Having a website increases your chances of finding your target audience online. But what good is that website if it does not appear on search engines? Improving your local SEO will automatically boost your number of offline customers. Research suggests that in 2022, 98% of netizens used search engines to find out about local businesses, and around 42% of local searches involved Google Maps.
So, if you want to have a local online presence, it’s time you start building it with a few simple strategies. Here are 13 tips for local SEO success in 2024.
1. Get Your Website On Google
Does your website rank on search engines? Here’s a quick way to find out, search your website name on Google and see what comes up. If your website and social media handles are listed there, you have your bases covered and you can tick this off your list.
If it does not rank on Search Engines, it’s time to get to work. The quickest way to get your website noticed is to index it on Google Search Console. This will inform Google that your website exists and, if they find it authentic, they will rank it on their search engine.
Indexing pages on Google Search Console does provide crucial insights about your website. For instance, if your website is not secure or has many 404 error pages it will not rank on Google. Indexing pages on the search console will put these issues under the spotlight, giving you enough time to assess and improve on them.
2. Provide Value
In this SEO rat race, we often forget that we are writing for human beings and not search engine bots. An important ranking criteria for Google is noticing customer behavior. If your website is keyword optimized but fails to provide the necessary information, you will have a high bounce rate (meaning that customers will leave as quickly as they visit the website) and search engines will rank your website lower.
On the flip side, if customers visit your website and stay on each page for a long time, maybe even going to the other pages, search engines will know that you provide customers with a lot of value and hence will improve your website rankings.
3. Create A Blog
A blog section is one of the best ways to get noticed by search engines. A well-maintained blog does the following:
- It establishes you as an expert in the industry
- It builds a rapport between you and your readers
- Content that answers FAQs and ‘How to’ questions are far more likely to rank on Google
- Provides opportunities for interlinking pages
- Increases chances of backlinks
- With more content, you show search engines that you are an authentic website that provides valuable information to your customers
For your blog to rank, you should not just create a blog and add a few articles in it. You must be consistent with your posting game. When you have a blog posting timetable, you not only give your potential customers something to look forward to, but show search engines that you are dedicated to providing authentic content.
4. Optimize Content For Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are the pieces of content that come in the rank 0 box section when you ask Google a question. The top organic search result receives 19x more traffic than the first paid result for the same search term. Hence writing content that gets noticed by featured snippets can be an asset for your business.
How can your website rank on featured snippets?
Usually FAQs and answers to ‘wh’ questions (who, where, what, when; additionally ‘how’) show up on featured snippets. If you are trying to rank your website through blog articles, you do not need a separate FAQ section as long as you write your article in clear paragraphs. You can either have a subheading with a question (like how we have here), or you can start a new paragraph, try to answer the question with as few words possible and try to incorporate a few keywords that sound natural in the sentence.
Try targeting long-tail keywords if you are particularly aiming for a local presence. Local content is comparatively sparse thus increasing your chances of ranking on search results.
5. Add Keywords Without Sounding Robotic
You might be confident that your customers will find value in your page once they land on it. But there’s one thing that comes between you and your customers – the search engine. Keywords are the only way to communicate with search bots and if you use it to your advantage, you can make the search engine your ally, encouraging it to showcase your content on the top.
The first step to a keyword strategy is knowing your target keywords and studying their keyword difficulty. If a keyword is rated high on the difficulty rate, it means that the keyword has a high search volume and is difficult to rank on and the opposite is true for keywords with a low difficulty. A local SEO consultant should help you find keywords that have decent search traffic and yet are easy to rank on.
Once you know which keywords will connect you to your target audience, it is important to sprinkle those keywords throughout your content. Now, search engines know that companies are trying to get recognised through keywords, and hence they have been improved to notice artificial-sounding content. So, do not overstuff keywords or add it in a way that makes your content sound artificial.
