We all struggle with one very common, inescapable obstacle – competitors. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and as a local business, it’s essential to be the biggest dog in town. Going up against companies that have auto-generated local listings or businesses that have been in the local SEO game for years will be difficult to beat. Here comes the role of an expert SEO company like Austin Local SEO Company
Another barrier numerous local businesses require to problem solve is Google’s ever-evolving list of ranking factors. For small businesses attempting to show up locally, Google can completely disrupt your strategy with algorithm updates which allowed businesses outside city limits to contend for local spots if they service that area.
Now is the time to commence concentrating on how you’re going to move the needle for your business with these 10 local SEO tips.
Claim Your Business Listings
Over time, a listing for your business is created and ultimately duplicate listings accumulate. It’s significant to claim all listings under your business name, withdraw any duplicates and ensure the remaining listings’ information is accurate and up-to-date.
Finding all these listings may look a bit daunting but there are some great tools out there that make the process very simple for anyone.
Simply enter your business name – keep in mind that this requires to be written just as it is on your website (this comprises capitalizations, abbreviations, etc.) Select your business from the outcomes and Moz will serve you the complete, incomplete, inconsistent and duplicate listings tied to your business.
Add Location Pages to Your Website
Search engines are crawling your site and finding the most similar matches to provide as a result in the search engine results page. By having a distinct landing page for each of your business locations, search engines can readily locate your listing and provide the appropriate location to the searcher.
You should be containing suite numbers and determining if you want street, avenue, road, etc. written in full or abbreviated. How the information is presented on these pages will discern how you will be updating your information everywhere else – so keep this in mind when selecting how to write your location information.
Improve NAP Consistency
For search engines to administer your business as a result for the searcher, your business name, address and phone number (NAP) need to be constant everywhere.
You’ll need to be pickier than normal here; it’s not merely a matter of writing your name and address. Also pay concentration to suite numbers, and how street, avenue and road are written. Be consistent. This should be based on the location information displayed on your website.
Much of this consistency can be updated within the Moz Local search tool and advancement process. Your Google My Business listing is a great place to start, which gets us to the next tip.
Update All Things Google My Business
Every day, users across the internet rely on your enterprise listings for the right information. It’s extremely significant for your SEO that this is easy and fast for the searcher to identify.
By logging into your Google My Business (GMB) account, you can make sure your name, address and phone number are correct. You should again contain a brief but informative business description, a link to your website and your hours of operation. Make your listing appealing; your logo should be the avatar/profile picture and you can update your interior photos, exterior photos and product photos. These should be high-quality images because pixilated, blurry images look sloppy and unprofessional.
Attain Reviews
Reviews are paramount. They are a local pack ranking factor, and they also permit your listing to stand out. If you can tempt your satisfied customers to leave a Google review for you as a thank-you for a positive experience, it can go much further than nearly any other local SEO tactic.
Not only does the review benefit you rank better, but it also assists your results take up more real estate on the results page. This is a plan to employ pages outside of the local pack, by summing up schema markups, sub-pages, etc. to improve the real estate your business takes up.
Social proof is another huge advantage to gaining reviews. Searchers see five stars and they immediately know your business is highly advised by their peers. So, by getting reviews, you’re even tackling three major components of conversion: ranking, clickthrough rate (CTR) and CRO.
Create Local Content
Creating content catered to your slot is going to influence your local search rankings. See the SEO Checklist or just get in touch with Austin Local SEO Company to learn more about publishing successful content.
Take Advantage of Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This is a great, free tool to use when it comes to establishing your local SEO keywords. It’ll assist you in researching what keywords have the highest search volume and lowest competition and will also enable you to find identical terms that your local audience is searching for.
Acquire Backlinks from Partners and Sponsorships
Go after the low-hanging fruit. Make a whole list of the companies and organizations that you are members of or that you sponsor. This can also contain charitable or fundraising events your business has been a part of. Reach out to these points of contact and let them know how you’ve been involved with them in the past and ask them to encompass a link back to your website.
Conduct Local Link Building
In addition to acquiring links from partners and sponsorships, it cannot be worried enough how significant link building can be for your business. Optimize your links to the best of your mastery by working to affirm an association with local websites related to your enterprise. Earning links from websites with high domain authority in your local area will truly pack a punch when it comes to moving the needle.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are free, so it’s not breaking news that they can be an incredible way to dwell in front of your audience. Google will crawl and pull search outcomes from your social platforms, such as Facebook profiles and reviews, your business’ LinkedIn and even your Twitter account and your current tweets.