Putting effort into what we do is very important but, knowing where to put in that effort is what makes all the difference. That’s why the phrase “work smart not hard” has become very common in the world today. It is not because people fear working hard or anything of the sort, in fact, people who employ this principle still work hard, but they focus on things that pay off rather than working hard on things that won’t pay off in the end.
For example, why would anyone want to spend much time in marketing a product in the old ways when they can invest as much time in marketing through the internet and achieve better results. The internet has become one of the best methods that a business can use to advertise their products and as such SEO has become ever more important.
SEO can be categorised into local and global SEO if a business serves local customers and has a physical location they should put their focus on improving their local rankings. Some people believe that when it comes to SEO it’s all about the global market, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Local SEO is when you search for a business and you find results that are on top of the page coupled with star ratings, maps, address as well as the phone number of the business. Depending on the field of the business a site has a very high chance of being able to make it to the top of the search engine which will definitely be the difference between making people buy the product or service being sold and not generating any interest in it. So how can a local business improve their local rankings?
Acquire Local Back Links
For any local company, it is crucial that they have local links that will point back to their site. This will make it easy for the site to generate the required local traffic to make sure that the local SEO is well utilised. If a business sells clothes then they should have all their suppliers’ link back to the site. Another way to generate local links is by sponsoring the locally based organisations so as to have them link back to the site on their sponsor page. Also, the entrepreneur should be sure to get involved in the local community as much as possible they may get links and even business from this as well.
Improve On-site SEO
There is definitely no way that the search engines will know that the business is trading in the city it resides in unless it is stated on the site. For example, if one sells antivirus on the site and they reside in say, New York, they should state it on the site they are an antivirus seller in New York and also make sure they include their address, phone number as well as the business name on the site. Name, address and phone number are abbreviated to NAP in local SEO circles. The business can use MicroData or Schema markup to add this info to their site.
It is crucial for a local business to reference their location in the title tag of their site. After that, the entrepreneur should make sure that they list directions to their office, include local landmarks to make sure that the customers find the location easily, a Google map could also be added to the sites contact page.
Get Reviews
It is not a commonly used strategy regarding SEO because the jury is still out as to if it actually works to get better rankings. But one thing that shouldn’t be dismissed is that the more a site gets reviewed then, the more credible the business looks and trust is critical regarding getting higher rankings on search engines. Also, reviews help in the sense that most people who are looking for a local service provider will go straight to the review section to see how people are commenting on the services being offered.
Local Directories
Most if not all cities, towns and counties have local directories and these provide an excellent source of high authority local links. Most people don’t regard local SEO as an important part of their business but they should.
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