WHAT IS LOCAL SEO?

   Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the search engine visibility for local businesses, primarily those with related to your locations followed by Google algorithm. By the following local SEO best practices, businesses can improve the organic traffic from searches performed by customers in nearby areas. Search engines give importance on signals such as local content, social media profile pages, links, and the citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user to gather information for the local search. With local SEO, businesses can be use this to position their products and services to local prospects and customers searching for them.

WHY LOCAL SEO IS IMPORTANT?

Local SEO is important because many people will use search engines to find the local businesses.

In fact, according to the Google:

• 30% of all mobile searches are come from related to location.
• 78% of the people who search for something nearby on their phones visit to the business within a day.
• 28% of the searches for something nearby result in a purchase.

IMPORTANT FACTORS OF LOCAL SEO

 Here we will see some important factors of the local search optimization.

OPTIMIZE FOR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

Google My Business has become important factor in local search. Since Google supports, verifies and then shares its own content generously, Google My Business is an ideal tool to help your business to meet the Google’s needs.

To ensure that you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to:

• Create and verify the Google My Business page.
• Use the Google Posts within your account.
• Encourage your customers to share their reviews online.
• Respond authentically to the reviews, specifying location.

ENGAGE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Google considers content that the shared on social media more important now than ever before. Now that you’ve carved out a beautiful Google My Business page, share it on social media, further aligning social and search.

ENSURE YOUR NAP

The word NAP, stands for the name, address, and phone number of a business. Your NAP should be considered that crawl the HTML text on your site for Google to display it better according to location-based search results. The most common location for NAP is in the footer or header of the site. Additionally, you should include your NAP on the “Contact Us” page, too.

LOCAL SEO AUDIT 

A local SEO audit will include the following:

• Google My Business Audit – your Google My Business appear in the SERPs and the information accurate.
• Google Search Console Audit – your site crawl and it have any errors that would hinder indexing.
• On-Page SEO Audit – your site accommodate all the on-page SEO elements that help ranking.
• Citation Audit – all of your citations correct in the top business directories.
• Competitor Analysis – your site match up with your competition’s are there any gaps that you need to close.

ADD LOCATION PAGE

Location pages will provide readers with your name, address, phone number, store hours, store descriptions, parking information, promotions, and testimonials from customers. You can even get the bonus points if you add a Google Map to your website on your respective location page in websites.

CREATE LOCAL CONTENT

Google continues to get smarter, which means that the content creators can be now write more for users and less to appease for search engines. And while writing about the general topics will be attract a vast crowd, sometimes it’s more important to hone your focus and write about local or industry news to attract a local audience.

PARTICIPATE IN THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

The more participate in the local community, the more digital PR you’ll be receive. Partnering with the nonprofit on a campaign, having a volunteer in your organization, sponsoring an event or appearing in the local media as an authority in your industry are all the ways to earn press, brand awareness, and the inbound links.

GET REVIEWS

Getting your customers to write the glowing reviews for your business doesn’t just to optimize your Google My Business presence; it will also encourages more local customers to buy from you.

OPTIMIZE FOR MOBILE

This confirms that your website is optimized for mobile to be a play in the local SEO

Here are some tips to achieve this mobile optimization,

• Ensure that your website loads quickly.
• Use bigger fonts that will be easy to read.
• Use the images and copy sparingly, conveying only the information you need to be.

USE RELEVANT LOCAL KEYWORD

Your keywords should be relevant to the local customers. Google’s own Keyword Planner lets you filter the keyword searches based on location so you can get an idea for the popular search terms for a given region. This lets you to create a list of locally relevant keywords to target. Once you have them, they should be make the appearances in your site’s Meta content, copy, and URLs.