Local SEO: On-Page Strategies for Success

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Local SEO is a search engine optimization strategy. It helps any business with a physical location or serves a geographic area to become more visible for their customers. It also helps new people looking for their services through Google Maps, searches, and even in the local window of Google’s search results. 

If you want to know how you can earn more leads from nearby users, then local SEO may be able to help your company grow and thrive.

Read: On-Page SEO Checklists Every Team Should Keep Handy

15 On-Page Local SEO Techniques to Improve Your Rankings

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1. Claim Google My Business Listing

A GMB profile has a high chance of improving your rankings in search engines. The first step is to obtain better local SEO results and gain more customers. 

You can claim your business listings via Google maps and add the relevant details regarding the business on the profile. It helps to have a solid online presence in the local search results and helps enhance the growing portfolio of utilities.

 It has a significant impact on brands trying to improve rankings and seeking local exposure. It will add credibility to the business and boost your online presence and rankings.

It offers required information regarding the business hours, business address, and reviews to offer a user-friendly experience which helps to improve engagement.

 It helps to increase the number of organic searches and increase the search engine market share of the business. Google My Business listings help improve the business's local search visibility and credibility. 

Here’s a screenshot to show how it looks.

2. Build Business Citations 

If you want to rank better on the search results page, it is crucial to pay attention to the local SEO practices. 

You need to pay attention to local citations as it is an integral part of SEO and helps to catapult your rankings. These local citations are essential to SEO, just like backlinks are to ranking websites. 

Have a look at how this Dallas based plumbing service has added their website link on this citation website

Local citations play a significant factor in local map ranking. Citations mention your business on another website, and they would include the business's name, address, and other business details. 

It enables the search engines to connect the dots, understand the content and enhance the local SEO efforts. It would be best to add your business to as many quality citations as possible. 

Take a look at this screenshot showing how to get leads from citation websites.

TIPS: 

• Dig deeper into Google search and know the proper citations for your local business. 
• Leverage core structured citations from Yelp, Yellow pages, Bing and Facebook. 
• Use industry-specific platforms and appear on these citations to improve credibility. 

3. Insert Keywords Across Multiple Listings

Include local keywords into unique descriptions across multiple listings to increase engagement and improve rankings. Perform keyword research to improve the visibility of your website. 

Spend some time thinking about the local keyword search queries performed by the customers. You can use various keyword tools to help you with the research process, which is a necessary SEO process.

 As a result, you will have a list of keywords that will cover all the customer queries in the profile. It will have the top keywords that customers frequently search. It will help improve keyword ranking and enhance the business's visibility. 

TIPS: 

• Select specific keywords to target specific customers.
• Group similar keywords in ad groups
• Select relevant keywords that resonate with the ads listings for your website. 

Read: Benefits of Using Long-tail Keywords for SEO

4. Build More Positive Reviews

Earning a steady stream of positive customer reviews is essential for local SEO efforts. Respond to ads as many reviews as possible. Your first duty is to respond to negative reviews professionally and dedicate time to respond to positive reviews as well. 

Your customer reviews or testimonials signal that your business is reliable and known for its trustworthiness and best offerings.

Ensure to track the outcomes of review acquisition strategies and generate positive reviews on various social media platforms, sites, etc. Get valuable insights on local competitor reviews to better understand the engagement and rankings.

It offers valuable points to handle review acquisition tactics. Building positive reviews is crucial to enjoying local search results in the search engines. 

Here’s a screenshot to show how it looks.

TIPS: 

• Understand review guidelines
• Respond to customer reviews in a professional way
• Opt for Online Reputation Strategies and implement them while responding to customer reviews. 

5. Get High-Quality Links

Earning backlinks is crucial to establishing your business as a go-to resource in your area. 

Gaining quality backlinks enhances your business's website authority, credibility, and reputation. Ensure to have a local link-building strategy to make new connections; Positive PR helps build and nurture meaningful business relationships and connections. 

Here’s a screenshot of a backlink from a guest post.

