. Multiple locations need multiple landing pages. Optimize each landing page to each business location. Select corresponding keywords and insert them into the content of each landing page, its title, subtitle, meta description and other tags.

For example:                      

If you’re providing services in Lansing and Detroit create two landing pages to these two locations. The URLs of your landing pages should be like that:

• 1) https://website.com/my-services-in-Lansing
• 2) https://website.com/my-services-in-Detroit

Of course, you are to optimize your landing pages with keywords, but also write high quality content on the pages for your users. Make your WebPages informative and readable.  

Local link building strategy has its peculiarities. Try to receive backlinks from the websites which are not only close to your thematic but also which have the same location as your website. Search engines should connect your site with needful for you location.

For example:

If you’re providing educational services, select all educational sites in your locations for your backlinks inserting. It can be study centers, sites of private schools, training facilities, scholastic institutions, business centers, etc.   

Use regional directories. Business directories are giving authoritative links. You’d not only improve your ranking, but also inform your target customers about your site. It is an advantage for running local business.

Don’t forget about Chamber of Commerce in the region, where you are. Leave not only web address of your site but also your contacts there.

Local optimization is a must for lots of projects.  It is easier to promote your product on the market if target customers know that you are close to them. It is known that search engines distinguish only two types of search queries: Location-dependent and location-independent queries. The difference is simple.

For example  

If a user is looking for information about his favorite team, then geo-referencing will not be (the issue will be the same for all residents of your country), but if a user needs the nearest health clinic the search engine will display the results for the user's city.

Thus, the verification of the site positions should take into account this ranking factor. Registering your project in SpySERP is very important to specify the geolocation, where you need to check positions. SpySERP has the most complete GEO base.

By setting the correct regional settings, you can get the most accurate information about how effectively your site is moving in a particular region. And vice versa - if this setting is specified incorrectly - you will get incorrect positions of your site.

Let’s have a look how it works in SpySERP project:

For one of the sites, the following settings were used:

As you can see, the local area has almost no effect, but localization in the country as a whole and in the city in particular have a wide difference.

For this test, a toy store in Toronto is taken. It has a website, but sells the products on offline platforms.

As you see geolocation factor is very important. By setting the correct regional settings, you can get the most accurate information about how effectively your site is moving in a particular region. And vice versa - if this setting is specified incorrectly - you will get incorrect positions of your site.

Website mobile version is important for both local and global search engine optimization. It is possible that in a new place a person needs to repair a car or something else. Creating a site with an easy mobile access, you’ll gain new customers.     

To get to the TOP of Google local search as well as the TOP of any other popular search engine demands high efforts. But now if somebody asks you “How does local SEO rank”? You would easily give an answer. It gives local target costumers and if you run your optimization correctly, you’d gain advantages for your business. Good SEO local optimization strategy raises your sales and develops your business. Build and follow it step by step and you’ll have better than your competitors’ rankings.