If you are a website owner, one of your main concerns will be to have people discover you for a keyword that you are targeting. To achieve this, you should rank high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) with such a keyword and ensure that your site shows up for the right people in the right locations. For this, you will need to improve local rankings.
If you own a website that sells something to the people who live near and around you, then using proper local (search engine optimisation) SEO strategies is a good idea. Improving your local rankings will allow you to engage the right market in your area, boost conversion rates, and increase revenue.
However, getting to the top of local SERPs is not easy. Regardless, it can be done!
How local SEO impacts your business
Before you implement local SEO on your site to improve local rankings, you first need to understand what it is and why you should use it.
Local SEO, as the name implies, is a strategy where your website is optimised for local search. It makes your site relevant to search queries by your local market, which in turn makes your pages highly visible on the SERPs.
What happens when you optimise your site for local search include:
- Clients can easily find you – If you are running a website for a brick-and-mortar shop, then doing local SEO is a must. This boosts the chances of locals, as well as visitors in your area, finding your store easily.
- Potential clientele can gather more information about your business – Local SEO will help potential customers find out what you have to offer. This can be done by including localised content in your pages, which your visitors can truly use.
- You get more qualified and targeted leads – People who find your site on local search results will usually end up calling you or actually visiting your store.
How to improve your local rankings
Now that you know what local SEO can do for your business, it is time to learn how you can improve your rankings locally. Here are the steps that you should take:
Optimise for Google My Business listing
Optimising for Google My Business listing is one way for you to improve local rankings. It allows Google to find out more about what you have to offer, who you are, where you can be found, and other pertinent information about your business. This synchronises with Google Maps to help potential customers find you.
Create content that is based on the latest news and events in your region
When you create content that is tied with the current events in your area, you become relevant in the eyes of search engines. This helps possible clients notice that you are up-to-date and in-tune with the things that are happening around you. Localised content can come in the form of news briefs, blogs, and videos that focus on causes your company believes in.
Keep your website mobile-friendly
More and more people are doing their searches on their mobile devices. Majority of those who do this are on the move and wanting to find something in an area they are currently in. When you are optimised for local search and have a website that displays well on mobile devices, you have a leg up on your competition.
Gain local backlinks
Still one of the biggest factors for ranking well on SERPs is backlinks. If you want to do well on local search results pages, having high-quality local backlinks is a must. This will show that your business is an authority in its niche, since other sites that are in the same sphere as you are linked to it.
Use local words in your metadata
Keywords that are tied with the locality you are targeting is also one of the things that have to be done to make your site rank high on local listings. And, you should use them in your metadata.
For example, if you are a pet shop in Sydney, New South Wales, using keywords such as “pet shop Sydney”, “pet products Sydney”, or “pet accessories Sydney” in your page titles and meta description will make your site more relevant to local search. When people type these keywords on the search engine, you stand a bigger chance of appearing at the first pages.
These are not the only things you can and should do if you want to optimise your site for local search. There are a few other methods that you can use, such as encouraging customer reviews, adding location specific “about us” information, using local business directories, and optimising for voice search.
While you can try to optimise your website for local search, it is much better if you trust this task to experts who know exactly what to do and when to do it. This allows you to focus more on giving your customers what they want when they find your business and on running your company better. It also ensures that your site is properly optimised without the need for guesswork, since people who know how to do it will be handling the task at the onset.
