5 Min Read Would you like to reach more people in your local area? Or maybe you have premises in different locations and you want to know how to rank each of them? Looks like you need some tips on local SEO. Keep on reading to find out how to do it.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of ranking your website in the SERPs for your local area. This is especially useful if your customers can visit your store, or if you only deliver within a certain range.
Ranking your website for local searches is quite similar to the process of ranking nationally or globally. However, there are certain steps that you’ll need to take on top of what you’re doing currently if you want to boost your local online presence.
Research Local Keywords
You’re much more likely to rank for a local keyword than a national one, which means you’re more likely to be found if you focus on local SEO. You can also experiment with keyword variations of your product or service. For example, if you were a marketing agency in Chester, you might want to try “Marketing agency in Chester”, “Marketing agency in Cheshire” or maybe “digital marketing agency in Chester”.
Once you have your keywords, make sure that your pages are optimised for them. This will give your pages the best chance of ranking organically. Try to include your keywords in the title, headers and main body of the text, but do so in a way that reads naturally. There’s no need to keyword stuff. You might even be penalised by the SERPs if your site looks a little spammy.
Include NAP Information in Your Footer
NAP information includes your business name, address and phone number. If you only have one business location, then you can simply input your NAP data to the footer of your website and this will carry across to all pages.
If you have separate locations, make sure to create landing pages for each one, clearly listing that specific store’s contact information. It would also be useful to include any varying opening times if your stores have different business hours.
Structured Data Markup
Now that you have your NAP data clearly displayed on your website, you can hop onto the Structured Data Markup Helper and create some structured data markups to put onto your site. Structured data makes it much easier for search engines to understand what your site is about and rank you accordingly, so it’s important to do it if you know how.
If you don’t feel comfortable messing with your site’s code, just get your web developer to do it for you. They’ll know what to do.
Sign up to Google My Business
The next step in local SEO would be to sign up to get your Google My Business page. Why? Because this is essentially what will allow your page to appear in maps, location-based searches and in the top 3 ‘snack pack’ results on Google.
If your premises already appears on Google My Business, then you can simply claim it as yours and check the information over. However, assuming this is a first-time setup, you’ll need to input everything yourself – and don’t forget to add photos. Don’t worry, Google will walk you through the process. It’s really easy.
Sign up to Bing Places for Business
Much the same as Google My Business (albeit smaller and less important), Bing Places will bring up your business in the SERPs for users on the Bing search engine.
And here’s the fun bit: If you’ve already set up a Google My Business profile, then you can simply press a button and all the information from there will sync to Bing Places. So, make sure that you create the GMB page first, then Bing.
Create Localised Content
After all the technical stuff is out of the way, you’re still not done. Next comes the part where you have to produce great, localised content that people are likely to find useful or shareable.
If, for example, you’re a property developer, then this could be a blog on the best restaurants around your new homes development. The idea is to think about what your local audience would be interested in and write something that they would enjoy reading. This signals to the search engines that you’re a useful resource for the area and so they’ll rank you higher in the SERPs.
Get Quality Backlinks
Whilst you should definitely still create your own content, a large part of local SEO is also about getting other people to write about you and link to your site. You can do this by reaching out to write a guest post, doing something news-worthy in the area, or even by simply being the best in your field – you might get featured in a “best of” guide by a local paper or guide.
There are the Basics of Local SEO
We hope you learned a lot about how to rank for local searches by optimising your local SEO. However, if after reading this, you’ve realised that there’s a lot more than you initially thought, we can help.
eclipse marketing is an SEO agency in Chester with vast experience in all aspects of SEO. We can assist you in all aspects of your search engine optimisation, from keyword research to structured data, and our knowledgeable team can even give you advice on site layout for improved SEO.
Get in touch on 01244 347 545 or send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
