Do you have a business that you feel your community needs? Do you want to see an increase in local customers? Does your business have multiple branches that your customers may not even be aware of?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, your company needs local search engine optimization (SEO). Local SEO is an important addition to your marketing and existing SEO plan, as it adds an essential component for reaching customers within a few miles of your business location(s).
Google’s flagship search service is increasingly focused on local and hyper-local search results, meaning that if your business isn’t local SEO optimized, you may be missing an opportunity to reach customers right down the street. The year 2017 is slated to be a year of change for SEO and you need to take hold of the incredible benefits that a healthy SEO plan provides.
The Local SEO Audit
Setting a local SEO game plan in place involves first understanding your own site through an audit: analyzing its strengths and weaknesses and working to improve each part and removing pages that detract from your brand or leave users at a virtual dead end. An external local SEO auditor can provide this service for you by examining your site and search characteristics and recommending changes that you can implement to improve your searchability.
A local SEO audit will provide you with:
SEO audits are not a “one and done” type of deal, but require constant attention, monitoring and tweaking. As the internet marketplace changes and your competitors shift their strategies, your site will need continual adjustments to stay up in the rankings.
Take Ownership
It is crucial that you claim your website through Google’s authorship tools. You will need to provide information about your company’s NAP (name, address, phone number), which will be verified by the information that you provide on your website itself. Connecting to Google My Business will help you to get started. This simple, but essential, step will provide you with improved credibility in site rankings, which will help to improve your search rankings.
Title Tags
Every page on your website needs careful analysis of title tags to flag your pages when users run a search that is relevant to the information you’d like them to see. Optimizing your websites tags ensures that your site will appear at the top of a related search query.
Links
Additionally, every one of your website pages needs links to build out your web map and make your footprint a little larger. Staying on top of links can almost be an audit in and of itself, as this analysis requires continual review to check whether links are live and not broken.
You also want to ensure that each page features the right amount of links. Too many links can look spammy and will hurt your site’s credibility. You also want to seek linkbacks from credible sites and ensure that your links send visitors to relevant pages.
Improve your Local Network
Reaching out to other local businesses for linkbacks and recommendations can help to build your credibility and boost your site’s searchability. You can attend or host meetups with other local business owners to increase each other’s networks. You may also want to send press releases to local online and physical outlets to give your company more visibility and drive traffic to your site.
Your Multi-Site Business Needs Local SEO
In the current SEO landscape, it’s crucial to employ local SEO for your multi-site business. Local SEO provides an immense opportunity for your business to get recognized in local searches and can help your site to break through the virtual noise in the online marketplace.
You Need Some Help
Navigating your site and developing your local SEO can be a little tricky, especially with everything else you have on your plate already. With the importance of local SEO, you can’t afford to try and run your site without it.
This is why calling in a specialist to manage your SEO can provide you with exceptional value and free up your time. A specialist will do the legwork to get your local SEO strategies up and running. Local SEO specialists understand the intricacies of website optimization and work to get your site up to snuff as a formidable contender in the online marketplace.
Here at BGH + MARKETING we understand your unique local SEO needs and are here to help. We do the leg work to get your site up and running for local SEO and maintain it for continued online success in search rankings.You're now signed up to our newsletter!