“Panda“, “Penguin“, “Hummingbird“…
If you are thinking that we are chattering about birds and animals, sorry, you are wrong.?
We are talking about the renowned algorithm updates by Google that significantly modified the search results to date. These algorithms drove marketers to get more in-depth with their SEO efforts. Still, most businesses hadn’t paid heed to the subsequent update that came along – ‘The Pigeon’.
It was with this algorithm, they shook up the local search engine optimisation domain in the year 2014. Even then, many people continued to operate as if Google is focused on serving them. Local SEO was utterly ignored. However, the fact is that they were continually missing a lot of opportunities due to this.
Being a dedicated digital marketing company, we personally don’t want any business to repeat this. So, in this article, we have come up with ten local SEO tips to increase business reach and search visibility.
#1. Get Customer Reviews
- The Number of Reviews: The thought is simple – brands with more reviews will definitely be more popular than those with fewer reviews.
- Review Score: It is a commonly known fact that Google is less likely to rank brands with lower review scores.
- Responsiveness to Reviews: The search engine tends to promote businesses that respond quickly to customer reviews over companies that do not make any efforts for that.
? Recommended Reading: 7 Effective Strategies To Get Customer Testimonials!
#2. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors
Competitors are the best way to get insights into SEO, digital marketing, keywords and more. That means, keeping an eye on them will help you get some exceptional ideas to develop and update your online marketing strategies. So we recommend you to focus on competitors’ activities and try to remain one step ahead of them.
But how are you going to do that? Here we go!
- Look over to your competitors’ blogs to get some better ideas to improve your marketing contents.
- Visit their social media profiles and analyze their activities on it.
- Make use of popular tools like ‘Hootsuite‘ to know insights of both you and your competitors’ social media channels.
- Always take a look at competitors’ keyword strategies and see if there is something you could try out.
- Subscribe to their articles, so that you will get real-time updates.
#3. Provide Your Business Name, Address And Phone Number
Give your business name, address and phone number on every page of your website to deliver a hassle-free experience for your audience.
They wouldn’t be searching for your contact details for too long. If they are not able to contact you within a few seconds, then they might leave the thought. Therefore, place these details in such a way that your customers can locate them quickly.
#4. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
This is one of the essential local SEO techniques out there because mobile-friendly websites are found to rank higher on Google search engines.
See the below infographics?- it shows the increase in the percentage of mobile searches in recent years. This means there are a lot of people who search for businesses and services on their smartphones. So if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website in order, you’re missing a lot of opportunities.
#5. Don’t Forget On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is vital for getting relevant website traffic. It helps search engines like Google to understand your website and its content.
Proper keyword insertion and relevant content can help your website to rank better on search engines.
#6. Choose A Domain That Matches Your Business Brand
Keep your domain name more or less similar to your brand name because people would easily find your website that way.
And while choosing your domain name, remember to:
- Keep it short, so it’s easy to retain.
- Include keywords to increase search visibility.
- ‘.com’ is preferred more as a Top-Level Domain (TLD) as it is easy to remember.
- Stay away from unusual spellings that can create confusions.
#7. Include A Blog Section For Your Business Website
As we always say, “content is the king”. So, start writing blogs and include this as a special category to your business site. Today almost every major business website has a page totally dedicated to the blogs.
You can write content about various topics related to your field and publish them to get more visitors to your website. But make sure to provide only high-quality content as this is an opportunity to initiate quality interaction with your audience.
#8. Include High-Quality Images And Videos
Visuals have more capacity to please people than textual words. Including high-quality photos and videos related to your products and services can fetch you a massive increase in CTR (Click-Through-Rate). Not just that there are other extensive benefits of adding high-quality multimedia to your websites. Some of them are:
- More views to your site
- Increased user engagement
- Decreased bounce rate
- Drive more visitors
- Promote social sharing
#9. Ensure Whether Your Business Is Visible Or Not
There are various tools, such as ‘Yelp’ that you can use to examine your business profile. Check it by yourself and if you feel it looks outdated, then start updating it. Include all the relevant details such as business name, URL, customer’s review section, phone number, address, photos, videos and maps.
In terms of online visibility, a website that gives more importance to these details is always a step ahead of websites with partial information.
#10. Complete Your Business Profile On All Local Listing Sites
To make people aware of your business, you need to upload your proper NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) on all listing sites. Popular local listing sites like ‘Google My Business’, ‘Bing Local’ and ‘Yahoo Local’ will allow your visitors to know about you and get your contact details quickly.
It gives you an extra boost for your already established online presence paving the way for improved reputation among customers. It’s also a way of providing free online advertising to local shoppers.
Over To You
So, there you have it, “the ten best local SEO tips” to increase your business reach and search visibility. Now, it’s time to employ these strategies in your business to grab the right set of audience.
Want more guidance? Here, at Parel Creative, the best web design and development company in Kochi and Singapore, we have a specialised team focused on delivering result-oriented local SEO strategies to help clients get relevant leads. You can click here to contact them now.
