If you service customers locally through your business, optimizing your website for local search traffic is a necessity. It may take a little extra time and effort, but when you invest this time, you’ll reap the benefits with a lot more traffic to your site and your store.
7 Tips to Optimize Your Site for Local Search
These 7 Tips will help you optimize your site for local searches:
Homepage Optimization
Make sure that your basic information can be found on your homepage: who you are, what you do, and where you’re located (including actual street address). Add this information to your title tag and meta description as well. In WordPress, you can easily do this under “Settings” and “General.”
Meta Data Optimization
If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin can be your best friend. Not only can it help you create better SEO for your blog posts, it can offer the same help for your website. After installing the plugin, go to “Pages” and find your homepage. Then, add your SEO title and meta description using the plugin at the bottom of your screen.
Create Multiple Pages
Instead of consolidating, create a page for every product or service that you offer. If you have more than one location, create a separate page for each one of these as well. You can then use the meta data information at the bottom of each page (with Yoast SEO) to optimize each page of your site.
Include Information on All Pages
Make sure your banner image, logo, company name, description, hours of operation, address, and phone number are listed on as many pages as possible. You can add most of this information to your footer. Including it in as many places as possible will help Google find you easier for local searches.
Claim Your Google Business Page
Go to Google My Business and log in with your Google account to add your business page. You can add your street address, phone number, website link, and hours of operation. Claiming your page will boost your local search results.
Improve Social Media Pages
Make sure your address, phone number, email, and website are listed in your “About” information on your social media pages, especially your Facebook business page. This will allow visitors on your page to locate you on Google Maps easier.
Ask for Reviews
Local online reviews can help build your SEO. Yelp is one of the first pages that appears in Google results for local business searches and great reviews will build your Google rankings. Ask customers to write a review about your business. The more reviews you have, the better your site will be optimized for local searches.
While it does take some time to work through these steps, the benefits will be worth it. More customers will be able to find you easier through local searches; customers who may not have even known about your business before.
Other Posts of Interest
Other posts you might find interesting regarding search engines.
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