Introduction

Local search optimization is a critical part of any business’ digital marketing strategy, but it can be hard to know where to start. Here are ten key components for optimizing your local listings, website and content for local search.

Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

Optimizing your Google My Business listing is the first step to local search optimization. A Google My Business listing allows you to claim and manage information about your business on Google, from hours of operation to photos and social media links.

Google My Business listings are important because they appear at the top of search results for specific queries related to local businesses, including a business name, address and phone number. They also include customer reviews (which can be filtered by “All” or “Filtered”), as well as a list of categories that apply to your business. As a result, people searching for what you offer will be able to quickly get an idea of how good your service or product is without having to click through multiple pages on Google or Yelp!

The more complete and accurate your listing is with respect to relevant information (including images!), whether it’s updated regularly (such as special offers) or set up correctly so that customers can easily find out more about you when looking online—the better chance you’ll have at attracting qualified leads who are ready-to-buy!

Optimize Your Website

Once you’ve established your business, the next step is to optimize your website. This is where many businesses start to fail.

• Make sure it’s mobile-friendly: A responsive website is critical for local SEO because Google will penalize sites that aren’t mobile friendly by lowering their rankings or removing them from its index altogether.
• Get an HTTPS certificate: This ensures that all communication between your computer and the server hosting your website is encrypted. It also helps establish trust and protects data from being hacked or intercepted by third parties like hackers and governments, which can be valuable if you’re running a business such as a bank or healthcare provider that handles sensitive information about customers.
• Get it indexed by Google My Business: Once you have a site up, make sure it’s listed on Google My Business so new customers can find you through search engines such as Bing and Yahoo!

Optimize Your Content

Optimizing your content:

• Make sure the content you publish is relevant to your local customers. You’ll want to use keywords, but don’t overdo it or you’ll look spammy and risk being penalized.
• Make sure that it’s easy for readers to read, including lots of white space, clear headings and subheadings, bullet points, etc.
• Ensure that the content is optimized for mobile devices (this will also help with SEO).
• Include multimedia like videos and images where appropriate to add visual interest and engagement with readers.
• Use Schema markup on certain types of pages such as product pages if possible so search engines can better understand what those pages are about (see below for more information).

Ask For Reviews

Once you’ve established a good reputation and positive reviews, it’s time to ask for more. This is an important part of the process because most people will not leave you a review without being prompted. Here are some ways to ask your customers to leave reviews:

• On your website or blog—you can embed a widget that will display on every page of your site. The widget should be easy-to-use and send users directly to the review site they would like to submit their information on (i.e., Google My Business). It’s also helpful if you provide detailed instructions on how much or how little information is required in order for them to complete the submission form properly.* On Facebook—create an event where people can RSVP for an email reminder about when their review is due, then encourage them by saying something like “Come on by! We’ll have cake!” This approach invites people into your business with an incentive, making it more likely that they might actually stick around long enough for you to request an honest opinion.* In-store signage—if someone has received exceptional service from one of your employees and isn’t sure what else he/she should do next, put up signs encouraging him/her towards leaving positive feedback online via Google My Business or Yelp.* Email—you can write personalized emails asking customers who visited recently whether or not they had a pleasant experience so far (especially since most won’t sign in as much anymore). Then include links at the bottom where they can easily go through steps 1-3 above.* Phone calls—this should only be done after trying other methods first because it takes up too much time unless there’s something specific that needs fixing right away.

 

Get Local Links and Citations

Citations are a great way to get links to your website. This is because they usually come from trusted websites, like authoritative business directories or even non-commercial sources like blogs or press releases. Citations can also be found on other sites that aren’t necessarily relevant to your industry but are still relevant to the location you serve (e.g., a hotel in Denver may have been featured in an article on outdoor adventures in Colorado). These types of citations will help build up your local SEO profile since it shows that your business has been featured by reputable sources outside of the internet marketing world.

