Keeping up with consumers’ fast-paced needs is a challenge for any business, regardless of their size and industry. Nevertheless, technological advancements are making it easier for businesses to engage and interact with an online audience. This leads to more optimized transactions and opportunities for brand recognition.
Although there are numerous benefits to having broad online visibility, it doesn’t always translate to greater sales figures. This is the myth that many amateur business owners have about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Greater in digital space doesn’t benefit your business unless you’re reaching the right audiences. It’s one reason small businesses invest in a more targeted approach with their SEO. Doing so enables their marketing team to have a bigger impact without spending as many resources.
The value of focusing on local SEO
Local SEO keeps you restrained to a select target demographic, which is an effective way of finding your niche. It’s a strategy that smaller businesses utilize to gain a dedicated following with much greater Return On Investment (ROI). To achieve this, you must invest your on-site optimization efforts on particular site elements.
If you want your business website to rank higher through local SEO, here are three on-site elements you should prioritize:
1. Local keywords
The simplest way to rank higher with a local audience is by investing in a combination of high-volume and low competition keywords. Using Google’s Keyword Planner, you can filter keyword searches under different categories based on location. Cross-referencing your current keyword lists gives you valuable insights into the popular search terms per region. This allows your marketing team to create a list of locally-relevant keywords proven to provide quick traffic and influential long-tail rankings. Don’t forget to include region-specific and landmarks when including them in your content copy, from meta descriptions to URLs.
2. Location pages
You can utilize local SEO even if you’re handling multiple branches in different regions. Although it can be much harder to segregate your content, it will increase your visibility to local searches. Besides arranging your content and other tags, it’s necessary to have several location-specific “about us” pages for focused visibility. Ensure that it contains your store hours, address, and phone number particular to an individual location. Remember to link your specific contact information to online business directories like Yelp, YellowPages, and Google My Business for stronger link-building efforts.
3. Link signals
Speaking of link-building, one of the essential components of SEO is reinforcing strong local link signals. Strengthening your backlinks is a great way to boost your local SEO. However, you must be mindful about where your backlinks lead to. You can regulate this by publishing high-quality content that other sites will want to link to. Additionally, guest blogging on reputable sites with high domain authority will allow your landing pages to rank higher. You can also utilize local influencers’ reach further to increase your local SEO to specific target markets.
Conclusion
Best SEO practices change rapidly, sometimes per quarter or month. This is why business owners must pay attention to shifts in market trends and customer behavior. However, monitoring is a whole different task from executing effective SEO strategies. For this reason, businesses need to collaborate with SEO experts that know how to respond appropriately to the ever-changing preferences on SEO.
Local SEO Pro is a US-based professional SEO company specializing in observing and adapting to the latest market trends. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
