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Small businesses can use local search to their advantage: 46% of all Google searches look for information about the area. Your business could be missing out on potential customers who are ready to shop in your local area if it is not optimized for local searches. Local SEO is essential if your business wants to remain relevant.
We have created this comprehensive guide to help you optimize your local SEO in birmingham.
The guide will give you a solid understanding of how to optimize your business for potential customers who use local search to find the products and services they want.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimizing) is a process to improve search engine visibility for local businesses. This includes brick-and-mortar establishments. Local SEO best practices can help businesses increase organic traffic from customers searching in the same area.
Local content, social profiles pages, links and citations are all signals that search engines use to deliver the most relevant results for users to find information in local searches.
Local SEO allows businesses to position their products and services for local customers and prospects.
Local SEO Tips
- Optimize for Google My Business
- Get involved on social media and post to Google My Business.
- Make sure your name, address, phone number, and email address are all consistent online.
- Optimize online directories, citations.
- Do a local SEO audit.
- Enhance your internal linking structure
- Optimize URL, title, headers, and meta descriptions.
- Add location pages to you website.
- Make local content.
- Mobile-friendly websites are essential.
- Inbound links that are relevant and authoritative.
- Get involved in your local community.
- Optimize for Google My Business
Google My Business is the best local search engine. Google My Business can help you meet Google’s requirements because it supports, verifies and shares your content.
You’ll need to do the following:
- Verify and create a Google My Business Page.
- Google Posts can be used within your account.
- Encourage customers to leave reviews online.
- You must respond authentically to reviews. Example: “We value your feedback on [product/service] within [city, state]. Your input is valuable and we look forward to working again with you. We are grateful to you, the [full name of the company] team.
Google could reward you with a desirable sidebar space in Google’s local searches if your business can be verified as genuine by Google.
This is not just for SEO. You can improve the customer experience by having reviews, keeping your contact information up-to-date and maintaining operating hours. Due to 2020’s disruption in consumer buying behavior and business operations, consumers need to have current information.
Get involved on social media and post to Google My Business.
Google now considers social media content more important than ever.
Once you have created a Google My Business page that is beautiful, share it with your social networks to further align social and search.
Make sure your name, address, phone number, and email address are all consistent online.
It’s important to make it easy to search engines and people to find you. To do this, you need to create your NAP.
What does NAP stand for in local SEO?
NAP stands for name, address and phone number (with an area code) of a company. Google will display your NAP better in location-based searches if it is crawlable HTML text.
Pro Tip: Images cannot be crawled using search engines such as HTML text.
The footer, or header, is the most popular place to include the NAP. You should also include your NAP on a page called “Contact Us”.
Optimize online directories, citations.
These four map data aggregators are available to United States companies and provide map data for Apple (Yelp), Bing, Google Trip Advisor, Google, Bing, Google and many other search engines:
- Express Update
- Neustar Localeze
- Foursquare
- Factual
You must be consistent: ensure that your citations are consistent across the four data aggregators.
Misspellings, abbreviations and a lack of suite numbers or the wrong number can all be problematic.
Google may not be able to determine the correct information about your business, and it might not show it in search results.
Pro Tip: Make sure to remove duplicate listings from online directories. To gain an inbound link to your local area, you can also join the Chamber of Commerce in your area.
Do a local SEO audit.
It can be tempting to let go of the basics once you’ve mastered them. SEO is an intuitive and ongoing process. It is important to conduct a thorough audit of your website to determine where it stands and what needs to be done to reach your goals. The following are some of the things you might find in a local SEO audit:
- Google My Business Audit – How does your Google My Business rank in the SERPs Are the details accurate?
- Google Search Console Audit – Is your site searchable? Are there any errors that could hinder indexing?
- On-page SEO Audit – Is your site compliant with all on-page SEO elements that aid in ranking?
- Citation Audit – Are your citations in top business directories correct?
- Competitor Analysis: How does your site compare to your competitors? Do you have any gaps? What are your strengths and weaknesses in regards to inbound links, content design, positioning, and positioning?
- Website Audit – How is your website performing?
Enhance your internal linking structure
External links to your site are great (which I’ll talk about soon), but adjusting your internal link structure can also improve your SEO rankings.
Why is internal linking important? The following are the benefits of internal linking:
- Website navigation support
- Assist with website hierarchy and information architecture
- Pages are given authority and rank power.
Kissmetrics’ Seven Commandments of Internal Linking: Top-Notch SEO is a great resource for anyone looking to improve their internal linking structure.
Optimize URL, title, headers, meta descriptions, and content
Every new blog post, when it comes to content is a new indexed webpage for your site. It’s a page that you can target with a geographical search phrase and gives you a new chance to be found in search engine result pages (SERPs).
You must optimize your content for search engines every time you create content. This includes using high-volume keywords within the URL, title and header, meta description, body, and meta description. You can highlight customer success stories or case studies if you have trouble creating geo-targeted content.
Pro Tip: Optimize “near me” local searches by adding more details to these assets, especially for your business’s locations.
Add location pages to you website.
You can create location pages if you own more than one brick and mortar location. Locator pages include your name, address and phone number. They also contain unique store descriptions, parking/transit information, testimonials, and promotions.
You should also avoid duplicate content on multiple pages. A local About Us page is a good idea for single-location businesses. Bonus points can be earned if you include a Google Map on your site’s respective location page.
Make local content.
Google is getting smarter every day, meaning content creators are able to write more for users rather than to please search engines. While general topics can be popular, it is important to focus on local news and industry news in order to attract a local audience.
Promote local events, news and educational content via your blog to be the industry authority. Top-of-the-funnel content is anything that goes beyond the products and services your business offers.
If you are a local security firm trying to attract new businesses to your area, create a resource that will help them get to know the city. Your persona could benefit from a map of local service providers and a schedule of city-wide events. These resources can also provide valuable on-page signals.
Mobile-friendly websites are essential.
Mobile and local search go hand-in-hand (61% of all Google search results are made on mobile).
Your site can be used in many ways, including to search for contact information, look up reviews and find directions to your location. Mobile searches for “near me”, have increased by 250% since 2017.
Your prospects and customers will find it easier to use your mobile-friendly website.
Inbound links that are relevant and authoritative.
Inbound links offer compelling opportunities to increase your local SEO. Every inbound link tells Google that you are a legitimate business. Additionally, inbound links can raise your domain authority. Here are some ways to obtain inbound links.
- Sponsorships and Partnerships
- Guest Blog Posting
- Scholarships
Begin with your network. This includes the Chamber of Commerce and business improvement districts, licensing boards, licensing bureaus and trade associations.
Sponsor a webinar, meet-up or community event. Promote something you love and build relationships with influential people. You can also reach out to your partners to ask if you could be included in their partner directory.
Guest blogging can also help you attract links. Talk positively about others in your industry and be a resource provider to the community. Participating in community conversations will increase the buzz surrounding you in the form inbound links, social growth, and media coverage.
Get involved in your local community.
Participating in your local community will increase your digital PR. You can partner with nonprofits to run a campaign, host a volunteer day for your organization, or sponsor an event online. You can also get press coverage, brand recognition, and inbound links by appearing in local media as an authority in the industry.
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