Local SEO tips to increase visibility on search engine
29-04-2024
Local SEO, SEO
It’s never been more important to optimize your business online presence and formulate a strong web strategy. These Local SEO tips will help you to win over the competition and help you to consistently rank at the top of the SERP’s.
46% of all Google searches are looking for local information, which means if your business isn’t optimized for local search, you could be missing out on potential customers who are ready to shop in your area. In short, local SEO is critical if you want your business to stay relevant.
Here are 10 of our go-to local search tactics to help your business improve local search visibility
1- Get listed all the local business directories
Your business information needs to be listed and listed accurately all the important directories that Google cites to rank for your business.
Consistency is key: verify that your citations are consistent and complete across all the local directories.
Discrepancies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number, or wrong phone number can be problematic. If Google can’t determine which information about your business is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results. Additionally, be sure to remove any duplicate listings you find.
Using OBENAN’s Local Listings Platform makes it much easier to manage all your listings. That includes getting your name, address and phone number (NAP) consistently and accurately listed across dozens of local search engines and directories, whilst also removing duplicate listings.
Managing this manually is extremely time-consuming and tedious, and can result in inaccuracies across the local search ecosystem. By using OBENAN’s Local Listing Platform you can save yourself time, which you can then re-invest back into other areas of improving and optimizing your business.
Bonus points for emphasizing a Chambers of Commerce membership in your community, which will garner you an external inbound link. But keep it in mind, if your company name is different than your brand name that may cause inaccuracy listing.
2- Use structured data
If you’ve been paying attention to Local SEO strategies, you might have heard about Schema markups, also called structured data.
We all know structured data is important for helping Google to better understand content and that it can help increase clicks, impressions and conversions. The same principle applies to local search. That’s why you should absolutely implement structured data types like local business, geo-coordinates, postal addresses and reviews to help improve Google’s performance.
Additionally, with structured data, Google can quickly capture essential details on your company and the content that you are publishing on your website. The search engine can then display the results more prominently in search results without the searcher needing to click on the link to your site. Google calls the presentation of schema in search results rich snippets, and they improve Google’s overall service and the click-through rate to your website.
Google post automation If you want to know how to add structured data, click here to check Google Search Central documentation for Local Business
Sample structured data:
<html>
<head>
<title>Dave's Steak House</title>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Restaurant",
"image": [
"https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg",
"https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"
],
"name": "Dave's Steak House",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "148 W 51st St",
"addressLocality": "New York",
"addressRegion": "NY",
"postalCode": "10019",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"review": {
"@type": "Review",
"reviewRating": {
"@type": "Rating",
"ratingValue": "4",
"bestRating": "5"
},
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Lillian Ruiz"
}
},
"geo": {
"@type": "GeoCoordinates",
"latitude": 40.761293,
"longitude": -73.982294
},
"url": "http://www.example.com/restaurant-locations/manhattan",
"telephone": "+12122459600",
"servesCuisine": "American",
"priceRange": "$$$",
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": [
"Monday",
"Tuesday"
],
"opens": "11:30",
"closes": "22:00"
},
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": [
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday"
],
"opens": "11:30",
"closes": "23:00"
},
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
"opens": "16:00",
"closes": "23:00"
},
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
"opens": "16:00",
"closes": "22:00"
}
],
"menu": "http://www.example.com/menu",
"acceptsReservations": "True"
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
3- Optimize google my business listings
If you are not using and optimising your Google My Business profile, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to get your products and services visible where it matters the most. When optimizing for Google My Business, make sure you fill out all the information you can, including photos, menu items, descriptions and service lines. Many brands miss out on this golden opportunity to list their businesses in the correct categories. For example, if you own a pizzeria, you should list your business in both restaurant and dining. It sounds too simple to even mention, but this is one of the most important aspects of local search optimization. It’s absolutely worth taking the time to fill out menu information, descriptions, available facilities etc and keeping your information up to date.
If you’re searching for “lunch restaurant near me” and find a restaurant with great reviews that appears to be open, but you drive there only to find it is temporarily closed, you will have a bad user experience – and you may not want to risk giving this restaurant another chance. This is precisely why it’s so important for businesses to update local search results and keep potential customers in the loop when they are temporarily closed or operating under special opening hours.
