Local Search is one of the most potent ways for businesses to earn potential leads for sales conversion. A large number of searches on Google are related to local information.
In 2022, more than 50% of searches were related to Local searches, out of which more than 80% contacted businesses within 24 hours. It is vital optimizing your business for local searches to earn qualified sales conversions.
In 2023, give the utmost attention to Local SEO. In this blog, we will walk you through Local SEO Tips for 2023.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is one of the most effective & potential lead-generation search optimization strategies that help businesses gain higher visibility in Google Local Search results.
Local SEO’s primary focus is boosting Google search engine visibility for local businesses, especially those with brick-and-mortar locations.
Any business that has a physical location & serves a specific geographic area qualifies to benefit from Local SEO.
Hire a Digital Marketing Company for Local SEO services, and they will help you with the best Local SEO practices to improve your business’s organic traffic from local searches performed in nearby areas.
Search engines primarily rely on local content, links, social profile pages, & citation for providing the most relevant, to-the-point, and informative local results to meet the user’s local search requirement.
Hence, it is vital to use Local SEO to position your products & services to the local consumers searching for them.
Local SEO Tips for 2023
Foster your Google My Business Page
If you haven’t listed your business on Google My Business page, then it is the foremost thing you should do in 2023.
Google My Business is a free business listing provided by Google to all businesses to link their accounts together and add your business details, photos, location, products, & services to get a higher ranking & broader visibility across Google search results.
Below are the essential tips for fostering your Google My Business that you must inculcate to make it look enticing to drive users’ attention and get higher visibility.
- Verify your Google My Business Page, as verified business pages look authentic & legitimate.
- Ensure to use Google posts in your account.
- Encourage customers to share reviews on Google reviews about their experience with your business and business products & services.
- Ensure to respond on the same day to customer reviews by addressing the customer’s name & feedback.
Having the latest reviews and your response to them shows that your business pays attention to the consumers’ need & acknowledge them, which is a positive sign for your business’s growth in Local Search results.
Note: Once Google has verified your Google My Business page, you have a rewarding tool for massive revenue generation as your business will have a specified sidebar space in Google Local Search Results.
Engage your Social Media on Google My Business Page
Engaging users is one of the essential practices that businesses must do to keep the users gripped with your business. Connecting your business Social Media accounts on Google My Business Page engages users as they find your business authentic & legitimate and get to know about business ambience.
Ensure to use standard contact details online
It is a must to use the same Name, Address, & Phone Number (with area code), abbreviated as NAP, and keep it consistent online. The NAP practice makes it easier for consumers & search engines to discover your business.
Keep your NAP as crawlable HTML text on your site to make it straightforward for Google to display your business according to location-based search results.
Note: Don’t include NAP within an image because search engines can’t crawl images like HTML text.
Tip: Keep NAP either in the footer or header of the site. Also, ensure to keep NAP on the “Contact us” page.
Enhance your Internal Linking
Many businesses pay sheer attention to external linking but tend to miss out on Internal Linking Structure.
External links are provided on search engines, which help determine the worth, usefulness, & quality of your web pages. External Links are vital in higher ranking.
On the other hand, internal links are hyperlinks that direct users from one page (link) on your website to another page (link) on your site, e.g., Website Navigation.
Users & Search Engines both use internal links to discover content on your site.
It is crucial to focus on the Internal Linking structure to help users & search engines navigate through the site and crawl them to the content they are looking for. Internal Linking help in distributing page authority & ranking power among pages.
Don’t miss out on adding location pages
Many businesses have more than one physical location in the same city, which makes it essential to create location pages for your website for plain sailing navigation for users & search engines according to location-based search results.
Location pages provide necessary information to the users, such as NAP, store hours, products, services, store descriptions, packing information, promotions, & customer reviews.
Note: Ensure to create a unique, captivating location page for each location for easier crawling to your site for users & search engines.
Pay attention to Local Content
Google has become more intelligent over the years, allowing content creators to focus more on writing user-centric topics than search engine-centric ones. User-centric topics help businesses drive users’ attention to the topic they want to read.
However, the focus should also be on writing content about local products, services, & industry to entice the local audience.
We recommend writing content about local industry news, events, employees, and relevant & beneficial educational content on your blog.
E.g., if you are operating a local furniture showroom, it is vital to create content based on local residents’ preferences and include interactive events, furniture trends, the latest news & happenings in the town, and other relevant topics to drive users & search engines attention to your site.
Optimizing content for Local Search engines
When it comes to local SEO content, it is essential to optimize URL, title tags, headers, content, & meta description by using high-volume keywords to make your content filled with rich, helpful, & worthwhile information for targeting a geographic location, & getting higher ranking for multiple types of local searches in SERPs.
