How to Improve Your Local SEO

Being a small local business can be extremely difficult, especially with everything stacked against you due to COVID-19 restrictions. However, one way you can grow as a small local business is by optimizing your local SEO. While digital marketing is often thought of as a way to penetrate new markets and expand on a national or global level, it also can be a fantastic way to get more local business. Effectively using local SEO services can generate lots of leads and establish your company as a premier brand in your local area. So how exactly can you engage in local SEO and use it to generate more business? Here’s how to improve your local SEO. 

Optimize Your Website

One of the best ways to improve your local SEO is by fully optimizing your website. Optimizing your website can do wonders for your SEO. It makes it easier for search engine crawlers to comb through your website and makes the browsing experience so much better for human users. For example, you can optimize your website by making the mobile experience for users much smoother and better looking. Properly optimizing for mobile users will generate more leads from those using mobile devices and increase your website’s credibility in the eyes of search engines. Some other areas you may want to optimize are the speed at which your website loads and the way your website is organized and structured. If your website loads fast and is easily navigable, both human users and search engine crawlers will view the website favorably. As a result, you’ll see a big increase in local traffic, and you’ll rank higher for local searches.

Use Business Directories

A fantastic way to improve your local SEO and drive more traffic to your business is by taking advantage of various online business directories. Online business directories like Yelp, FourSquare, and YellowPages are relied on by many web users. As a result, if you’re not listed in these directories, then you could be missing out on a large chunk of traffic. When listing your business in these directories, it’s important to make it as easy as possible to find you. This means ensuring that the directory has accurate information when it comes to the business’s name, phone number, website address, and physical address. In addition, you should have a strong description and call to action that can catch a user’s eye. If you’re not already taking advantage of online business directories, you’re missing out on a potentially huge boost to your SEO. 

Create Meaningful Content

Another great way to improve your local SEO is to create meaningful content that is location-specific. Too many times, businesses will create content that has little to no relevance to their local audience. Content that is locally relevant can be a great way for locals to find your website and increase local web traffic. There are a variety of ways to approach making locally relevant content. For example, you could cover local current events and how they affect your industry. In addition, you should try to have your local content link to other local entities as well as local links coming back to your content. This means you may want to include links to local news stories in your content and have other local businesses link back to your website. Creating and advertising content that is meaningful and relevant to your local audience is a fantastic way to build up brand visibility and improve your local SEO. 

Research and Target Specific Keywords

When trying to optimize your brand’s local SEO efforts, you’re going to need to do some research into specific keywords. While you’re researching keywords, you’ll want to look for things such as the volume of searches and the competition for that particular keyword. Knowing metrics like this can allow you to target specific keywords that receive a decent amount of searches, but you won’t have to compete with lots of other brands trying to rank for the same words. When your research provides you with locally relevant keywords that receive traffic, you’ll then want to create content around them. When you create your content, these specific keywords should be included, allowing your website to rank higher for that particular keyword search. If you really want to improve your local SEO, you’re going to need to conduct research on various keywords and include them in your SEO efforts.