Don’t forget to update Q&A within your GMB business profile with any pertinent or timely details, like:
4- Audit your listings
Always audit your local listings to identify the following:
If you are already using OBENAN Local Listings Management, you don’t need to that all your information will be distributed every 30 minutes across all the directories.
5- Manage your online reputation
When you search for a business, it won’t take you long to see what customers said about it. Most likely it’ll be one of the first results you see. Google takes review ratings and review responses from multiple sites into consideration when determining the order of businesses it returns in local searches.
Having positive reviews and a good customer experience is absolutely critical to ranking high in the Local Map Pack, yet countless companies still neglect to respond to their reviews, both positive and negative.
Although it shouldn’t be ignored, responding to and managing reviews is time-consuming, made even more complicated by the fact people are not only posting to Google My Business, but to Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, etc. OBENAN’s Review Management Software compiles all your views into one single dashboard – meaning you can manage every single review on the same page regardless of where it was written.
Bonus Tip: By using OBENAN’s Review Management Tool, you can automate the review request from customers who visited and used your business. Acting proactively creates an online conversation about your business. By integration Formitable reservation system or using SO-Wifi you can gather fresh reviews from your visitors.
6- Use hyper-local content
Being hyper-local means being as local as possible. It’s a matter of getting as close to your customers as you can and communicate with them from that position.
Hyperlocal marketing is the process of targeting prospective customers in a highly specific, geographically restricted area, sometimes just a few blocks or streets, often with the intention of targeting people conducting “near me” searches on their mobile devices.
When a company goes hyper-local they often involve their local staff, making the communication genuine as well as playful and personal. The result is connections with customers on a deeper level. The hyper-local approach is getting more and more traction – in particular within multi-location-based companies.
In the end, SEO is all about providing a positive content experience across all devices and platforms to help end-users satisfy their information needs. Always focus on adding unique quality content catered to individual locations. This tailor-made hyper-local content can help improve visibility among potential customers located nearby. Be sure to include hyper-local terms in your on-page optimization strategy. This includes headings, titles, metadata, image alt text, and text.
7- Connect with customers via always-on messaging
Download the Google My Business app and turn on messaging as a way to help your customers reach you. If you are not available by phone or it is after business hours, messaging can help customers get the support they need.
Bonus Tip: Businesses can now message with customers through their web browser, not just the mobile app.
8- Optimize for voice search & mobile
The way in which we consume information has changed and we live in a world where users are constantly asking questions and searching for information. Your brand needs to be able to provide the answers, even when consumers are asking a digital assistant. Your website, therefore, needs to be well optimized in order to deliver answers to common questions about your products and/or services. For hints on what to include, take a look at your internal search metrics and analytics to see what common questions people are asking about your business.
You can also take advantage of the OBENAN Listing Tool and features. While voice search is still a relatively new way to stand out in local search, by getting your local listings voice search ready now you’ll be one step ahead of your competitors.
9- Track rankings & build out local landing pages
Always make sure you offer local landing pages that offer a good user and page experience. You should always consider the responsiveness, speed of the load times, the latest schema code base, calls to action, and design elements. All of this can help your brand rank for all of its locations and turn those searches into real visits.
Taking the time to track your rankings can help you to understand and continually improve the progress and success of your local search campaign at a local and zip-code level. By using OBENAN Local Listings Tool you can monitor analyze your location traffic through the result page.
10- Don’t forget links are still very important
Focus on getting high-quality links by researching local and general sites, blogs, etc. Amassing high-quality links from reputable sources with good and useful content creates trust and credibility around your brand.
You should however still aim to collect links from locally targeted listings and blogs too. This is a really important factor in improving visibility. Having a strong local search presence is more important than ever given today’s competitive SERPs. Consumers are searching for products and services related to your brand, so you need to be visible.
Following these proven tips can help you get to the top of the SERPs and dominate the local results.
Bonus Tip: OBENAN’s Local Listings Software distributes your business’ information to over 50 online platforms. You will be built up backlinks on all those important directories and this will increase your business online visibility and spreads the word about your business further.
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