Are you a local business owner looking to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results? If so, you need to use local SEO best practices on your site. Local SEO is a unique form of optimization designed to help businesses like yours rank higher in search results when people are searching for products or services in your local area.
Luckily, we’ve put together this handy guide on optimizing your local business website for search engines. Just follow the tips and tricks below, and you’ll be well on driving more traffic and sales to your business!
Start by claiming your Google Business Profile listing – This free listing allows you to manage your business’s appearance in Google Maps and Google Search results. Include accurate and up-to-date information about your business, such as your hours of operation, address, and contact information. You can also add photos and post updates about special promotions or events that you’re running.
Optimize your website for local keywords – When people search for businesses like yours online, they typically include location-based keywords in their queries (e.g., ” Italian restaurant NYC”). As such, it’s crucial to ensure that your website consists of these keywords throughout its content—on both the front end (in titles, metadata, etc.) and back end (in tags, alt text, etc.). That will send signals to search engines that indicate your site is relevant to searchers’ needs and should be ranked highly on results pages.
Create location-specific pages on your website – In addition to optimizing existing pages for location-based keywords, you should create separate pages specifically designed for each area you serve. For example, if you own a chain of restaurants in New York City, you would want to have a separate page for each borough (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island). In addition, these location pages should include relevant keyword-rich content about why customers in each area should visit your restaurant.
Encourage customer reviews and testimonials – Online reviews are one of the most critical factors in local SEO—so much so that they account for 10% of how Google determines which businesses to rank highly on results pages. Make it easy for customers to leave reviews by adding links to popular review sites (like Google My Business) on your website or directly on each page of your site. You can also encourage customers to leave reviews by offering incentives like discounts or coupons.
Ensure your NAP is consistent across the web – NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. It’s critical that this information is consistent across all of the places where it appears online—including social media profiles, directory listings, and review sites — as even slight discrepancies can lead Google (and other search engines) to believe that it’s inaccurate. Not only will this hurt your chances of ranking highly, but it will also confuse potential customers trying to find your business online.
Conclusion: By following the tips above, you can easily optimize your local business website for search engines and improve your chances of ranking highly on results pages. Doing so will help you drive more traffic —and eventually more sales —to our business! Don’t forget to use strong keywords, create location-specific pages, encourage customer reviews, and make sure y our NAP is consistent across the web! Best of luck!
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