Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become increasingly important for businesses that want to be found by local customers. In addition, more than half of all search queries are made via mobile devices, and smartphone users are constantly increasing. So, if you don’t optimize for local SEO, you’re missing out on a lot of potential. In this guide, we will explain what an SEO outreach specialist does to improve local SEO ranking factors.
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What Are the Benefits of Local SEO?
Local search results are a powerful tool for local businesses. It’s an effective way to find new customers and increase sales.
For Whom is Local SEO Important?
Local SEO is relevant for companies whose business has a physical location and where customer contact takes place in person. For example, if you have a local business in Toronto, then you should optimize your website and the shop’s location according to local SEO measures.
Many local businesses tend to forget the importance of local SEO because they think it’s only for big businesses. However, there are many reasons why Local SEO is important for small businesses too. Here are some examples:
1) You can address local customers directly.
2) Your competitors may not even know you exist.
3) People trust reviews and ratings more than ads.
4) Reviews help you build credibility.
5) Finally, customers are more likely to buy products from a local company.
How to improve local SEO Ranking Factors?
This is how a local SEO agency can improve local SEO ranking factors.
Analyse local competition
First, it’s important to see how your competitors perform in local searches. If their performance is better than yours, you can take note of what they are doing differently than you.
These factors can be responsible for the fact that your competition ranks better locally than you:
- Better local content: relevance of topics, quality of posts, frequency of updates
- Local Backlinks: What Links Do Your Competitors Have? Are these of better quality than yours?
- Local Landing Pages: Are Your Competitors’ Pages Better Locally Optimized?
Improve local SEO with local landing pages
With local landing pages for your respective locations, you can fulfil the search intention of your customers even better and rank better for local keywords.
This is especially the case if your company has multiple locations in different cities – e.g., SEO Agency Toronto, SEO Agency New York, etc.
For each location to achieve a top ranking for the respective local search query, you need landing pages optimized for the respective location.
When creating a local landing page, you should pay particular attention to the following points:
- The location or the local keyword should appear in the title, meta description, H1 heading, and in the first paragraph of the content. Of course, you should also use keyword variations with the location in the further body text.
- Integration of Google Maps: It is not only helpful for your users to integrate a map with your location. Your local ranking can also improve as a result!
- Your address and phone number should be visible on your website after the NAP information, as described above. The NAP data should be identical everywhere so that clear signals can be sent to the search engines.
Locally optimized snippets
Any local SEO optimization should include adding your location to the snippet. This makes it easier for you to be found in local search results. This should be done with every local SEO campaign.
Structured Data for Local SEO
The inclusion of structured data can also lead to better rankings. With structured data, you can arrange your HTML data semantically so that search engines like Google can evaluate your website more effectively and display it in the organic search results.
You should mark the following data to improve your local ranking:
1) Type: Type of your business
2) Name: Your company name
3) Address: Address of your company. This can be supplemented with the following properties: street address, address locality, address region, postal Code.
4) Opening Hours Specification: You can also mark your opening hours with structured data.
5) Reviews: Reviews on your website can be displayed in the local results using structured data.
I recommend Google’s rich search results tool to check your structured data.
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