Effective Ways to Improve Your Local SEO Rankings

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1. Get Reviews Frequently from Customers

Get reviews from customers who positively engage with your business. You can request customers to provide reviews via a web link after a sale or ask them in person after a business transaction.
It gives an edge over the competition on the SERPs when you have positive feedback.
It’s essential to acknowledge and thank all your positive reviewers. Also, address the negative reviewers and reply to their reviews.
A lot of brands try to reinforce this type of positive feedback through incentives or emails. Make sure you keep track of all the positive feedback. At a later date, you can send them an email to express your gratitude. This way, you can expand your brand’s reach.

2. Optimize Your Site for Voice Search

Implement the best practices in the industry for voice-based searches. Include keywords based on natural voice commands.
Use common phrases used by people to perform voice-enabled searches. This level of local SEO optimization must have up-to-date information. It should include your business location and contact details, as it will help you to boost your rankings.
Voice search is one of the latest technologies to hit the market. Voice assistants are becoming more commonplace. It has triggered a quick rise in the number of voice searches. Optimizing for voice searches is different compared to regular query search. The searches are more aligned to natural speech patterns.

3. Improve Internal Linking On Your Site

Internally link other important pages on your website within your content.

• It amplifies your SEO performance.
• It delivers a seamless navigation experience to your customers.

Add internal links to landing pages, popular blogs, and pages with impactful content. You can see a visible improvement in SEO performance. Internal linking is important to a website’s ranking, as it controls the flow of link juice through the website. Also, it increases customer dwell time and prevents bounce.
Be sure to hyperlink with keywords and do not fill your whole content with it. It might annoy the users resulting in a higher bounce rate. So, include the optimum number of interlinks pointing to relevant and useful resources only.
You should take care to link to relevant pages on your website. It ensures better flow and customers stay on your website longer as well.

4. Update Your Google My Business Profile

Check for duplicate listings of your business on the Google My Business directory. Use popular website validation tools. Then weed out any duplicates that may have been accidentally set up in the past.
Follow these steps to remove them.
Google will lower the rank for the Duplicate webpage listings. It will diminish your local SEO efforts and drop your site rankings.
For a local business, their GMB page is perhaps the most critical for searches. There have been cases when just changing the GMB information has worked for many businesses. Make sure you get it right when it comes to location. Double-check on the map to ensure correctness.

5. Add Relevant Categories

Tagging your website content with relevant categories is a crucial measure to improve your local SEO.

• Explore among the myriad category options available on Google My Business directory.
• Narrow down the list of categories as closely as possible.
• Then check the products and services offered by your company and post accordingly.

Categories help search spiders index your website more effectively. It helps your website rank higher in your niche. And not just that, categories can also help bring relevant traffic to your website. It gives you higher quality leads, which are easier to convert.

6. Create Location Pages on the Website

Update the physical location of your business accurately on all relevant landing pages. Make sure to update on all places where customers lookup your product information.
Ensure these pages give clear information about your business location.
If your business operates out on multiple locations, ensure that each location has a designated landing page. It enables Google to index those pages with local searches effectively. Because if you’re aiming for local relevance then, location pages are important. And brands need to focus on creating local content catered to their audience.
A location-specific page can help funnel more relevant visitors to your page.

7. Have Consistent Details on Both Website & My Business Profile

It is important to maintain details about your physical location consistently. Contact details on your website and Google My Business profile must be the same.
Make sure to update new changes in both places.
Even when you expand the businesses to multiple locations, it’s vital to add it to the website and GMB for that particular location.
Because a mismatch in this information potentially lowers your local SEO score. It is something that a lot of businesses are guilty of. Also, it is something that you shouldn’t overlook.
Location mismatch not only lowers your SEO score but also confuses the people who are visiting. The best way to make sure is to check your physical location for any changes on the map.

8. Try to Earn Links From Local Sites

Get other websites within your local region to link to your site. It’s a great technique to boost your local SEO scores and increase the trust of search engines. Many such local backlinks signal your business as credible to Google. It will help you in getting targeted local web traffic.
Know the quality of links pointing to your website and increase them.
Getting better traction with a local business can help improve your local SEO profile. To encourage more people to link to your website, create value for them. Posting on their page can help to connect with them. It also opens doors for collaboration.

