Google local SEO. How to improve it?

Local SEO is a fundamental topic for Google and that makes perfect sense: we all look for things that are physically close! Local SEO today is vital for any business that has a physical location to directly serve the public and that wants to take advantage of the Internet to get more customers.

Local search engine optimization is a part of search engine optimization (or SEO) that focuses on improving the visibility of a local business in local search engine results. The results that appear in the local search results generally respond to a deliberate question “near me”, which means that a search engine is looking for something “in [CITY]”, or the search engine has understood that there were geographic restrictions for the search.

By using local search optimization strategies, businesses can improve their visibility in these local search results for terms related to their business and their products or services.

Local SEO can seem a bit confusing, which is why I’ve decided to break down the top 10 ways to optimize your website for local SEO below.

Top 10 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

1. IMPLEMENT THE BEST SEO PRACTICES THROUGHOUT YOUR WEBSITE

Yes, this may seem obvious, and it is, but it is often ignored. Treat your website with love. The better you optimize your website, the better your content strategy, the better your blog posts, the more quality inbound links you will naturally lead to your website. And you want to drive quality links to your site, because they are an important ranking factor for local SEO, as well as your natural SERP ranking.

2. CLAIM YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

Claiming your business listing and completing the content of your listing is essential for your local SEO, especially for your Google Local Pack and SERP results. Don’t be discouraged if your business category is not listed, although there are over 2,000 categories, so do your best to find the one that best fits your business. Use primary keywords and LSI whenever you can while filling out your content, as this represents almost 20% of your chances of getting into the local package.

Again, if you have multiple locations, claim each of your GMBs. You can manage them all from one login, so it won’t be a headache to update, but yes, you must own each physical location for your business.

3. UPDATE NAP APPOINTMENTS ON YOUR WEBSITE

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Telephone Number. Take a look at how your business appears on the Google My Business listing and make sure it appears EXACTLY the same way on every page of your website. This is commonly done in the footer of a website.

If you have multiple locations, then create a page for each location and apply the relevant NAP for that location on that page.

4. OPTIMIZE YOUR HOME PAGE

Your home page should clearly state who you are, where you are, and what you do. Make it easier for Google to understand these elements of your business. The page title tag, header tag, and meta description should clearly state this information.

5. OPTIMIZE YOUR METADATA

If you are focused on optimizing your website for local SEO, the title tags of your page should include the name of the city in which you are located. Optimize your page title tags to include the name of the city and the product or service you offer. This will help not only tell search engines “this is where you can find me”, but it also clearly says “and this is what I do at this location”.

6. CREATE A PAGE FOR EACH PRODUCT, SERVICE AND LOCATION

To apply the product / service schema to each of your individual product / service offerings, they all need to have their own page. Not only is this good general SEO practice, as it helps generate a clearer sitemap for search engines and also helps your product / service pages rank for that specific offering, it opens the door. to specific schema applications. If we had a page that said “Our services” and no other individualized pages, do you think we would ever qualify for a particular service with a web page labeled “Our services”? I do not believe it.

Similarly, if you have multiple locations, create a page for each location. How do you expect their Malaga location to appear in search results if it’s on the same page as their Seville and Madrid locations? Exactly. It will not. So stop trying to get all your kids to share bunk beds and give each one their own room. It may take a bit more work, but you will give them more space to mark their territory and be found when prompted.

7. ADD YOUR BUSINESS TO LOCAL DIRECTORIES

Local directory listings and citation creation are a great way to optimize your website for local SEO. It may take a bit of time, but there are different tools (if you’re willing to pay for them) that can help make this a little less intimidating. The key here is to make sure each entry is EXACTLY the same. So again, reflect the exact format and representation of your business from your GMB page and make sure to list your business in exactly the same way in local directories.

8. CONFIGURE SOCIAL MEDIA SIGNALS

If you don’t have a Facebook business page, you should do it now. Having social media signals pointing to your location is another advantage when it comes to ranking for local SEO. You don’t necessarily have to do a lot with it, but the mere existence of the page is better than nothing. However, ideally you should have a social media strategy in place that will help you manage content for multiple locations, if that is relevant to your business.

9. PRIORITIZE REVIEWS

As your business grows, you’ll want REVIEWS that validate that you are who you say you are, do what you say you do, and are located where you say you are. It is an advantage if people also have favorable reviews about your products and services. Reviews are a great way to do this. When search engines try to figure out what might be the best results for a certain search query, they are going to look at a number of factors in your algorithm and the number of reviews you have on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. to be part of that consideration process.

Work on creating reviews for Yelp and Google. And your Facebook page is likely to appear on the first page of Google when your brand name is also searched, so develop those reviews to help rank positively! While the reviews may not be on your physical website, they are a great way to optimize your website for local SEO.

10. USE THE LOCAL SCHEME OF BUSINESS, ORGANIZATION, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

To optimize your website for local SEO, you must apply a local business scheme or structured data markup on each page. Local schema is additional code that you add to your website pages to make it easier for search engines to understand who you are, what you do, where you are, and how you can be relevant to people who might be searching for your type of products or services you offer.

Adding a product and service outline to your website focuses more on the details of each of those products or services. Again, the whole mindset behind the scheme is talking to a robot (search engines) in their own language. Talk to them in their language for optimal local search results.

Conclusion

Almost half of all Google queries today are local searches. In an attempt to better meet the needs of its users, Google began providing more results for geographically related searches based on Proximity, Relevance, and Prominence.

That means that if your business is close to where someone is searching, offers services or products they may be looking for, and has an optimized local business listing, potential customers are more likely to find you online.

If you want your clients to find you in your area when they need you, you should start implementing these recommendations to improve the local SEO of your business. You can always count on an SEO specialist to help you in this section.

Alex Romero – Experto Marketing Digital
Marketing Digital Malaga