How to Take Advantage of Local SEO to Boost Rankings

Fact: “85 percent of online consumers use the internet to find local businesses.” In other words, if you want customers to find your business, you better make sure your local SEO strategy is on point.

Nowadays, people are looking for convenience. So, if your business is conveniently located where potential customers can easily find you, then they won’t think twice about choosing your company over the rest.

What are the benefits of Local SEO?

While traditional SEO is a tedious, on-going process, local SEO is vital for your business (whether you have multiple office locations or not). Whether it’s by zip code, address or city, it’s important to let customers know where you are located and how they can find you with one simple search.

Local SEO not only helps increase your company’s visibility amongst your target audience, but also helps your business rank higher on local search engine results pages (SERPs).

Let’s take a look a some of the benefits that local search has to offer:

• Customized results. We all know that google has a way of generating specific results based on the user who is searching. That’s why local SEO plays a significant role on the type of results a person sees while searching online.
• Google prefers small businesses. While Google tends to rank websites based on history and authority, it also likes to give smaller local businesses some love too. Free web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, provide detailed reports that help small businesses increase their online visibility. This also allows small business owners increase relevance in the search engine world.
• Advantages of mobile and wearable devices. Now that smart watches and other wearable/mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular (like the beautiful Apple Watch), this means that users tend to search for information while on the go. According to a recent study by Google, “Consumers, particularly on mobile devices, now have higher expectations than ever before – they want everything right, and they want everything right away” (Source: Google: Inside AdWords). As a result, local-based searches will soon become even more popular than before.

How Do I Get Started?

Initiating a local SEO campaign isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. It’s actually self explanatory, but it does take some time and effort. Remember, you want to make sure the information you are registering is accurate and up to date – you don’t want to lead your potential clients to the wrong place!

Here’s how you can start:

1. Create local citations. In order to consistently rank high on local search engines, you have to build local citations. However, since there are numerous resources available it can be challenging to figure out which one is best to use for your company. Special tools like Location Citation Finder makes this process a whole lot easier. This tools not only helps you determine where to list your business, but also helps boost your local search engine rankings by providing a competitive analysis of successful business in your niche market.
2. Build relationships and optimize your local content. Promoting you content is a key element in any content marketing strategy. But, promoting your content and optimizing it for local search engines is even more important. Try to base some of your content on local relevance, and make sure that you include the name of your city, region or neighborhood in your articles/blog titles.
3. Maintenance and local reviews. Good reviews help build an established brand, and shows that users can trust your company when it pops up on the search engine results page (SERP) with those five stars. Encourage your customers to post reviews and testimonials about your business on places like Yelp, or other review sites. So, try to gather a significant amount of positive reviews, and make sure you log in regularly to thank and respond to each review.

Conclusion

Now that you have a basic understanding of the importance of local SEO for your business, it’s time to take advantage of this resource (if you haven’t already) and develop a local search campaign.

As a Fort Lauderdale web design agency, we have definitely noticed a difference in search visibility by implementing local SEO into our internet marketing strategy. Once you have a solid ongoing strategy, you’ll start to see results within weeks or months. SEO is a process, and it only gets better with time and commitment.
Cultura Interactive is a full service, award-winning Fort Lauderdale web design agency that strives to not only create unique and attractive websites, but also helps businesses improve their internet marketing strategies in a less-complicated way.
Our team of professionals specialize in web design, logo design, WordPress development, eCommerce, responsive web design, mobile apps, SEO, social media marketing, pay per click advertising and more. Learn more about our services or contact us for a personal interview.