9. Show Google Virtual Tour Of Your Business

A Google virtual tour allows you to deliver interactive walkthroughs and photographs. Prospective customers will get an immersive experience through 360 in-store videos. They can experience your location, and it attracts them to your company.
Add a 3D photo tour of your business in your Google profile to increase visitor footprint. A new addition to usability, virtual tours can help get attention for your business. It is innovative and effective while being powerful for SEO.
Using Google tools like these can help leverage your website’s local rankings. Most top businesses who have stores opt for a virtual tour of their premises.

10. Create Local Listings On Authoritative Websites

Add your business location and other useful details in popular online business directories such as Google, Bing, and yahoo. By doing it, you can see a remarkable improvement in your local SEO performance.
“Search for mentions of your business online.”: You can easily find authoritative and trustworthy directories that pass value to your business.
Search for mentions of your business online. Claim those to generate targeted search results that list your business.
Local listings are a great source of traffic when done right. It can also help you get in touch with your audience. Covering a lot of listings can have beneficial effects for your SEO score.

11. Optimize the Website for Mobiles & Tablets

It’s essential to design your website and optimize it by keeping mobile users in mind. These users form a significant subset of the overall searches online.
Ensure that customers have a consistent and seamless browsing experience on mobile devices. It should be irrespective of all screen sizes. Mobile optimization delivers higher local SEO rankings.
Every year mobile users are increasing steadily. Last year, mobile users surpassed PC users when it comes to search and eCommerce. And pretty soon, brands that don’t have a mobile responsive website will see reduced business numbers.

12. Implement Structured Data Mark-Up On Your Site

Add structured data mark-up and metadata within your website code. It provides additional information about your website to search engines.
Worry not, if you are not good with codes, as you can refer to this page to use the relevant code snippet for you.
Search engines are increasingly relying on structured data mark-up for ranking and indexing. Structured data is highly efficient in tagging relevant content. Mark-ups vary, and this variation is due to different platforms used in searches.
Google uses mark-ups for their searches. In contrast, social media uses Open Graph. Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to implement it. But you also have other options that you can use.

13. Adjust & Keep a Consistent NAP Profile

The Near Me search option by Google is a powerful feature. It allows customers to locate businesses closer to home that fulfils their needs.
Optimize your website for these searches by getting more local backlinks. Also, get more positive reviews, as it increases your business reputation with Google in your area.
NAP is another area where inconsistencies can be bad for your business. Your website might even get penalized for inconsistent NAP.

• Non-matching NAPs can have serious repercussions to your search results as well.
• It might classify both addresses as separate businesses.
• It will lead to you losing traffic numbers.

14. Create Quality Contents For Your Audience

Quality content makes or breaks a well-planned local SEO strategy. Make sure to use professional writers for your content. Invest in your content strategy to get non-plagiarized material. It should talk about relevant local events or features blogs that contain useful local information.
Ensure that it contains what the local audience is looking for.
One of the most powerful ranking methods for websites is content. And when we talk about high-quality content, it’s not just about basic checkboxes.
The created content needs to be relatable and offer value to users. It will make sure people come back for more. And more people means better rankings for a local business.

15. Create Citations To Improve Trustworthiness

A citation is a web reference to your business. It could contain your business name, address, and phone number. NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) information significantly affects search engine visibility and rankings.
Check existing citations for accuracy and create more citations with Google. Also, develop citations in other business directories to improve your local search rankings.
Make use of this citation website list that falls into your niche.
As with most listings online, citations are one of the basic methods to get noticed. Every business needs to own and publish their citations. It improves the trust factor of businesses with their audience.

16. Incorporate Location Data Points

Incorporate location data points for nearby landmarks and other popular locales. Doing it for schools and restaurants within your webpages is a great way to amplify your local SEO rankings for a specific area.
More location data points with links to their webpages strengthen your search listing within a targeted area. And this is critical these days because of the advance in tracking tools.
There are a variety of applications that have tracking information. You can use this information for SEO purposes. When you include location data, you are optimizing these tools to work for your business.

