Local Search Engine Optimization: What You Need to Know
Local search engine optimization has become the backbone of many online marketers. In fact, businesses that don’t use professional internet marketing agencies to help them with their online marketing haven’t incorporated local into their sites and marketing, which means they’re probably being penalized right now by the major search engines.
Google introduced local SEO as one of its algorithms some time ago, but still many companies are not adopting this requirement, which means they are losing valuable business on a daily basis. Local SEO is a great way to reach your local audience. The focus of this algorithm is to present searchers with products and services that match their search requirements within their local area, before showing them results from other locations. The benefit of this is that search engines find relevant results, while businesses can reach their local audience and increase their brand visibility.
So where do you start? The first thing you can do is start incorporating local into your keywords. A good example is if you sell essential oils, your keywords might be “essential oils” or “high quality essential oils”. Now you want to enter local, so you convert your keyword to a long-tail keyword with location, like “essential oils London” or “essential oils in New York” as examples.
Your keywords will help the search engine identify your location and what you do so that you can be ranked and your audience can reach you in the future.
From where you need to make some essential changes to your website to ensure that each of your pages is ranked and not penalized. This means adding your address, phone number, and email to every single page of your website. Until the algorithm was introduced having a contact page was good enough, now you need to add it to every page to make sure every page ranks correctly and your audience can find you based on all your pages increasing the chances of that will increase your website traffic in the long run.
You can incorporate local search engine optimization into your social media campaign. Be sure to provide accurate location information in the about section of your social media page and use location-specific keywords to reach your audience. Remember that search engines also use social media to find websites and businesses, so this can benefit you greatly in the long run.
Next, you need to make sure you cover all the areas you work on. So if you provide a global service, you’ll want to include keywords that cover all the countries you serve to make sure you’re ranked worldwide and the search engine is aware of the areas you cover, so they can rank you on consequence.
Another thing to know about local search engine optimization is that you want to get listed with as many well-known and reputable online directories as you can. Be sure to include your details accurately so that search engines can identify you and boost your business in the long run.
Remember to be consistent in your marketing efforts. This means that you want to ensure that you are constantly monitoring your progress and your website, making sure that all links are fixed and that you have embedded locally accurately.
It is advisable that if you don’t have the time to hire the services of a local company specializing in search engine optimization that can help you with your marketing efforts in the future.