The quality of links directed towards your website significantly impacts local search engine rankings. These quality links help bring valuable lead traffic and help rank higher on the search engines results page. 

Quality links play a crucial role in local SEO as it helps increase local search rankings. It increases the chance of appearing in the local three-pack of the search engines. 

Here’s an example of how it looks to get a backlink from Google my business

TIPS: 

• Connect with local directories and business listings. 
• Get listed on Yelp, Yellow pages, Business associations Google My Business.
• Look for link opportunities on local reputed websites for better rankings
• Perform community outreach, and outsmart your competitors. 

Read: Best Practices to Earn High-Authority Backlinks for Your Website

6. Improve Internal Link Structure

Example of internal linking in entrepreneur.com

Internal link structure helps to improve local SEO efforts like indexing link flow. A good website architecture strengthens the user experience navigation experience. A proper website architecture helps to offer a seamless user experience to find the information effortless on the site. 

A good user experience helps to ensure influential search engine rankings and engagement. It enables users to spend more time on your website, indicating that it delivers quality content. 

Here’s a screenshot of the internal link structure of a website.

A solid website architecture helps search engines crawl your website effectively and ensure a deep navigation experience for users. 

It helps to distribute page authority equitably and strengthen the internal link structure. Lastly, it helps to increase more conversions by generating more user content. Let us explore some helpful tips to be kept in mind while performing internal link structure: 

• Keep your URLs simple and user friendly
• Keep your website content consistent along with a simple navigation menu
• Create HTML and XML sitemaps and perform a sound internal link structure. 

7. Optimize Title Tags 

Optimizing title tags with local keywords is essential to ensure that your local pages or websites rank high in search engines. A title tag is an essential part of SEO and is impactful for search engines. It is the snippet that showcases the description of the webpage. 

It includes keywords used in the meta descriptions, alt attributes, URL, and other page elements. They significantly impact search engine rankings and users' decisions to click on your website.

Keep the title tags unique for affecting the indexing of web pages. Title tags can be short of improving the chances of getting ranked. Try keeping the significant keywords in the title tags to enhance rankings in search results. 

Take a look at this screenshot showing title tags.

You can use Yoast SEO plugins while using WordPress for your business. 

TIPS: 

• Make simple tags for practical crawling purposes,
• Be relevant to the content of the page
• Encourage the audience to click on your site with exciting title tags. 

8. Ensure Your Nap Is Consistent Across The Website

NAP is a crucial ranking factor that includes name, address, and phone number for local search results. Search engines cross-reference your company name, address, and location across various listings to ensure it is a legitimate business. 

Besides claiming for Google My Business, use Schema markups to enhance local search results. 

Claiming your Google My Business account along with schema markups helps to improve rankings. NAP details and GMB profile help to improve local SEO efforts. 

When searchers look for local businesses, they search for the basic NAP details, which help to improve local search results. Adding local schema markups to HTML code enhances rich snippets and helps to improve local rankings. 

Here’s an example of how it looks.

TIPS: 

• Add appropriate NAP details to your website to improve rankings
• Use Schema WordPress plugins for your business
• Use Google structured data testing tool to validate your results

9. Optimize For Voice Search 

The Voice search feature has been increasing over the years. It is an integral part of local SEO as it is required to optimize how people make queries or ask questions; usually, it is preferred in a conversational style. It is essential to use appropriate keywords in the search results. 

We suggest you use long-tail keywords while optimizing for voice search features. It is essential to optimize for user intent for the voice search feature. 

Voice searches are more apt for mobiles. It is essential to have a mobile-friendly website with appropriate mobile optimization. 

The maximum volume of voice search requests includes "near me" questions, implying that people search for a business restaurant. It is one of the critical factors for local search results. 

10. Optimize Your Website For Mobile

Mobile SEO means optimizing your site for mobile devices. It helps improve the website's visibility on mobile devices and improve rankings. 

As per stats, 53% of local search occurs on mobile devices. It helps offer a seamless user experience and boosts local SEO search results. 

Search engines rank websites that provide a seamless experience on mobile to users. 

