What is Local SEO?
Most business owners are familiar with the term SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. However, many small business owners are unfamiliar with a specific type of SEO that is extremely important for their online presence- Local SEO. Traditional SEO is a strategy that uses keywords or phrases in a particular format to improve the chances of a customer finding your business on the web. Local SEO improves the chance that customers geographically near your business find it easily on the web. To be more specific, it’s a strategy and process to optimize a webpage or website so they appear first for organic queries in the major search engines.
Why does Local SEO matter?
Now that you’re familiar with what it is, let’s talk about why Local SEO matters. Customers in your area use the internet regularly to search for information about your business. Unfortunately, many times traditional SEO isn’t enough to attract local customers to your business. This is especially true if your competition is engaging utilizing a Local SEO strategy and you’re not. Local SEO increases visibility for businesses interested in ranking high in local searches.
What influences Local SEO?
Local Citations -A local citation is an online mention of the name, address, and/or phone number for a local business. If you want your site to rank, all local citations must be IDENTICAL on all online platforms. Any inconsistencies can confuse a search engine.
Online Local Directories – Business owners need to claim and verify listings on all local business directories including Yelp, Superpages, and Foursquare. The more places your business is listed online, the more credibility it will have with search engines.
Online Reviews – Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo want to help people satisfy their problems. They accomplish this by providing the highest quality searches they can, meaning that they factor in both positive and negative reviews whenever possible. Bottom line, the reviews that your business receives online are very important.
Localized Content – It’s important to have content on your website that is geo-specific to your business. This means creating geo-targeted service pages, mentioning specific service areas, and including maps with your business location. The more relevant local content on your site, the likelier it is to show up in local search results.
Schema – Web developers have the ability to “markup” the schema of your website with location data to improve the chance it will show up in local search. When done properly this data will provide search engines with a clearer supply of local information about your site.
Milk Street Marketing offers small business packages that bundle many of our services into an affordable monthly payment. We offer an integrated, multi-channel marketing solution backed by a team of marketing professionals.