17. Address the Reviewer by Responding to Reviews

Always respond to customer reviews with a few polite sentences. Thank them for their patronage, and be sure to address any negative feedback immediately. It helps to build credibility with your customers as well as signals to search engines. It shows that your website is trustworthy and responsive to customer feedback.
A brand customer-interaction is a viable method to attract other people. And this is what a review response enables. When a brand can maintain their voice through an online exchange, especially a negative one, it gets people interested.

18. Optimize on Bing and Yahoo as well

Google is the most popular search engine on the web. But millions of people use Bing and Yahoo for searches on the internet. It would be best if you did not ignore these potential avenues. Utilize it to increase your traffic and SEO rankings.
As per the stats, the mobile search has increased on Bing and Yahoo over the years. Also, nearly 5% of total searches in a day happen on these SE, which is large in terms of users.
You should optimize your website using SEO practices for these search engines. A lot of SEO agencies commit the same mistake. They focus on the most popular, leaving out the rest. But today, Bing and Yahoo are doing reasonably well in terms of searches. It is in your brand’s best interest to get on them.

19. Be Active on Social Media for Better Presence

Social media platforms have more than 3.8 billion people subscribed. And that is a huge number even for the biggest of brands. An active social media presence with a loyal following is a must.
Post good quality content by targeting local customers. Good quality content indicates a strong commitment to your business and your customers.
Social media materials get crawled by all major search engines. It adds to the overall ranking and score for your business. Also, don’t hesitate to be a bit creative with your social media campaigns. If you play your cards right, you can get your content to go viral.

20. Create Local Events For Your Business

People love contests and interacting with other people. And they love winning prizes even more. Increase the visibility of your business locally by creating promotional events and flash sales.
Participate in customer engagement activities happening in your local community. These events also get visibility with search engines.
This increases awareness about your business in the community.
People quickly share good events with everyone in a community. Any backlinks generated through these event pages can lead back to local news publications. It enriches your website rankings. Another aspect of events is that it can get word-of-mouth advertising from people.

21. Populate Your Website with Local Terms

To make sure that you have the most visibility among your competitors, you need to use local terms. These local terms have a considerable advantage for your SEO metrics.
Use a large number of local terms in your webpages that are specific to your area.
Find the most searched local search terms by doing local keyword research. Here’s an example of the list of terms a plumbing business in London should include on their website.
Make sure it’s relevant to your business. It increases the possibility of your website appearing in local searches for a targeted audience.
Update your website’s tags and descriptions. Match it with local keywords and locations to rank higher. It can vastly improve performance for local businesses. The key is to find the right terms that you can use.

22. Add Photos to Google My Business Page

A key point to improve your business reach is to share authentic pictures of your premises. Update your GMB page with clear and recent photographs of your business.
The customers are more likely to purchase after seeing pictures or visit your business out of curiosity.

• It attracts local customers and increases your website appearance.
• It also increases the chances of your website listing higher in the list for local searches.

Adding images gives your audience a better idea of whom they are dealing with. Images of their office accompany most company reviews. It also improves the trust factor of the business and can improve traffic numbers for your brand.

23. Add Happy Customer Testimonials on the Website

A happy customer is always a promoter of your business. Their positive experiences leave a lasting impression with other prospective customers.
Don’t forget to add customers' happy faces to make it look real.
Add positive customer testimonials on your website. It showcases the strength and quality of your business. It also helps to rank higher locally with search engines. Plus, it also lends your business a sense of authenticity.
You need to make sure that these are authentic. There is no point in adding fake reviews to a website. It will only bring down the integrity of the brand. You could also link to other websites that specialize in reviews like Trust Score.

24. Research the Competition & Learn from Them

An important part of Local SEO is to analyze your competitors. Check what they are doing and improve upon it.
Perform research to understand who your principal competitors are within your local area.
Uncover their local SEO strategies using SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.
Visit their website and social media pages to learn about their customer engagement and local SEO practices. Leverage the best practices from these into your local SEO strategy.
Through analysis, determine shortcomings in their local SEO ranking process. Highlighting these can give your brand a sense of direction. You don’t have to repeat their mistakes. Thereby, you can gain an edge on your competitors. It can also save you a lot of time and money.

25. Focus on Website User Experience

As of today, people are spoiled for choices when it comes to brands.

• It has led to incredibly short dwell times and high bounce ratios.
• It has led to more attention to user experience.