E.g., if you are writing about a specific product, then mention its meaning, features, benefits, usages, maintenance & service, and all relevant information about the product. It will help you earn more traffic to your content (blog).
Tip: Focus on writing content about each location of your business, and optimize each content with “near” me local searches for driving maximum traffic to your site.
Ensure optimizing online citations & directories
It is crucial for Google to determine the correct information about your business, or else your business will not appear in search results. Hence, it is a must to use correct online directories & citations to avoid discrepancies like abbreviations, misspellings, formation of sentences, & information about a specific topic.
For the U.S. companies, we recommend below four map data aggregators:
- Express Update
- Neustar Localeze
- Foursquare
- Factual
Note: Avoid duplicate listings in online directories; if there are any, you must remove them.
Tip: Get a Chamber of Commerce membership to gain an external inbound link for your specific area.
Focus on making a mobile-friendly website
In 2022, more than 80% of consumers made purchases via mobile devices by browsing different sites, and more than 50% of traffic on businesses & companies’ sites came from mobile devices.
Users are finding shopping on mobile devices convenient & time-saving. Finding information such as directions to the business location, reviews, contact information, & store hours is much quicker on mobile devices.
Hence, it is vital to make your site mobile-friendly by making the pages & images load faster to enhance user experience and result in potential sales conversions.
Get a local SEO Analysis & Audit report
Getting a local SEO Analysis & Audit report of your website is crucial to comprehend how well your site is performing and what strategies you must implement to improve it.
A professional technical SEO auditor must perform an SEO Analysis & Audit as they are well-equipped with immense knowledge & experience and will help you formulate a bespoke SEO strategy for improving ranking in Google search results, driving traffic to your site, lead generation, & penetrate new customer segments.
At Sun Media Marketing, we provide free SEO Analysis & Audit reports performed by our competent SEO experts. Contact us to get a free SEO Analysis & Audit report.
A local SEO Analysis & Audit report includes the following:
- Website Audit- To determine the health & performance of your website
- Google My Business Audit- Evaluate how your Google My Business page is appearing & performing in SERPs.
- Google Search Console Audit: This audit helps determine if your site crawls users & search engines to local-based search information. It also helps in detecting any errors in passage indexing.
- On-Page SEO Audit: It helps identify whether your site has all the On-Page SEO elements or not for higher ranking in Google search result pages.
- Competitor Analysis: SEO Competitor Analysis helps you understand where you exactly stand with your competitors & what strategies they are implementing in terms of inbound links, content, design, & business positioning. Once you have the competitor analysis, you can formulate an SEO strategy to forge ahead of them.
- Citation Audit: Last but not least, it is important to verify that all the citations are placed correctly in the top business directories.
Create relevant inbound links
Inbound links are a vital part of Local SEO strategy as they boost your Local SEO. Inbound links are also called backlinks that appear on other websites and link back to your website. E.g., your business is listed on the clutch, so if anyone navigates through the clutch, comes across your business page on the clutch, and clicks on your website link, it will direct users to your site.
Inbound Links help Google comprehend that you are an authentic & legitimate company. We have listed the following ways to get inbound links:
- Guest Blog Posting by participating in trending local community and social media growth for local buzz & media coverage
- Sponsorships & Partnerships, such as sponsoring a local webinar or meet-up, promoting an illustrious local event, hosting a local community event, building business relationships with prominent influencers, and contacting partners for featuring in their partner directory.
- Building Local Networks, such as trade associations, licensing bureaus, vendors, manufacturers, business improvement districts, & Chamber of Commerce.
Take active participation in Local Community
Businesses that participate actively in their local community tend to receive more digital PR.
We recommend participating in your local community by partnering with a non-profit organization on a campaign, volunteering in different NGO campaigns, sponsoring an online event, or appearing in local media for a Nobel cause are some of the best ways to earn digital PR, spread your brand awareness, & get inbound links.
E.g., you can participate in a non-profit organization campaign by donating money, items, or services to feature in their organization’s social media pages & website, which can help you earn inbound links.
Top Local SEO Tools for 2023
Our team has listed the top Local SEO Tools for 2023 after thorough research. We recommend following Local SEO Tools for the best results.
Conclusion
After going through the entire blog, you will have a firm idea about Tips for Local SEO for 2023 & how to optimize them for your business to reach potential local consumers.
If you want local SEO services for your business or a free SEO Analysis & Audit report, get in touch with us today for a free quotation. We provide comprehensive SEO services to help your business get a higher ranking in Google Local Search results.
Contact us at +1 (917) 267-8626 or +91 -9898-630-296. You can even email us at info@sunmediamarketing.com.