Google’s voice search and digital assistants are now making things a lot easier for customers searching for local businesses for buying products. It’s my apparent guess that the year would bring more opportunities for marketers to boost their presence on local search engines.
The only connotation that goes unchanged with SEO is that SEO changes all the time. Strategies have been altered and methods have been changed to cook a strategy that wins applause. Whether you’re targeting global markets are local, you need to tame optimization strategies in sync with Google. For local SEO, it becomes more important to map your strategies having in mind your consumers who may be searching for your local business.
A Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO Strategy
If you’re new to local SEO, I am listing here 9 surefire local search optimization strategies that will help your business rank higher for local search terms. The article offers you sure-shot ways to sharpen local SEO strategy for enhanced customer outreach.
1. Optimize for Google Lens
Google Lens is simply going to revolutionize the way visual search works. With the arrival of Google Lens, visual search is going to get more power. Visual search getting popular rapidly as many people prefer images compared to text to search for things. This led Google to invent an entirely new regime of search technology called Visual search.
Technically, Google Lens is Google’s visual search engine. Google’s Sunder Pichai termed Google Lens a set of vision-based computing capabilities that can understand what you’re looking at and help you take action. Next time when a visitor will be looking for some products at your store, Google Lens will assist him by providing information about your offers for better buying decisions. The technology understands and interprets what you see to help you take action.
2. Optimize for Voice Search
If Google’s stats are to be believed, 20 percent of mobile search queries are voice searches. Furthermore, by 2020, the number will be grown by up to 5o%. Usually, voice search queries are different from normal text queries in a manner that they are shorter than them and mimic how real people talk. Therefore, to optimize your site for voice search, you need to be bit different. Rather than using queries like hotels in New York City”, you should be using conversational search queries like “Which hotels are affordable in New York City”.
It’s worth noting is that voice search queries always start with words like “who”, “when”, “where”, “how”, “what” etc. The best practice is to optimize your site for personal assistants like Google Assistant, Apple Siri, or Amazon Echo. These personal assistants offer users proactive suggestions based on what are the search queries users are searching for. That’s why it’s important to have properly structured markup on your site.
3.List the business in various directories
Along with the Google My Business listing, you can list the business in any online directory as well. You will find this tip more useful when you want powerful SEO. Some directories you can look for are as follows. Yelp, Angie's list, foursquare, best of the web, about us, hot frog, etc.
There are several other national and global directories as well so you should also see if there is an online business directory that specifies your area. This tip will give you a good result in the end.
4. Focus on local keywords
One of the basics of the local SEO is all about targeting the local keywords. The local keywords are pretty self-explanatory. However, you should still research longer-tail local keywords for the business. For instance, if the publishing company is in the location “India”, you have to look for the options of a keyword like “plumbers, India” or “India plumbers”. You may also want to drill down into the hyper keywords as well.
5. Optimize the site
Once you have the list of local keywords you want to rank, the next step is to optimize the entire site. These are outstanding and successful SEO tips. Site optimization is the whole topic on its own, but there are also several online local SEO basics. Initially, you want to ensure that your home page and any service page should contain any of the local keywords like heading, title tags, Meta description, footer, and body.
If you wish, you can also try to incorporate the main local keywords into the URL whenever it is necessary. When you are incorporating the keywords, ensure that you use them naturally and you do not stuff them into the content.
6. Optimize for mobile
Another top tip to follow for SEO 2021 is to optimize the site for mobile. Making your website more suitable for SEO is the crucial EO tip. As per the stat, 30% of the mobile searches are location-specific.
Also, lots of customers look for mobile devices or there are navigation issues and this will not look good to potential customers. So, they may move out of the site, and your competitor may raise their head here.
7. Work on page locations
Does your business serve multiple locations and want to grab the audience from multiple spaces? If yes, you have to make sure you are ranking at the top of the local searches in all such locations. The way to do this is by creating the location pages following the local SEO.
