8 Local SEO Tips To Improve Your Local Ranking on Google
Getting your business listed on Google Maps and optimized for search has proven benefits in generating more leads and sales. Optimizing for Local SEO would help your business get discovered by new customers and stand out above competitors. But when the time comes to optimization, there are several ways to improve your local ranking on Google.
In this article, we are going to list out the best Local SEO improvement techniques.
Boost Local Ranking with Eight Best Local SEO Tips
What is it to get your business listing to show up higher in Google Maps? Is it off-listing SEO or on-listing SEO? You might be having all these questions in mind. Don’t worry, we have eight proven tips and tricks to improve your local ranking on Google.
1. Create & Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
The first step to start off with local SEO is optimizing your business listed on GMB. With a proper Google My Business Profile, you will allow your business to appear on local searches, get better at SEO and increase online visibility.
You’ll reap the benefits of the platform by keeping all the information on your GMB profile up to date. With an optimized GMB, you can stand out from the competitors who are not listed. Business updates and sharing fresh content are one of the main opportunities for optimization.
This way you’ll more likely to get more reviews from your potential customers and get your business easily discovered on search. Eventually, everything will add up to boosting the credibility of your business.
2. Add High-Quality Photos to your Business Listing
Photos are meant to draw users’ attention. When it comes to optimizing GMB, your efforts must go into adding higher-quality photos related to your business. According to the research, business listing that has photos appears more reputable and get more clicks than those that don’t.
This can help local businesses become trustworthy to local searchers who are searching for local providers to get help from. As a matter of fact, fostering authenticity allows more engagement from potential customers. From the SEO rule of thumb, Google values what searchers love, and searchers love photos.
So, uploading high-quality and compelling photos is proven to improve Google Maps’ ranking.
3. Post consistently on your business profile
Like social media, posting on your business profile helps you find & connect to more customers. A post can be anything from announcements, offers, events, or blogs.
In order to obtain the best results, you’ll need to make sure – of regular posting, aligning posts with your marketing campaigns, and including links and CTAs to drive more customers to your business.
4. Generate and Respond to Reviews
Reviews are the primary influential factor in customers buying decisions. Most customers read reviews before they make their purchase. So, generating and responding to customer reviews should be your main focus when it comes to boosting local SEO.
Reviews are a kind of word-of-mouth marketing and no marketing strategy can beat positive word-mouth. Not only should you focus on getting good reviews but also make sure to proactively respond to the reviews. Since every customer needs proof of excellent services in order to meet their standards, reviews become a prominent aspect to know more about the brand or service provider.
5. Optimize Content for Local Keywords
Content strategy has proven effects in reaching out to hidden customers online. Content marketing completes the digital marketing process.
Instead of going overseas, many customers prefer to resolve their problems locally at a local company. So, by creating content you’ll be able to boost your local search ranking on the keywords that local searchers are searching for. This, eventually, provides you with higher conversions, and better sales growth opportunities.
Simply make sure the content on the website should entail local keywords. For instance, if someone is searching for SEO services in San Diego, they are most likely to hire an SEO company in San Diego.
So, the keywords must appear in the meta description and title of the page or post you are creating content for. Long tail keywords are considered to be more effective than short tail keywords in terms of improving overall SEO performance. But the question is, how you are going to find these keywords? Conducting keyword research is the way out. There are lots of quality keyword research tools available in the market.
6. Optimize for Mobile Friendly Website
Mobile optimization is not an option anymore, it becomes a Google ranking signal to secure a place in the SERPs. There is a significant increase in mobile users as more and more users like to place their orders from a mobile or even get information instantly available on their fingertips. So, it is not surprising that your website should be optimized for mobile. A study showed that 82% of shoppers had done a “near me” search using their smartphones.
With this in mind, a website becomes mobile-friendly when:
- It loads quickly.
- It promotes easy clicks on the buttons or links.
- It should be responsive which means it should fit all screen sizes.
Your goal is to provide fast navigation to the visitors. The faster your users access the information, the better will be the user experience.
7. Get backlinks from the local creators
Link building is another key opportunity to improve your local ranking on Google and achieve higher domain authority. The websites link back to yours must be relevant in order to be of higher quality.
And, the more high-quality backlinks you’ll get, the more chance you’ll have to rank on the first SERP. There are several ways to build links, including:
- Asking customers and clients to link to your website.
- Creating guest posts for other industry experts.
- Participating in forums and online communities
- Get your business listed on business directories and listing.
7. Ensure Accurate NAP in the Citations
NAP is the acronym for a business name, address, and phone number. It is recommended to keep your NAP consistent in local search results. This indicates that your business’s information should be on significant citation websites such as Bing Maps, Yelp, and Facebook, besides the GMB listing.
The consistency in the NAP data is when they are identically and accurately listed across all online platforms, including websites, social media, and business directories. NAP consistency is crucial not only for search engine ranking algorithms, but it may also directly impacts how customers perceive your company. So, in order to ensure consistency in the NAP citations, you’ll need to run a NAP audit.
Final Words
The tips we’ve shared are sure ways to boost Local SEO and improve local search ranking on Google. But there is more to SEO which will help in building a sustainable business and gaining customers. To make your success hassle-free, Lion Bear Media is the San Diego digital marketing company to help you out achieve your desired business goals.
FAQs
Why Local SEO is important?
Local SEO is important to gain traction in the local search. An effective Local SEO strategy helps increase online visibility and makes business easily discoverable by new customers. Physically located businesses are more likely to get more in-store traffic through local business listings.
How does Google determine local ranking?
Local results are based on relevance, distance, and prominence. With the combination of these factors, Google provides the best match to the searcher’s queries. Google’s algorithm is designed in a way that takes into consideration these required factors to set their ranking.