Ans. Local SEO wins you perks like:
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Take a look at this screenshot showing the geographic difference that local and national SEO has while targeting the audience.
Here, you lead by building local citations, targeting location-specific keywords, etc.
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Local SEO helps you with:
Some Limitations of Local SEO include:
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Some of the fundamentals for local SEO include:
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Some good ways to measure my local reputation include:
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Yes, of course. Service businesses like plumbing, home services, home tutors, etc., use local SEO without a physical location.
Local SEO helps you rank for the area where you serve. You can also mark yourself as a “Service Area Business” in your GMB profile.
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80% of US consumersstart with online research even while purchasing offline. And as per another survey, it doesn’t differ much in the entire world.
34% of the US consumers search the internet for local businesses at least once every day.
And, Google is already powering over 97 billion monthly local intent searches.
That said, if you aren’t optimizing for local SEO, you are straightaway losing over 50% of your consumers.
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Yes,local reviews form a crucial factor when gearing up for local search engine rankings. Google has an eye on your GMB reviews and user reviews on your site and business listings.
For example, take a look at the below screenshot.
So, local reviews build your location authority and add to your ranking probability. Positive GMB reviews also represent strong social proof. Thus, start attracting reviews!
Ans. Use these tips:
Ans. Local citations define the mention of a local business on an external site. These sites usually back the business reference with the data like name, address, and contact info.
The citations look richer with additional info like images, reviews, product info, offers, etc.
Business directory sites and listings offer you structured citations. And PR mentions, guest post blogs, and reviews form the unstructured local citations.
Here is a common example of local citation:
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Local citations earn you a prominent business awareness online. Your GMB listing resembles the official presence of your local business online. And the other local citations together build your location authority.
Moreover, when you attract backlinks from your local citations, these add to your authority. For instance, Yelp is considered one of the most trusted local directories. So, a backlink from here will boost your local profile.
Together, these factor into your local SEO performance and rankings.
Ans. Some good tools to help your local SEO efforts include:
Read: Does Yext Local Listing Boost Local SEO?
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The local SEO ecosystem is marked with the daunting competition. And the local 3-pack captures a significant part of the traffic.
Moreover, you cannot witness instant results in terms of rankings or awareness.
So, an experienced local SEO expert creates a fail-proof long-term SEO strategy for you. He helps you draw backlinks, valuable local citations, and top rankings.
Ans. Some tips include:
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As per Moz, your Google My Business signals have 25.4% dominance in the local 3-pack rankings.
Further,
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Yes, local SEO works amazing for small local businesses. Google doesn’t charge you a single penny for your local SEO efforts. Anyone can go to Google Business page to create a page and manage.
You can build and optimize your GMB listing and update other crucial local listings. Moreover, your efforts can earn you a position in the local 3-pack or other organic rankings.
You might only have to invest substantial efforts or hire local SEO experts to assist you.
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You can use several keyword research tools like KWFinder, Google Keyword Planner, and Long Tail Pro.
Here you can search for keywords related to your category, offerings (products/services), and location. For example, here’s a screenshot showing how you can find local keywords confined to a location.
Moreover, you can use Ahrefs and SEMRush for checking the keywords your local competitors use.
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On-page optimization holds a crucial prominence for local SEO.
Read: On-Page SEO Checklists Every Team Should Keep Handy
Ans. Some ways include:
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Off-page SEO efforts remain a dominant deciding factor in your local SEO performance.
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Google offers Local 3-pack rankings the privilege to dominate the zero position. These appear below the paid search ads for at least 93% of local-intent searches.
Moreover, the Local 3-pack results win 100% higher clicks than the results following them.
The high CTR of these results is owing to its insightful information. They represent the website, directions, phone number, ratings, and business/service hours.
Here is an example:
Ans. Some tips to rank in the Local 3-pack positions:
Ans. You can leverage competitive marketing in several ways for local SEO:
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Content marketing holds an essential role in all types of SEO efforts. It allows you to grow your keyword relevancy for the local-intent search queries.
Creating content for the local audience makes you a go-to business for the local audience. E.g., creating blogs to resolve their queries.
Moreover, content marketing efforts earn unstructured citations (PR mentions, reviews, blog mentions) for your local business.
Ans. Some tips for leveraging content marketing for local SEO include:
Ans. Social signals might have an indirect impact on your local SEO. But, your social media popularity grabs you with high content reach and better customer relationships. You can use the popularity for attracting user reviews and local citations.
