How to Optimize Your Website with Local SEO

Local SEO is a form of marketing that specifically targets consumers that are local to the business and actively searching for a relevant product or service. Search engines use local content, social media pages, links, and citations to organize local SEO to generate proper results for users. While anyone with a good enough SEO strategy can rank for generic search phrases, local SEO addresses the search queries that have a local intent. Meaning, if you are looking for a product or service “near me,” a business in California won’t be of much help to a resident of New Jersey.

We’ve outlined some important adjustments you can make to begin improving your local SEO rankings.

Google My Business

Google gives higher priority to content that it can verify as truthful, so Google My Business is a necessary tool for your company. Developed as their way to verify authentic businesses, Google My Business allows you to manage the information that appears on Search and Maps regarding your business. This can include business name, location, hours, reviews, and even pictures. Keeping this information up to date can help your company place on a sidebar space in local Google searches.

After creating a Google My Business page, share Google posts within your account, encourage customers to write reviews of your business, and respond authentically to each one.

Optimize Your Website

Each piece of content on your website should be fully optimized for SEO, and some can easily be optimized for local search. Each indexed page on your site is a new opportunity for targeting a geographic search phrase that will help your site get found on search engines. Be sure to use high quality, relevant keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and body text.

Create Local Content

As Google improves its ability to understand and interpret content, content creators are better able to write content that appeals to readers without worrying about how it will rank on Search. While writing about general topics pertaining to your business is good for appealing to a wider audience, you can improve your local SEO by also focusing on local industry news and events. Writing content that addresses local happenings will not only appeal to locals and gain you customers, it will also help you incorporate local keywords like town names. By doing this you can establish your business as a local industry authority and a positive community presence.

Mobile Friendly

When you think local search, you should also be thinking mobile search. The majority of local searches are conducted on mobile devices, usually when consumers are not within reach of a desktop or laptop. It is important to ensure that your website is mobile responsive to give your site visitors the best user experience possible and avoid loss of potential sales.

If a customer is conducting a search for a product or service they want to immediately consume, even if your local SEO efforts deliver your site as the first result on the SERP, a non-responsive mobile site will only frustrate users and cause them to seek out a competitor. Keep the most relevant information about your business, like location and hours, on the homepage as well as on another easily navigated page.

Add Location Pages to Your Site

As mentioned earlier, it is important to keep the most relevant information on the homepage, but it also helps to have that information on a dedicated location page, especially if you have more than one location. This type of page can be featured as an “About Us” page and contain store hours, contact information, locations with an imbedded Google Map, store descriptions, parking information, and any other information that is relevant to each store location.

Keep these tips in mind the next time you create content or make an adjustment to your site. If you’re a small or localized business, these tips will be especially important for you to implement sooner rather than later.

If you’re starting to rethink your current SEO strategy but don’t know how or where to start, we can help. Kraus Marketing is a digital marketing agency equipped to take your local SEO strategy to the next level. Contact us to get started!