Over 46% of all searches on Google are local – as per the latest statistics. People have become smarter the way they use search engines to find food and services in a certain city. Most of these people would type in location-specific keywords. Google can recognize such keywords as having local intent.
Over 46% of all searches on Google are local – as per the latest statistics. People have become smarter the way they use search engines to find food and services in a certain city. Most of these people would type in location-specific keywords. Google can recognize such keywords as having local intent.
Whenever Google receives a locations specific query, it will automatically offer all the location-specific options in the search results. The businesses that make it to the top of such search results are the ones with the best local search engine optimization strategies. If you want Google to rank your business on the first page of its SERPs, you should have a highly effective local search engine optimization strategy for your business.
How to Maximize Your Local SEO?
Your business should be optimized for local search if you want to attract the bulk of local customers to your business. There are many ways of maximizing your business for local search results. Here are some of the most effective strategies to maximize your business for local search. You can scan your business for local SEO in this free tool.
Optimize Your Title Tags with A Location-Specific Keyword
Optimizing the title tag of your website with a location-specific keyword is one way to maximize your local SEO. For example, a keyword such as “best restaurant in Phoenix” or “HVAC contractors in Scottsdale” is designed to inform Google that your website is directly linked with the particular city. This will make your appearance in a local search more likely.
Get High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the top three ranking factors according to Google. This gives you an idea of the importance of backlinks for ranking your website on the first page of Google. It’s even more important to get high-quality backlinks to point to your website if you want to maintain the high rankings over time. High-quality backlinks have a positive impact on both local and organic SEO. If you want to rank for local search terms, you should get more backlinks from local authority sites. You should cultivate local relationships with similar businesses to fetch some good links for your website. Getting your business involved in the community is one way of getting high-quality backlinks to your website. For example, you can do a presentation at a local university relevant to your business, speak at a local business conference, or participate in an event where the organizers will link to your website.
Have More Localized Content on Your Website
Having blog posts that focus on local events, news, and activities will help your business get more attention locally. This will help you compete in local search. Gear up your content towards your business location’s residents to build loyalty to your brand and business. Locally focused content will help Google understand the relevance of your business to its location. This would help your website rank for a wide variety of local keywords relating to your business.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free listing service that can have an impact on your local SEO rankings. If you have not claimed your Google My Business Page, you should do it without delay. You need to use Google My Business Page properly to get the maximum benefits of the process. All the information about your business should be listed on your My Business profile. The name, address, and telephone numbers of the business should be included in the profile. Also, the opening and closing hours of your business should be included in it. You should make sure that you verify the profile because a verified profile should rank higher in Google compared to a profile that isn’t verified.
Through Google My Business, Google encourages businesses to ethically ask for reviews from their customers. Getting positive reviews is great for your business. Over 97% of clients read online reviews for local businesses before deciding to buy a product or service offered by them. You should also remember to build profiles on Bing Places, Yelp, Foursquare, Yahoo Local, and other local listing sites.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
Over 50% of local mobile users look for local business addresses and contact details. Because mobile users have already overtaken the number of desktop users, your business should pay close attention to mobile optimization. A study by Acquisio in 2017 says that over 75% of all mobile searches that have a local intent end up in actual visits to the local store or shop within 24 hours of searching for the information. This is more than enough for a local business to optimize its website for mobile. This is important not only for local SEO but for organic search engine optimization in general. You have to boost the website’s loading speed, adopt a responsive design, and use bigger and easy-to-read fonts to optimize the website for mobile search.
Conclusion
Local search has become extremely popular in this day and age. People are already searching for your business by typing relevant location-based keywords. If your business doesn’t come up for such a search, you are losing a lot of money in the process. The aforementioned article provides information on the importance of maximizing your local SEO to rank your site higher in Google.
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