Read: Social Media SEO
Ans. Social media platforms can catalyze and support your local SEO efforts.
The image below shows how many people like content from this business.
Ans. When you search for a location or a local business, you will most likely use your mobile device.
Mobile devices power over 50% of local queries on Google.
Moreover, businesses like HVAC services, plumbing, etc., attract business queries through mobile. So, keeping a mobile friendly site as in screenshot is crucial to rank on top.
So, Google considers mobile optimization a key criterion for sorting local SEO rankings.
Thus, you must ensure that your site offers an impressive experience to mobile users.
Ans. Start by checking your site’s mobile-compatibility issues through Google’s Mobile-friendly Test Tool. And request your developer to fix these issues.
Ans. Some globally popular sites to attract local citations include:
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Ans. You can simply check the domains that link to your business using Google Analytics.
Moreover, Google Alerts is a reliable tool to check mentions about your products, services, or business.
Ans. You must take care of several factors while optimizing your GMB listing. The key elements include:
NAP Consistency: Use your original brand name to add updated contact and address details for your listing.
Category: Clearly define your business category and add all the relevant secondary categories. You can inspect your competitors’ listings to check their secondary categories.
Services/Products: Add all the services or your product catalog for the viewers. Also, highlight your crucial sub-services or specialties.
Description: Make good use of the 750 characters description box. Define your business USPs, experience, specialties, etc. And draw SEO value by sprinkling location-specific and niche-specific keywords.
Service Area Business: If you serve on the client’s location (home care services, HVAC, etc.), use the ‘service area business’ option. By mentioning your service radius and areas, you become eligible to rank for these locations.
Hours: Ensure to mention and update your business hours or service hours on your profile.
GMB Reviews: Your GMB reviews have a crucial impact on your local SEO value. So, focus on earning more customer reviews here.
Images: Add images of your products, catalogs, venue, staff, food, ambiance, etc.
Posts: Leverage this feature to create offers events, and showcase new products with CTAs.
FAQs: Add relevant FAQs to grow your relevancy and engagement on your profile.
Ans. Yes, follow the below steps to create an optimized GMB profile for local SEO:
Ans. NAP consistency is the practice of using the same name, address, and phone number across your several listings. This defines the authenticity of your business info and makes Google trust your business.
As GMB is considered the most trusted directory, mention accurate Name, Address, Phone number, and all other third-party business directories.
Ans. Location authority represents the credibility and value of your local business.
It substantially impacts your local search rankings in the search engines. Moreover, high location authority makes your business more visible in Google Maps.
Ans. You can enhance your location authority by:
Ans. Local SEO and PPC both have their specific set of perks and limitations.
Local SEO perks over PPC:
PPC perks over Local SEO
Ans. Local SEO allows you to grow your brand presence online. These tactics allow you to rank for relevant location-specific queries.
And you can highlight your business info and contact details across several platforms. This attracts more site traffic, inquiries, and even store footfall traffic.
Ans. Yes, Google deems your brand’s credibility and reputation important for local search rankings. The reason being users have multiple choices to fulfill their requirements. For example, take a look at the below screenshot:
The reviews on your site, GMB profile, review sites, directories, etc., have an impact on your local SEO.
Ans. Yes, you can use tools like Synup or Mention to track your local reviews. Also, a good way is to set up alerts for your brand mentions or product mentions through Google Alerts.
As you track your mentions, you get to see what people write about your brand. You can even manage negative reviews with this approach.
Ans. Influencer collaborations come in handy to catalyze your local SEO efforts.
You can request your niche-specific influencers to review your local business. For example, Ed Sheeran is a huge fan of Heinz ketchup. He even has a tattoo of it. So, undoubtedly he was a good influencer for them.
Influencers can share the experience with their fans, and you can even highlight this review. This is solid social proof; it attracts direct inquiries, encouraging more reviews.
Bloggers and local journalists can also offer you reputable brand mentions and backlinks.
Ans. A good way is to showcase multiple locations on your GMB profile. Here is the way you do it:
These multiple locations start appearing in SERPs as an example here.
You must also mention different location-specific keywords on your site and other listings.
Read: Important Tips to do Local SEO for Multiple locations.
Ans. You must continue your local SEO efforts as long as you wish to sustain or grow your rankings. Though these rankings aren’t as volatile as PPC, your competitors are most likely working to dethrone you.
Ans. Not particularly, you can still do and win local SEO without a website. Google allows you to create and adorn your Google My Business page. Moreover, you can win valuable local citations and backlinks from authoritative sites.