It is vital to focus on getting prospective customers to stay longer on your website.
Some websites always highlight the sales point, while some give what the users are looking for - an attractive and seamless UI. For instance, Ahrefs have most searched informative pages on their homepage with a trial button beside, which doesn’t annoy the users.
Make them browse through your site’s product pages. It grows your business and improves search rankings.
Focus on user experience aspects such as site content and mobile optimization. Also, check the colours and interactivity to gain more visitor traffic. It is also important to focus on the layout of the website.

26. Include City Name & Geo-Location in Meta tags

Tags are one of the most critical parts of the SEO basics. That is where a lot of brands make the mistake of ignoring it. And, you need to get your location right in your meta tags.
Make sure that your local SEO strategy is fetching traffic to your site. Always include your city’s name within the meta tags of your website’s code. This information helps narrow down local searches to your city. This practice enables you to gain targeted customers within a targeted area. And in time there are chances you will outrank your local competition.

27. Engage in Local Community Forums

Post often on local forums. Forums like Reddit, Stack Overflow, Quora, etc., receive substantial amounts of traffic each day.
Involve in healthy debates and discussions on these forums. It helps to establish a strong reputation as a brand with integrity and experience within your specific business domain. This engagement with legitimate backlinks to your website drives higher local SEO rankings. It also builds your reputation.
Like social media platforms, local forums are buzzing with activity. Get on a few of them (check for relevancy) and post actionable material. You can get a lot of interest from the local populace who are also active there.

28. Get Featured in Local Media

The local media is a very powerful platform for businesses. And it is important to make your presence felt on them.
Get your business or website featured in the local press or community newsletters. It is a great way to engage with your local audience.
Also, it’s considered as one of the best ways of growing your PR.
Participate in local events and drives to generate organic backlinks to your website. It improves your local visibility as well as on search engines.
Several people scan the local media for news and opportunities. You improve your chances of getting a lot of web traffic by featuring on them.

29. Avoid Adding Fake Reviews

It can be tempting to add fake reviews to try to gain increased traffic and higher rankings. But this practice is unethical and often does more harm than good.
Google’s latest algorithms can sift through fake reviews quickly. They penalize your site by demoting it for using manipulative SEO practices. Today, the penalties for adding fake reviews for your brand are a lot stricter.
In some cases, they may ban your site from search results for a while. Also, if people find out that you have been manipulating reviews, you’ll lose their trust.

30. Write Local Content With City-specific Keywords

A proven method to boost local SEO rankings is to write content specific to your local area. It woos the customers residing in and around your business location.
Include your business or product description along with the area and city within your webpages. It will help to feature higher in search results.

Related : How Can Local SEO Services Help You to Boost Your Local Business?

Content that has a ‘local flavour’ relates better with your audience. It gives your brand a chance to engage with them. You also get valuable ‘personal marketing’ from your audience. It is a fact that local pages drive up engagement numbers for brands.

31. Create Location-based About Pages

For a brand, an about us page will have a lot of relevant information. And this is where several brands share everything that makes them a business.
A tactic that you could use is to create specific pages for different locations. Make sure these pages have relevant local content. It can ensure that it is appealing to people from different locations. And another fact is that since it has location-specific keywords, it will also rank higher at those locations.
Most brands have location-based keywords because they bring much better results. Also, take care to be consistent with the details of your business listing.

32. Use Online Business Directories To Gain Local Visibility

Business directories have perhaps been used for the longest time in SEO now. But they still do produce results for businesses of all sizes. These days you need to optimize your business listing entries to rank up considerably.
You should feature on all the most popular directories from your area. Make sure that posting on directories needs to be accurate. It gives your business a chance to get noticed for a better brand reach.
Business directories have an inherent value to SEO metrics. They can help you draw powerful backlinks from other brands. It makes posting on directories worth the time.

33. Build a High-Quality Backlink Profile

As a business, for better local rankings, you need to get authority brands to link back to your website.
Search engines rely on quality backlinks to know the quality or trustworthiness of content it’s sharing. We recommend you to gain backlinks from higher DA sites, which is an acronym for Domain Authority.
Here, SEO can help you gain traction regardless of your niche.
An experienced digital marketing agency can put you across with the best brands in your niche. The way this works to increase your ranking is simple.
Search engine spiders that validate backlinks will see that your website has links from authority websites. It understands that your brand has more value to your audience. And They will place you higher on local search results. It will make it easier for users to find your brand.