6. Create A Content Strategy
Amateur businesses will only focus on creating blogs or website pages. An SEO expert will help you create content that strategically complements each other. So for instance, if you are a lifestyle company that sells kitchen appliances, you should write articles about different types of the same appliance or how different appliances complement each other (for instance, writing about the best heavy duty blenders and then writing about the best portable blenders would allow you to interlink the two articles, in case the reader wants to explore different varieties of blenders).
An experienced local SEO company like Netlynx includes the following parameters in a content strategy:
- Blog posting calendar
- Content clusters (creating groups of content that can be interlinked with each other)
- Keyword strategy (creating a healthy balance of long tail keywords and short tail keywords)
7. On Page SEO (Meta Tags, Titles, And URL Slug)
This is one of the most crucial steps for SEO optimization. It may not take more than 30 minutes but will make a massive difference in the way search engines rank your content. Add the primary keyword, meta titles, meta tags, and descriptions on all your pages and blog content before publishing them.
The url slug should also be optimized according to the keyword. Here is a quick and easy checklist to refer to before you publish your article:
- Make sure your primary keyword is on the H1 heading
- Have the primary keyword on any H2 or H3 heading
- Make sure your primary keyword is in the beginning of your article
- Add the primary keyword to the cover image alt text
- Make sure the meta tag and meta description have the primary keyword
- Add 3-4 pieces of media content (photos/videos) on your article
- Add at least one internal link to your blog
- Add at least 1 external link to your blog
- Use lighter images and videos on your blog page to maintain website speed
8. Optimize Images
Usually, viewers who use auditory applications to read out a website will now know that you have added images. Therefore adding an organic sounding alt text will improve your website’s user experience. Many novice companies stuff keywords on their image alt text which has a negative impact on the SEO. Instead of this, you can create an image alt text that sounds natural and relevant to the context.
9. Conduct an SEO Audit
Sound technical SEO improves your chances of showing up on Google’s very first page. But when you have many website pages, it is hard to keep track of which pages are optimized for search engines and which ones are not.
When you conduct an SEO audit it helps you stay ahead of the SEO game. Check out the next section for SEO parameters.
10. Follow SEO Best Practices
Use this as a checklist for SEO best practices. Make sure you:
- Get an SSL certificate to remove the ‘unsafe’ alarm on your website
- Fix 404 errors on your website, with a ‘re-direct’ code
- Monitor and improve website speed
- Optimize your website for both mobile and desktop users
- Remove duplicate pages and content
- Fix/remove broken links
Just a few of these simple observations can make a big difference on your website.
11. Spread the word
When you are completely new online, no one is going to spread the word for you. You have to spread the word yourself. Using social media platforms like the company page or your own pages will boost SEO through backlinking.
Encourage customers to tag you on their posts or mention you on their websites. Create referral programs and incentives that encourage customers to talk about you online. The more they spread the word, the better your local SEO health.
12. Start Building Backlinks
A backlink is a link created on a third-party website that re-directs customers to your business. Both follow and no follow backlinks improve your SEO health. The great thing about creating blog content is that you increase opportunities for others to use your content as a resource on their own website.
Additionally, you can increase backlinks by applying to local directories and offering to guest post for industries that co-exist with yours (for instance, a television company can partner with a sofa company to promote the idea of a comfortable viewing experience).
13. Constantly Update Old Articles
When we are constantly in the loop of producing new content, older articles quickly become forgotten. Remember that a good SEO strategy builds over time. When search results start noticing your company, they are far more likely to rank older articles first, because they most likely to gain maximum daily traffic.
So, make sure your older articles have all the necessary article links. Update the page meta tags and descriptions as the need arises and do not shy away from adding new research and findings to the old articles. When you have a sound combination of adding new pieces of content and improving your old articles, you become a strong competitor in your industry.
Conclusion
These 13 tips have a strong impact on local SEO health. Always remember that you cannot build SEO overnight. It needs patience, consistency, and dedication. With local SEO experts on your side, you too can build a significant online presence within your locality!