Take a look at the screenshot below, where a couple of businesses rank in local 3-pack and have no website.
You can win PR mentions, awesome GMB reviews, and influencer reviews.
You must also buff up your social media profiles for good engagement and direct inquiries.
All these factors have an impact on your location authority. And these help your listings and social presence to appear in relevant searches.
Ans. Yes, definitely; having a website has perks like:
Ans. Use the following tips:
Ans. You can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to check your referral traffic, backlinks, conversions, etc. Here’s a screenshot showing it in the GA.
Moreover, you can use Mention or Google Alerts to track a rise in your business mentions and reviews.
Ans. The key metrics to track for your local SEO performance include:
Ans. Your local SEO results depend upon your local competition and your strategic efforts. It may take around 6 to 12 weeks to achieve local search rankings.
However, you may start to receive inquiries and traffic within a week owing to increased business visibility.
Ans. Local SEO might not serve you in cases like:
For example, if you use any of these keywords, it’ll be difficult to secure a top position consistently.
Ans. Some inevitably crucial technical SEO parameters include:
Ans. Negative reviews are likely to fade your business reputation. This also faints your location authority and local SEO performance.
Ans. Use these tips:
Ans. Google has been transparent about leveraging site speed as a ranking factor.
And Google’s Page Experience Update also mentions the importance of site speed in SEO.
So, your site speed also gives a considerable push to your local SEO ranks.
Ans. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to take a speed performance test. If your speed exceeds 3 seconds, request your developer to fix the same.
Some good ways to fix it are:
Ans. There might be multiple reasons, and some of the most common ones are:
Ans. Yes, Google considers server location important when compiling results for a specific geo-location.
Another related factor:
Country-code Top Level Domain Names (ccLTD): If your domain reflects your country code (.au or .in or .co.uk) you gain a considerable advantage in local results.
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It is common for businesses to have Generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs) like .com or .net.
Here you can use Google Search Console to set your geographic location (Australia, US, UK, etc.)
Ans. Some evident perks are:
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
Site Speed Impact on Local Business
Google Maps for Local Business
Tips to Partner With Local Businesses
Boost Local Rankings Using Cdn
Boost Offline Sales for Local Biz
How Google BERT Affect Local Businesses
Boost Local Rankings Using Cdn
Local SEO Benefits for Ecommerce
Wordpress Local SEO Best Practices
Local SEO Mistakes Plumbers Make
Tips to Build Authority Using Local SEO
Tips to Rank Higher in Google Maps
Tips to Optimize Category Tag Pages
Technical SEO for Local Business
Tips to Get More Visibility for Gmb
Niching Down Benefits for Local SEO
Local SEO Fixes to Boost Rankings
GMB Optimization for Small Businesses
Boost Audience Engagement With Local Email Marketing
Tips to Use SEO Ppc for Local Business
Tips to Optimize Small Business for Local SEO
Local SEO Mistakes Law Websites Do
Enterprise Local SEO Challenges
Local SEO Mistakes Contractors Make
Customer Engagement Strategies for Local Biz
Optimize for Local SEO Without a Website
Tips to Build Local Engagement
How Bad Customer Reviews Affects Local SEO
Small Business Local SEO Mistakes
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
Site Speed Impact on Local Business
Google Maps for Local Business
Tips to Partner With Local Businesses
Boost Local Rankings Using Cdn
Boost Offline Sales for Local Biz
How Google BERT Affect Local Businesses
Boost Local Rankings Using Cdn
Local SEO Benefits for Ecommerce
Wordpress Local SEO Best Practices
Local SEO Mistakes Plumbers Make
Tips to Build Authority Using Local SEO
Tips to Rank Higher in Google Maps
Tips to Optimize Category Tag Pages
Technical SEO for Local Business
Tips to Get More Visibility for Gmb
Niching Down Benefits for Local SEO
Local SEO Fixes to Boost Rankings
GMB Optimization for Small Businesses
Boost Audience Engagement With Local Email Marketing
Tips to Use SEO Ppc for Local Business
Tips to Optimize Small Business for Local SEO
Local SEO Mistakes Law Websites Do
Enterprise Local SEO Challenges
Local SEO Mistakes Contractors Make
Customer Engagement Strategies for Local Biz
Optimize for Local SEO Without a Website
Tips to Build Local Engagement
How Bad Customer Reviews Affects Local SEO
Small Business Local SEO Mistakes