In our last blog we introduced you to Google My Business (GMB), a central tool for building a wicked Local SEO strategy.
This week?s blog will explain a little bit more about local SEO and provide you with the toolbelt to boost your businesses visibility in local search results.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is an important growth strategy for any business with a physical address or that serves a particular location.
While traditional SEO focuses on optimising your website to capture national or global visibility, local SEO facilitates a stronger connection with potential customers who are in your area.
Google?s local search results are powered by an algorithm that takes searcher location into account. This is why you don?t have to include ?near me? or a city name in your search query for Google to serve you a list of relevant local businesses. One example of this is when you search for the word ?lunch? and Google shows you a selection of Google My Business (GMB) listings for eateries that are close by.
With the increasing popularity of mobile users who are searching for solutions to their problems on the go, optimising your online presence for local search is a must-have for any business.
If someone?s looking for a vet, pharmacy or optometrist near them, a local search strategy could be what determines whether they find your business or one of your competitors.
Local Citations:
Last week we covered how to set-up and manage your GMB listing, but what can you do to amp up it?s presence?
Your GMB listing is just one example of a local citation ? a place online where your business? name, address and phone number (known as NAP) are available. Getting this information in the right places and ensuring that it?s accurate is key to building an effective local SEO strategy.
Increasing the number of times that your NAP exists online will help Google to trust that information, therefore increasing the likelihood of your GMB listing being pushed to the top of local search results.
Citations can either be actively built and managed by you or earnt without action. However, it?s important to remember that if an aspect of your business? NAP changes and results in the existence of inaccurate citations, this can cause Google to lose trust in your listing and stop showing it all together.
Generally speaking, the more citations the better. But it?s important to keep track of all the places that your NAP is listed in order to maintain a healthy relationship with Google and a strong local SEO presence.
Local Directories:
It?s commonly known that local directories deliver value for businesses by making it easier for customers to find your business, but they are also a type of local citation.
Directories that include website mentions also contribute to link building. This is a general SEO strategy that uses Google?s trust in other sites to strengthen its trust in yours.
These links work to:
- Improve Local SEO - By increasing Google's confidence in your NAP.
- Improve your overall SEO - By contributing to backlinks which can help build your authority score (a primary ranking factor)
- Provide referral traffic - helping to drive people to your website.
Here?s a list of New Zealand?s top 10 website directories where you can place a listing for free.
That's it For Now...
This week?s blog on local SEO marks the end of the series.
Hopefully, you?ve come away with some wicked SEO knowledge that will let you go away and smash your business? goals.
If you?re keen to see SEO bring in some juicy results for your business but it seems like more work than you can commit to, Aro Digital are here to help!