13 Strategies to SEO Optimize Your Local Business Website
If you run a store-front business or offer a service that is within a specific local-based geographic area, then you will want to focus your marketing efforts on getting in front of local traffic.
Since many marketing initiatives are of a more global nature that don’t help you at all, there’s actually a few specific things you can do to ensure you get visible in front of the local people that you want to attract to your business.
Aside from using targeted Facebook and Google Ads, local search optimization can help your business be found in searches when people are looking for a business likes yours in their area.
So what can you do to get your website to rank better for local search?
Here’s 13 techniques to improve your rankings locally:
- Make a list of local regions you’d like to rank for: This will include your city, your major metropolitan area, county, and province or state. Think about the neighbouring towns that your business can also service in addition to your own. Then create long-tail keyword phrases for each of these. For example instead of optimizing for “home staging”, you can optimize for several phrases including:”Yourcityhere home staging” “Yourmetroregionhere home staging”, “YourCountyhere home staging”, “Yourregionhere home staging” etc.
- Add your business address at the footer of your website in text: This not only acts as a clue that shows Google you are a local business but also shows your website visitors that they are in the right place. Showing your location and the areas served on your website is vital for localized businesses. It’s also a good idea to embed a dynamic Google Map for good measure and ease of customers finding your location.
- Add a link to your business on Google Maps: Check to see if your business is showing up on Google Maps and if not, add a submission to have it included. Not only will this serve to help customers find directions to your place, but it’s also another marker that tells Google where you are locally.
- Write a web page or blog post dedicated to each local keyword phrase: Using the keywords and geographic locations throughout your website is also important for the search engines to keep you top of mind in their search results. I’m not a huge fan of this technique as it can crowd your website but you can create a local keyword phrase-based web page or blog post for each page including each service you offer to give those rankings a boost. Avoid adding these pages to the primary navigation if possible; however, they do still need to link back to your website home page in order to get indexed.
- Optimize each web page to rank well for the keyword you are targeting: Put the keyword phrase in several spots in the wording and coding of your website pages including:
- Meta keyword and description tags
- File name or URL of the page. For example: best-home-staging-Abbotsford.HTML
- Header of the page within an H1 tag
- Sub headers of the page within H2 and H3 tags
- File names of graphics used on the page
- Hyperlinked text containing the keyword phrase, ideally located in the first and last paragraph of the page
- Header tag using the keyword phrase at the end of the page
Once you have optimized your website for local SEO, there are other off-site methods you can follow to boost your local search results as well. So take the time to review your website and add local keywords, links, content and images and you’ll be on your way to getting more local customers.