SEO - 10 tips to help rank your local business

If you are a small business, the reality is that ranking high on search engine platforms, is simply not enough. The key is that you rank well locally and are therefore the first port of call for searchers within your immediate radius. In order for your online presence to gain traction it is essential to invest in local SEO.

1. Get a Google My Business Page

Google Maps is undeniably a powerful platform. By incorporating a Google My Business page in to your marketing strategy, you ensure potential and current customers can find your offline store easily. In addition, a Google My Business Page also allows you to relay contact information, working hours and website to your customers. Make sure to optimize the content of your Google My Business page with relevant keywords to guarantee ease of access to this essential info.

2. Boost your citations by creating a local listing

Believe it or not, there countless third-party listings available online. These listings help in creating citations for your online business. The more presence you have on local listings, the higher your ranking will be. This is because Google often uses such listings to assess the credibility of any given company - including yours.

3. Boost your site’s loading speed

Regardless of whether you wish to rank highly based on effective local keywords or in general, website speed is an essential factor on user experience. If your site takes too long to load, visitors will abandon it. Improve its code and structure to boost your site’s speed.

4.When people look for local services, they predominantly use their mobile phones to do so. It is the nature of our time. Therefore, it is essential that your website is compatible with an array of devices. Google also ranks mobile-friendly websites highly.

5. Conduct off-page optimization

Video promotions, content sharing, directory submissions. These are just some of the many off-page campaigns you can conduct to improve your local SEO. It is no fallacy that campaigns help create awareness and buzz about your local brand - isn’t that what marketing is all about?

6. Optimize all your content

Conduct keyword research and add relevant keywords to your webpage content. Remember, search engines rank pages and not websites. Therefore, it is essential to optimize all the content present on your website to boost your ranking.

7. Ask for online reviews

The more buzz there is around your local brand, the higher your ranking will be. This is why it is essential to ask your customers to write reviews about your offerings/brand/service online. Positive reviews on third-party platforms have much more meat than testimonials on your website.

8. Your social media profiles also need attention

Rather than just focusing on your website, focus on your entire brand. Optimize all the social media profiles of your business by writing an engaging description, filling in contact information etc.

9. Use Schema markups

If you have certain pieces of information that are more relevant than others, then use schema markups so that Google knows that the given information is crucial and not regular content of the website.

10. Use “near me” keywords

People search for businesses near them when looking for local solutions. Incorporate the phrase in your content to ensure that you pop up in the search results.

And that, is what will undeniably get your local brand noticed and of course leads generated! Our primary goal.