Manage Duplicate Business Listings

• Find duplicate listings. To find duplicate listings, you can use the free Moz Local tool that compares your Google My Business listing to those of your competitors. This tool also gives you information on what data is missing from each listing, helping you identify which listings might be duplicates and further investigate them.
• Update duplicate listings. Once you’ve found a few duplicates, go through and update the most accurate ones with new photos, descriptions, hours of operation and other information to ensure they accurately reflect your business’s offerings.
• Remove duplicate listings (if necessary). If a listing is inaccurate or outdated enough that it doesn’t deserve to be in Google’s database at all (e.g., if it refers to an old location), remove it using either the Moz Local tool or Google’s Support Center .

Use Schema Markup

Let’s dig a little deeper into the concept of schema markup.

Schema markup is a way to tell search engines what your content is about, and it helps you achieve better local SEO results.

Schema also helps with mobile optimization because if you have an online business, chances are that people will be using their smartphones to find you and look at your products and services. With this in mind, it’s important that all the information on your website has been optimized for mobile devices. This means ensuring that any images and videos on your site load quickly so they don’t cause problems when viewed on smaller screens such as those found in smartphones or tablets.

Be Active on Social Media

How to Use Social Media for Local Business

There are many benefits of using social media. One of the main uses is to increase your visibility in local search results by acquiring new customers, driving traffic to your website and building trust in your business.

• To do this you need a strategy that includes:
• Create multiple accounts on different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.
• Build an engaged audience – don’t just use it as an update platform but also create quality content that engages with people that could be interested in your products or services (i.e., writing interesting blog posts).
• Use hashtags relevant to your industry/location so that users searching for these keywords can find you easily (i.e., writing about “#SEO” if you were doing SEO would mean people looking for SEO could find you).

Keep Track of What’s Working and What Isn’t

You should be testing everything, and that includes your local search optimization strategy. If you want to know what’s working and what isn’t, you need to keep track of the data. You should also document your assumptions so you can see how they were proven or disproven as time goes on.

The best way to do this is by using a spreadsheet or spreadsheet app like Google Sheets (you can download it here). Treat it like an experiment: keep track of all of your SEO strategies and tactics (including their time periods), what they’re supposed to accomplish (for example, more traffic or leads), and the results that came from those strategies/tactics over time. Your input columns could look something like this:

• “Keyword” – The keyword phrase being targeted in this piece of content; example: “used cars”
• “Time Period” – The timeframe in which you ran this test; examples include 1 week ago vs 2 weeks ago vs 3 weeks ago etc…

Continue to Create Great Content.

• Continue to Create Great Content.

There’s a reason why Google is constantly updating their algorithm and making it harder for people to game the system: they want you to create good content that genuinely helps your customers. If you can do that, then your local SEO efforts will be well worth the effort.

• Make sure that the content you create is relevant, engaging, useful and easy-to-read.
• Optimize Your Content For Search Engines (SEO).

The best way to be seen in local search results is by having a good website, optimized content, optimized social profiles and good reviews.

The best way to be seen in local search results is by having a good website, optimized content, optimized social profiles and good reviews.

Your website should be optimized for mobile users so that when someone searches from their phone or tablet, they are able to find you easily and quickly. This can be done through responsive design or by using a plug-in like the Google Mobile Friendly Testing Tool. The pages on your site should also be internally linked so that if someone clicks on one of your posts they can easily navigate through other posts without leaving the page they were originally viewing. This can be done with plugins such as Yoast SEO Premium which allows you to add internal links within your post’s text or at the bottom of each post where there may not normally be any room left over (if this is the case). You could also use anchor links between different sections in order to help readers navigate between different sections more easily when reading an article online rather than having them go back through previous pages trying find related information about something new being discussed later on down further into an existing article already written before hand rather than just linking back up again immediately after mentioning something else new earlier on down further into another existing document already written previously before hand instead of just linking back up again immediately afterwards mentioning something else new earlier on down further into another existing document already written previously before hand instead..

Conclusion

The best way to be seen in local search results is by having a good website, optimized content, optimized social profiles and good reviews. Contact our team of experts for help with all your SEO efforts!