29/06/20 | SEO

Sean

SEO, PPC, Web

If your website isn’t set up for local SEO you’re missing out on a lot of calls – and customers

46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. And in 88% of searches for local businesses on a mobile device, the customer either calls or visits the business they find within 24 hours.

Taking the time to improve local SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase enquiries. Appearing in local searches brings in more of the right enquiries – people near you who need your products and services now.

What is a local search?

Local searches are searches where someone has mentioned the location within their search, or Google has used their location to refine the search results they see.

People browse a list of options near to them and compare them on things like distance, relevance, price, and reviews. You may well have seen this in your own searches. It’s a tool that makes it easy to track down what you’re looking for within a few clicks.

How to improve local SEO rankings 

Improving local SEO rankings is an ongoing process – like any search marketing activity. You’re going to need to set things up, monitor, and keep up with any changes. But there are some basic things you can do to improve local SEO on your site right now.

1. Create a Google My Business profile

This is the listing people see in the right-hand side of the search engine results pages when they search your company, and when your company appears in a list of results.

Your Google My Business profile puts you on the map for people searching for your services or company locally. For example, if someone local searches ‘forklift hire near me’ your forklift hire business will be one of the results that returns.

Here’s what ours looks like:

2. Fill in every section of your My Business profile

Just setting up a Google My Business profile isn’t enough. It needs to be detailed and full of your business’s information, so people can find out exactly what you do.

Having complete and correct information means you stand the best chance of a user clicking through to your website. Incomplete Google My Business profiles can make people think a business is closed, irrelevant or, frankly, behind the times.

3. Ask happy customers to review you

Review platforms such as Google, Yelp, Yell, and Facebook are considered by search engines as proof your business is operational and worth promoting.

They indicate what kind of experience customers should expect. The more positive reviews you have on these platforms, the more likely they are to show you to people searching for businesses like yours.

Here’s the review feature in action on the Google My Business profile of our client FASTISIGNS Leeds:

5. Create social channels for your business

Set up pages on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, if they are appropriate to your business.

People increasingly use the built-in search engines on these platforms to find services close to them, so having that presence when they do is vital. Make sure you keep them up to date though. If your last social post was back in 2018 people might think you’re closed!

5. Post about things related to local issues

Creating blog articles and social posts featuring local stories, events, issues, and initiatives is a great way to tap into local traffic. Writing about subjects that local people are searching for or recognise is an instant away to grab attention.

A good example of this is a local estate agent creating infographics about the housing market in their area. People searching for this information will be more likely to come across them and visit their website.

6. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

The shift to mobile has already happened and if you aren’t catering for mobile devices, you’re simply missing out as this point.

Having a mobile-friendly website is one of the criteria search engines like Google look for when ranking your website in search results. There’s a lot more to making a website mobile-friendly than the way it looks and having it resize for different screen sizes.

For instance, you must make it ‘tap friendly’ which means there’s plenty of space around buttons, so users don’t have to zoom in and out to press them and risk clicking the wrong link.

7. Display useful information for reaching you

Make sure you dedicate a page on your website specifically for useful information for finding you. Include opening times, parking, phone numbers, the address, a map with your business highlighted on it, and any current promotions.

This makes it quick and easy for people to find you and find out how to reach you – the simpler you make it the more likely they are to visit.

8. Reaching out to related local businesses (but not competitors)

Creating web links with local businesses that offer complementary products or services is a brilliant way of increasing local traffic to your site – and building connections other local businesses at the same time!

Maybe you supply coffee beans for local cafés. You could produce a great infographic on your blog dedicated to different roasting techniques and reach out to local cafes to see if they would share it from their websites too.

Search engines like Google see that there are links to your article from local related and reputable businesses and push it to the top of searches related to coffee bean roasting.

We hope this has given you an idea of how to improve local SEO. If you’re struggling to be found in searches, talk to us about organic SEO services and we’ll let you know why that is.

Want to find out in which areas, including SEO, your digital marketing could be improved? Our digital marketing review scores your current activity and provides practical feedback for things to improve on or implement, straight away.

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