You won’t be the first company listed on any Search Engine Results Page unless your local SEO strategy is strong. What should you do?
No matter the business you’re in, it’s important that you find ways to continually attract new customers. Without new customers, it’s not likely your business can survive unless you happen to have a constantly repeating service business such as a lawn care and landscaping company. How can your website reach the top of SERPs and bring in new customers? Here are several tips to improve your SEO.
1. Are You Using a Local Search Platform? Why Not?
Most of the local search platforms are affordable for business and a necessity in bringing your name to the front of mind for online searchers. Using a platform makes it much easier to manage all of your listings, which can truly benefit your web pages. It’s important your name, address, and phone numbers are consistently and accurately listed on all of the local search engines. Use a local search platform such as Moz, Yext, RIO, RenderSEO, Chatmeter, Uberall, or SweetIQ to give you the necessary SEO boost.
2. How Does your Google Business Profile Look?
Your Google Business Profile aids you in getting your products and services in front of online users. This profile is a huge part of your local SEO strategy to bring your name and business closer to the top of the list. You’ll need to fill out as much information as possible in great detail and add photos, menu items, and descriptions of the services offered. You’ll need to continually manage your Google Business Profile with new photos and products.
3. When did You Last Audit Your Listings?
How is your business listed on Google? Did you make a typo in your business hours and operations? Are there some listings that have been disabled? Has Google changed your listings based on user feedback that was incorrect? Google is only as good as the information put into it, and it’s not always correct. You need to audit your listings to ensure your information is correct and listed the way it should be online. Check these listings and use the suggested updates to ensure they are valid for your business.
4. Does Your Local SEO Strategy Include Localized Content?
When you want to attract your local community to your business, you need local content. This should be a huge focus in your local SEO strategy, especially if you rely on physical contact with customers to conduct business. You can’t run a hair salon, landscaping business, car dealership, or roofing business without a hyper-focus on the local community that you serve. Your content must include a localized focus, which can be done with blog posts and keywords regarding local events.
5. Are You Putting Google Trends to Work for Your Content?
There are always shifts in every market from one trend to another. You’ve got to closely monitor these trends to understand the shifts in search interest and behavior while using specific topics and keywords. When planning your content, start with Google Trends and see what’s working well in your industry at that time. This can help you develop the keywords and content you want to post on your website.
6. Are Your Local Landing Pages Built Out?
Your local landing pages are an important aspect of your local SEO strategy. This means employing a good user and page experience to entice users to stay on your pages longer. You’ll want quick load times, responsiveness, and calls-to-action written into the content. In addition to building these local landing pages, you’ll need to track rankings to ensure you can see the success or opportunities within each campaign at the local level. You’re attempting to attract your community to your pages, which means a strong focus on the localization of your pages.
7. Do You Utilize High-Quality Links in Your Pages?
How can you ensure that you’re using the right links on your pages? Do your research and make sure you add high-quality links that come from trusted sources on your pages. This is a great way to build more trust and credibility in your content, where you’ll find the right level of authority and trust for the content provided. Reputable sources make for good content and offer links that can work with your content, even if the sources aren’t local.
8. Does Your Content Ask and Answer Questions?
Have you noticed this is a list of questions with answers to those questions? When you want to optimize for voice search, you’ll want to ask questions and answer them. It’s likely if you use a question in your subheadings or even as the topic heading of your content, it’s more likely to be searched and found by mobile users. Many users click on the microphone and ask a question. Let them find you by adding voice and mobile search processes to your local SEO strategy.
9. Have You Turned on the Always-On Messaging?
The Google Business Profile app has an always-on messaging function that should be on to provide answers to questions asked after business hours. More than ever, customers want to engage with your business first through messaging before ever reaching you through an in-person experience. Downloading this app will help you reach your potential customers, who can get the answer they need when you’re not at work.
10. What are You Doing to Manage Your Reputation?
It’s important to ask for reviews from customers that you know have let your business after a positive experience. You may see some negative reviews from time to time, which require a response and action that shows you’ve rectified any concerns that customers had. The positive reviews show you’re doing a great job. Part of your local SEO strategy should be to collect positive reviews and see your star ratings rise as close as possible to the max of five stars. Many consumers won’t do business with any company that doesn’t have a high rating.
Use these ten questions to help improve your local SEO strategy and bring your content to the top positions on the SERPs, where you will be the first company users find when looking for the products and services offered.
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