Local SEO

Local SEO is one of the most important search marketing strategies for local businesses. The main idea behind employing an SEO campaign is to rank highly in the search engines and therefore drive more business to your website. The coveted position in the search engines is in the top 20 listings, because most searchers do not go beyond page 2 of the organic listings.

 Local SEO is mainly for businesses that sell products or services to a localized geographical area. So finding the right keywords that people use in searching for local services is crucial.

Examples of businesses that should be utilizing local SEO are dentists, plumbers, lawyers, childminders and any other businesses that have a customer base in a localized area.

Knowing your target audience and where they live will be important before undertaking an SEO campaign: Are they young or old? ; Are they single parents? ; Are they families with young children? ; Do they live in a city or village? ; Or do they live in a particular region of the country? ; And so on. Once you have this information, you can begin your SEO work.

No SEO campaign is complete without thorough keyword research. In fact, it is one of the most important tasks to undertaken before building your website. There are many valuable keyword tools, like the Google Keyword Suggestion tool that will inform you what keywords that prospective customers use when searching for your products/services. With this information, you can begin to build your selected keywords in your website content, title and header tags and your Google Business Listings.

Google business listings are local Google maps results which appear at the top of the Organic listings. Targeting with Google maps is simple because results are only shown to surfers in your local area based on your postcode. You can provide your full address and telephone number in Google maps, with directions to your business premises. A major advantage of Google maps is that you can sign up without a website: all that is required is a home or business address and a telephone number; and many businesses use this service successfully without a website.

Local directories like Yell.com can be a good source of traffic, business and link building for your website. Many of these directories rank well in the search engines and are frequently crawled by the search engine bots. Some might not help to boost your ranking, but the volume of traffic they send can mean more business.

It goes without saying that your website should be well constructed, with a clear navigation for your visitors and search engines.

• Make sure your most important links are in appropriate places, preferably at the top of the website.
•  Navigation should be clear and consistent throughout the website and all major links should be on all pages.
• Don’t confuse your visitors by putting navigation links in different places in different pages.
• Page load times should be fast and 5 seconds should be the maximum time for pages to load

Search engines like to rank sites that perform well with users, so building your site with your visitors in mind is a must.

Following these simple rules will ensure that your local website will perform well in the search engines and enable a continuous stream of activity for your business.