A mobile-friendly website helps to improve rankings and has become an important ranking signal. It is important to have optimized metadata for both mobile and desktop versions. 

TIPS: 

• Include quality content like text, images, and videos on mobile versions.
• Have a single and straightforward URL for mobile and desktop sites
• Enable mobile users to have a good navigation experience. 

11. Use A Location-Specific Page

Location pages are crucial if you want to improve your local search results. Create an "ABOUT US" page that focuses on local relevant information about your business. 

It is one of the essential ranking factors for local on-page SEO elements. Use location-specific keywords in meta tags, content, and URLs. If you have multiple locations, ensure not copy-paste the entire keywords list. Instead, include content that is unique to the location. 

Notice how this website uses a landing page to target USA customers.

Have specific criteria/ tips to be mentioned in the 'About Us page, which is as follows: 

• You should mention store hours or working hours clearly
• Name, address, and phone number details are important
• Testimonials and reviews
• Google map attached to each location page helps to improve local search results.

12. Create Content Based On Local Events

You can write and produce content related to your local business activities or events. You can produce engaging content that helps to increase your ranks in the search engines. Writing about your business activities helps to attract the audience's attention.

 You can have different pages or landing pages for your business that helps you feature quality content about your business. Images and videos can give a glimpse to the viewers into your business location before they visit. 

You can include location-specific images videos to improve local search results. Various strategies or tips are as follows: 

• Writing blog posts around local stories, events, or activities
• Setting location-specific webpages with high-quality content 
• Create videos that support your business activities earn backlinks from sites to improve the site's rankings. 

13. Take Advantage Of Online Business Directories

Local Business Directories are public websites that help customers find businesses near them. The online directory might be a standalone website as a section of another company's primary website. 

Online business directories are Yelp, Foursquare, MapQuest, and YellowPages. It is also good to put your business information on other sites. 

If you have an online/local phone number, you should make sure that it's consistent across all the top 5-10 local directories because if people can't find you, they won't find the word of mouth advertising very helpful!

And now you can even list your business in these directories for free at buzzonlocal. 

This local online directory posts your business information on everything from LinkedIn and Facebook to dozens of other social networking sites. But there are also many other sites dedicated solely to local SEO to enhance your marketing efforts. 

TIPS: 

• Get listed in any of the mentioned business directories to enhance your local search results
• Share your location with these business directories
• Include business hours and other appropriate details, create engaging profiles before listing them in directories

14. Make The Most Of Social Listening

Social listening does not only serve as a source for marketing insights, but it could also help you with your local SEO strategy. If you know what insights to look out for and how you should use them, social listening can offer something that may be influential to your business.

Social listening is a great way to get an added insight into your target audiences, but it's also great for identifying potential competition too. You might think people who frequent the same forums or social media sites are similar users, but that isn't necessarily the case. 

Not only can you use what you see on a particular forum as excellent background info for planning different kinds of campaigns, but you may also even be able to use it for advertising purposes – like pricing or other specials.

Social listening is an activity used for monitoring conversations about a particular product, service, or brand. It helps to understand and monitor the performance to rank higher in local search results. 

Read: How Can Social Listening Impact Your SEO/Rankings?

15. Keep Your Site Healthy

It is one of the most crucial SEO strategies which needs to be kept in mind. Having an unhealthy site can create several SEO issues. It is essential to have a healthy and responsive website that enables effective indexing crawling by search engines. 

It would be best to adapt to the various software that helps to identify the various issues and solve them appropriately. These strategies help to improve rankings and enhance local SEO search results. 

Here we present you some vital tips to be kept in mind: 

• Check for broken pages or links, or not optimize meta descriptions
• Missing or empty title tags
• External broken links
• Orphan pages (i.e., pages without internal links )

Key Takeaways

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• Optimize for Google My Business listings
• Ensure your name, address, and phone number of the business is consistent
• Optimize online directories and citations
• Perform a local SEO audit for improving rankings
• Improve your internal linking structure
• Optimize URLs, title tags, meta descriptions
• Add specific location pages to your website
• Get inbound links and improve the reputation of the site.