34. Create Dedicated Web Pages For Specific Services

Like creating location-based pages, as a brand, you need separate pages for your services as well. This provides you a platform to stand head to head with your competition in the market.
Creating relevant pages can give you a chance to attract traffic specific to that service. It also reduces the chances of bounce and increases dwell time. Also, since you are attracting high-quality leads, conversions increase and take less time.
Tailored product pages can offer brands of all sizes an advantage. Even someone as big as Apple uses a separate page for their new iPhone 12 mobile phone. If you have a lot of products, take the time to divide them into categories first.

35. Improve Page Loading Speed & Score 100%

Page loading speed is still one of the most important ranking signals today. It might come as a surprise to many, but it is true. Search engine caters the results to users based on their convenience. It means getting them the information they want in the shortest time possible.
That is why page loading speed plays such a big role. And it is even more important today because people are clicking away faster than ever. Bounce rates have been increasing all over the world. It makes a website that loads quicker a more desirable prospect for the visitor.

36. Optimize Onsite Images & Graphics

To sell anything, you need to make it look attractive – everyone knows this. And this is why companies use imagery on the website.
Images spruce up the page and break up the monotony of textual content. But today, the focus is on quicker loading times. So there needs to be considerable optimization when using images. It has also led to brands using different forms of image compression to make sure that their websites load up quicker.
Another solution would be to use fewer images to get your point across. You could rely on layouts to make your website more attractive.

37. Use the Right Keywords in Header Tags

If you have a lot of content on your website and it is indispensable, you might need to look at other methods. One solution would be to opt for header tags for your content.
Using header tags effectively can help you split heavy content. It can also help search spiders index your website better. And for local rankings, header tags are indispensable.
Just working on your header tags can give you higher ranks on your searches. Niches that are content-heavy need better formatting and layouts to make it appear less cumbersome.

38. Add A Blog And Update It Regularly

When talking about quality content, it’s not just about adding it on-page. You also need to create a blog section for your website. For local rankings, it is much more important.
Blogs can help you rank for a lot of relevant long-tail keywords without being spammy. It can also be a focal point of a lot of discussions. And another aspect of blogs is that they have a greater chance of getting shared on other websites.
If your blog is good enough, they will get featured on top local blog post roundups. The possibilities are endless.

39. Integrate Audio & Visual Content

While the text is a great medium to get your point across, more often, people are looking for something more. Just using text can limit your brand’s creativity and reach.
To get people’s attention, you need to push your imagination. It means creating innovative concepts that people can relate through audio and visual means.
Podcasts are pretty popular with customers right now. Nowadays, a lot of brands put out podcasts of a new product or a service on the web. It can also help you catch up with your audience. Similarly, regular video posting can give your website that appeal your audience has been looking for.

40. Create Content Aligned with Local Stories & News

When you need to attract the local crowd, it is a great idea to infuse ‘local-ness’ into your content. Create a blog post or a video on your website regularly. It will add a local flavor to your business.
For instance, a blog about Halloween will help your local audience rather than the subcontinent people.
The people who read it would love it. And something current and personalized has a much better chance of getting shared around.
You can talk about how a local event affects your niche and your business. Or how your company could contribute in response to a particular event. There are a lot of possibilities here to consider.

41. Create an Awesome User-Friendly Design

A few years ago, the first thing that comes to mind when people say design is a lot of colours and images. But today, the user base is much more discerning about their choices.
A garish website with a plethora of images is just not going to attract people to your website. It needs to be subtle and friendly. The new-age customer has a different perspective of user-friendliness.
It should entice the users in every possible way, including the presentation of text, navigation, image placement, etc. For example, Medium is considered as one of the best user-friendly websites.
Use effective navigation methods and layouts for maximum effect. It can help you rank better on searches and draw a lot of traffic as well.

