The fact that many still do not know the extent of the boost Local SEO can give to local businesses is still astounding.
While SEO as a whole can help your business in a lot of ways, Local SEO can go a long way in boosting local businesses, so we are here to not just talk about Local SEO but also give you pointers on the most common mistakes people make when it is related to Local SEO.
Table of Contents
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is SEO that targets local search results page rankings and visibility that falls under the region of its location.
The keywords are more customer-centric and area centric, where the local target audiences and customers’ concerns and needs will be met.
Is Your Local SEO Not effective?
If you did try local SEO and it is not effective, then you might be doing at least one of the below things.
Keywords
Keywords play an important role in SEO, no matter what type of business and how wide your business is.
What many fail to maintain for local SEO is that keywords for Local SEO need to be more geo-centric not to get flushed down by other traffic.
So instead of just going for common top keywords around the world, you can add your locality name or district name to attract your target audience.
Example: Instead of going for “SEO analysts”, which is just general local SEO would be “SEO analysts in Chennai.”
Google Business Profile
While it may seem irrelevant or unimportant to many, this has more than one advantage. Please do it immediately if you still need to create or claim your Google Business Profile.
And if you have one already, then make sure to optimize it to the fullest. Google Business profile listing plays a significant role in local visibility and also brings in a lot of local traffic.
So make sure your profile listing is updated with your business name, address, contacts, location map (if possible), website, pictures, reviews, and everything you can add. This will help you with the search engines and developing trust with your potential customers.
Also, make sure to add your business to more directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages and others more focused, location-centric, industry-centric directories.
Optimization
Not all optimization is enough, and you cannot go with half-optimized or poorly-optimized content and expect good results.
Optimize your website’s content, blogs and images with more geo-specific keywords that will help you reach more local audiences.
Even the off-page SEO needs to be optimized well otherwise, it won’t have any effect on your traffic or visibility.
Make sure your website is not only optimized, but it is also optimized for mobile and other devices like tablets or iPad because you won’t have people constantly checking up on stuff on their laptops or PC.
Keep up the quality of your content. Even though you are going for local audiences, you still need to consider your content.
Make sure you make blogs often and have good quality content which is well optimized.
Responding To Reviews
Reviews help your customers form trust with you and help search engines know that you are a legitimate business.
So, if you have a review, respond well to it and get your customers to post reviews and rate your business.
Many tend to ignore negative reviews. That’s where you go wrong. It is always advisable to respond to negative reviews in a polite manner.
It helps the ones searching for your business up on the internet make a decision, too, so do not ignore the comments.
Backlinks
Having and creating quality backlinks is the best thing you can do for your business. You can go with the backlinks created through social media and directories, but they are not the only options.
To have better and more effective backlinks, you can write more guest blogs, and that will help you establish more scores with the search engines and give you more visibility and exposure.
Across All Channels
Make sure your contact details for all methods are updated on all directories and websites equally.
Make sure they are updated and that your contact information, like phone number, email, address and website, are all entered in every place it is needed.
If your business has any old or duplicate listings or entries in any directories, make sure you delete them, as they can hinder your traffic or search results rankings.
Now, if the reason for your local SEO not working has yet to be found, then get in touch with Ahbiv. We provide premium SEO Services with our top-class analysts who will fix what is lacking.