You have to optimize the page for the search terms as per the local slang. Also, ensure there is location-based unique content, and it can show up the duplicate content on Google.
8. Work on local content
Most content marketing strategies focus more on non-local content. This will get you a wider audience and higher traffic levels, if you are a locally focused business, it is not going to help you win in the digital space.
If you want to maximize the content marketing efforts for enhancing lead generation, it is crucial to have local content. There are lots of topics you can create and you can relate the local content to the product or service you offer.
9. Consistent NAP across Listings
Consistent NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) across business listings boost your local business presence. Make sure that you have listed your local business on each of the top business listing sites as people thoroughly check a business before deciding an association with it.
Having solid positive reviews on popular local directories will help your business to gain more visibility and improve the bottom line. You need to make sure that your business has the same business name, address, and phone number across all the local business listings. Google takes cues from this information to accurately and precisely predict the address of your business and display it directly on the search results. Better optimized business listings bring more business opportunities.
10. Positive Customer Reviews
Positive and good reviews gradually garner trust for your brand. Multiple positive reviews compel people go through your local business listings. To get some on your website, ask your customers to leave a review. Connect with them with emails and messages and request them to drop their experiences in the form of reviews. Improve your user experience so that happy customers can leave nice reviews for your business.
Online reviews are still important for establishing a local search presence. The latest survey revealed that 84% of consumers trust online reviews and buying recommendations for making purchase decisions. Several tools are available that you can use to get, track and manage reviews. Trust Pilot, Vendasta, and Reputation Loop are a few that are very popular.
11. Influencer Connect
Connecting with influencers will be a boost to your local SEO strategy. You may leverage influencer marketing to revamp your local SEO efforts. Get connected with your local influencers such as bloggers, reviewers, or social media experts. Host events to identify popular local influencers, collaborate, and share your brand voice with them. They may help you to start a conversation involving your brand.
12. Effective Meta Tag Optimization
For local SEO, Title and Meta description tags are staple foods. You can tweak both elements to give your customers an overview of your business. Keep in mind that ‘title’ and ‘description’ tags appear in search results. This is why you need to curate these elements wisely. Clueless about how to optimize your website for local search terms? Brainpulse’s regional SEO services will help you from scratch. They are designed for the marketers like you.
To recall, last year, Google increased the width of the main search results area to 600 pix. This automatically updated the acceptable length of title and description tags. Now, Google search displays the title in up to 50-60 characters, while description written in up to 160-200 characters are considered good. Once you craft both the elements, check if they are displayed in the search snippet without getting truncated.
13. Utilize Online Directories and Citations
In one of its surveys, Google found that four out of five online consumers use search engines to conduct a local searches. Yet, small businesses quite often miss the opportunity to get their business listed on online local business listings. For small or mid-level online businesses, it’s ardently needed to have their business listed on top online business directories like Yelp, Merchant Circle, City Search, and others. You should also check reputed local directories to get your business listed.
In addition to business directories, get your business name, address and phone number listed on the major citation data aggregators like Infogroup, Neustar, Acxiom and Factual. While posting NAP on citation websites, make sure that information is consistent across these directories and citation aggregators.
14. Optimize for Google My Business
If you run a local business and seeking more buyers, it’s very important to claim your Google My Business page. Google My Business is free and can get you incredible exposure if your web pages are well-optimized to show up in Google’s local three-pack.
Claiming your Google My Business page is easier than ever when it comes to Local SEO. Visit Google’s official page to begin the process. Once you complete the verification process, Google will send a postcard to your business’s physical location. The postcard carries a PIN that you will have to enter after log in to verify your business.
15. Local Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup, also called schema markup or schema.org markup are very vital to your website. When added to your website’s code, they provide search engines with more information about your business. They tell search engines about the products you sell, reviews you’ve collected services you offer, etc.
Unfortunately, most marketers skip having this markup. And most are only using the basics. Adding structured data markup to your site helps your local business stand out and rank higher than your competitors.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