42. Fix Broken Links On The Website

An aspect of website optimization that is overlooked by a lot of brands is broken links. Unlike before, there are tangible problems when a search spider comes across a broken link on your website.
Broken links reduce your SEO score and flag your website as optimized incorrectly. The solution would be to conduct regular audits of your website. It can help you isolate broken links, which you can delete it later. Or you can get new resources for those links.
You can easily find it using any SEO tools, or if you don’t have access to premium tools, you can use a free broken link checking extension like CheckMyLinks, broken link checker, etc.
Regardless of the alternative, you choose you’ll have a positive impact on website metrics.

43. Use Clean Formatting Options

When it comes to website formatting in today’s world - cluttered is out, and clean is in. That is why you will see a lot of top brands focusing on minimalism. The consumer is an entity who is in constant evolution. It means that brands need to keep up with them.
One such change of perspective is the change to website formatting. It has become so relevant that it comes under web design best practices.
Use only a limited quantity of text, images, and icons with appreciable whitespace between them. A good example of this is Harry’s who specializes in men’s shaving gear.

44. Include a Detailed Contact Information

When you are a business, it is important to make sure it is as comprehensive as possible. Any errors in them might have disastrous results for your brand, especially when you are looking to improve your local rankings.
The fact is that this is not just for the people. Sometimes a Lapse in data will mislead search engine crawlers. It can affect your ranking signals and prevent you from ranking higher.
There have been cases where people report websites for lack of contact information. It can seriously hamper your website’s ability to compete.

45. Add an Easy-to-use Social Media Share Icons

Social media platforms are powerful entities when it comes to traffic numbers and engagement. Almost all businesses use social media as a source of clients. But the key here is to make sure that you make your website SM friendly.
Add relevant social media share buttons to the website.
You can do it by adding a plugin to your WordPress website or asking developers to take care of it.
It can encourage visitors to share a blog or an image on your website. It means free endorsements on different platforms. It can help you gain a lot of ground when it comes to local ranking. Adding CTA’s on your content can title the odds in your favour.

46. Aim For The Best Keywords

When you are choosing your keyword profile, the obvious choice would be the ones that affect your business positively. But keep in mind that performance is not the only criteria. You need to make sure that you select the ones that offer you a great price to performance ratio.
The aim of this exercise is not just to maximize performance. It is to get the most out of the allotted budget. Here, an expert SEO agency can help you make a choice. They have the expertise to formulate an effective strategy when it comes to keyword selection.

47. Create Catchy Page Titles And Descriptions

When creating page titles and descriptions for your website, keywords are important to include. But they should not hamper your creative streak. If you are going to write something focused on keywords, then it will not look interesting.
If you are new or find it complex to create attractive page titles, you can research your targeted keyword in Buzzsumo to get an idea of what titles are performing well.
The key here is to front-load all your keywords in the title. Then combine it with emotional and clear cut writing. Also, make sure it is shorter than 65 characters in length.
An example would be this Wix blog post. The first part of the title is ‘how to write a blog title’ that is the keyword here. The second part would be ‘hook your readers’, which is the emotional part.

48. Optimize Your URL Structure to Increase CTR

While your titles and descriptions can be unique and creative, URLs should not. A URL is not just a web address that appears on a browser. It is how you categorize your webpage on the search engine database. It means you should keep it as simple and to the point as possible.
Let’s say you’re selling a book about training horses introduced this year.
The URL should read as:
‘www.website.com/horse-training-manual-2020’ or something similar.
Neil Patel has beautifully depicted how a business should structure its URLs.
You should leave all the emotion and creativity with the title and description. A simple URL offers a much better local search performance.

49. Opt For A Mobile Application

If you’ve never considered rending your services on a mobile app, now might be a great time to do so. With mobile usage numbers growing rapidly year on year, there are considerably more people on mobile devices than any other.
Also, the reports say that businesses sales will go up when they have an application.
The convenience of mobile can entice many customers to your product. It can also help you gain better rankings in your niche because of the traffic numbers.
The key here is to opt for the experts when developing a mobile app. A bad app can be hugely damaging to your brand reputation.

50. Visualize Your Data by Creating Infographics

Using images on your website is a good way to break up walls of text. But it will not help you get shares on social media platforms. When you need maximum brand reach, opting for infographics can help.
An infographic is when you put content and imagery together into one cohesive image. The advantage here is that people share infographics much higher than any other asset.
Note: Provided that those add value to the topic of discussion.
An example of an informative infographic is this one about Why Carbs Are Bad For Your Health.
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