Do you have a local business? Are you trying to rank on search engines? Then you must read our guide to the top 10 most important local SEO ranking factors.
If you want to be visible on the search engine results and have more local customers, you must get your SEO strategies right. Google and other popular search engines use several local SEO ranking factors to determine the position of web pages on the search result pages. The biggest benefit of adopting local SEO ranking factors is that it will help you to attract local potential customers who are in need of your products and services. In this high competition era, integrating the right set of marketing techniques will make it easy for local clientele to locate your business. If you really want to boost your business visibility in local search and gain a major share of the local market then consider implementing these local SEO ranking factors in your marketing campaigns.
1. Google My Business
One of the most important local SEO ranking factors Google uses to determine your website position on the local search is Google My Business listing. You can list your business on Google My Business to improve organic visibility, inbound inquiries and attract more customers through search engines. Google My Business dashboard allows you to manage your business listing including your business name, business type, address, phone number, link to website, hours of operation and many more. Listing your business on this platform is a great way to give potential clients an excellent experience. Ensure you optimize your Google My Business page so that Google can understand your business better. Google can easily match your business with other types of search queries when it knows more about you. If you want to improve your marketing efforts with Google My Business, it’s important you complete your business information and add descriptions that best describe your business.
2. Links Signals
The best way to improve your business visibility on local search is to build quality inbound links to your website. Backlinks or inbound links are links from other relevant websites to your website. Google and other popular search engines look at the quality and quantity of outbound links to determine the position of your website on the search result pages. Getting quality backlinks are a crucial off-page SEO strategy you can’t escape if you want to drive traffic via search engines. As a local business, getting backlinks from local relevant sites using both your city and main keyword can help you to rank higher in search engines. The number and the relevance of your backlinks are extremely important for your business to be easily found by search engines and potential customers.
3. On-Page Signals
On-page SEO techniques are extremely valuable steps you can adopt to bring in more search engine traffic to your business. On-page SEO allows you to optimize your content and the structure of your web pages in order to rank higher in the search engine results. Optimizing your pages with the vital SEO elements will help crawlers to easily understand the context of your pages. As a local business, it’s important you integrate on-site SEO elements that will boost your website’s ranking positions in the local search. Some of the on-page SEO techniques that can improve your local search visibility include high-quality content, page titles, meta descriptions, multimedia elements, internal links, headings and many more. Optimizing your web pages for these elements can quickly boost your SEO and improve your search rankings.
4. Social Media Signals
Google and other popular search engines use social media signals to determine your pages rank on the search results. Social media signals such as social likes, comments and shares play an important role in your local search visibility. Search engines aim is to provide value and relevance to online users. However, social media networks are important platforms that offer people great value and relevance. Social signals help search engines to discover how online users value your brand’s content on social media networks. Any of your post that receives more likes, comments, votes and links will rank higher in SERPs. This is because search engines will believe that your content is of high quality and offers great value to the people. Improving the strength of your social signals is an effective SEO tactic you can employ to convince search engines about the quality and usefulness of your web pages. In addition, you can drive traffic from your social media channels back to your business website and increase sales.
5. Local Business Listing
If you have a business or service company that run on a small scale, it’s imperative you list your business on local business directories. Search engines use your business information such as name, address and phone on the local directories to determine your rank on the organic local searches. Completing and verifying your business information on the online directories can help improve your local search visibility.
6. Listing on Review Sites
In this information age, review is one of the effective marketing strategies many people are using to grow their business. Listing your business in review sites will help search engines to recognize that your business is still active. Google has shown that high-quality reviews can boost your business visibility on the search results. Review is a method search engines employ to check if your website is trusted by local customers. Some of the popular review sites include Glassdoor, Yelp, Angel’s List and more.
7. Bing Places for Business
Listing your business on this platform is a robust SEO strategy you can implement to improve organic traffic and drive more customers to your business. Bing is a popular search engine that attracts millions of searches every day. Optimizing your listing on Bing will definitely help you to drive more leads through Bing search results. If you want to drive local traffic to your business through Bing, ensure you provide all the necessary information that potential clients will need about your business. You can choose multiple categories because customers can use different words to conduct searches that will lead them to your business. Bing incorporates Facebook to help you see the performance of your Facebook pages.
8. Location-based Keywords
If you want to get more local customers for your business then pay attention to your keywords. Google has stated that the use of location-based keywords plays an important role in the position of your web pages in search results. Optimizing your web pages with location-based keywords is a crucial step you can employ to have a steady flow of potential clients. You can research the most valuable keywords people are using to find your business and utilize them on your content. With location-based keywords, you can attract qualified traffic and increase conversion rates.
9. Responsive Design
Responsive web design is an effective local SEO ranking factor that can boost your website performance. In 2015, Google revealed that responsive websites will see an improvement in their rankings. Responsive web design allows your business to adapt properly to every device. These days, there are an increasing number of people using mobile phones to surf the Internet. The popular search engines adopt responsive web design to provide wonderful experience for mobile users. A responsive web design enables visitors to access your website from any device without difficulty. You can attract customers that come through mobile devices with a responsive web design.
10. Localized Content
Publishing a localized content is a powerful SEO strategy you can employ to establish relevance and attract more customers to your business. Localization of content refers to the creation of content using local terminology, language, tone and ideas. A recent study by Localvox has revealed that 60% of searches done on the Internet today use a local keyword. You can use localized content to capture the interest of local customers. This local SEO ranking factor will help you to effectively connect with local potential customers and increase revenue.
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