Top Tips for Local SEO

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If you’re a seasoned business owner, I’m guessing we all understand the importance of having our websites designed and developed with effective search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies in place. For businesses with a heavy regional or local presence, such as bricks and mortar operations or businesses operating within defined boundaries, it’s crucial for your website to be optimised for local search intent.

What is Local SEO?  

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essentially a more ‘locally’ focussed version of SEO. Visit our What is SEO blog to discover more on the larger topic of general SEO. Local SEO forms part of a strategy to improve your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings for location based searches (think mechanics near me or mechanics in Adelaide, Brisbane etc).

If you’re a small business with a more modest marketing budget than your national competitors, you can focus on spending your marketing dollars where they will be most effective and profitable.

To bring that into perspective, it’s interesting to note that approximately 46% of all online searches include a location, with around 97% of those searchers looking for local businesses (thanks to 99firms.com for those stats).

This statistic highlights that without local SEO, your business could be losing out on a significant amount of traffic.

With that in mind, here are our top 7 tips for improving your local SEO.

 

1. Create Local Content

Local content is essentially including location specific terms in conjunction to your original keywords. For example, if your business is a mechanic workshop and is located in, say Adelaide, you would want to include Adelaide as a component of your key search terms.

Furthermore, you could include your suburb to narrow down the search intent of your potential customer. I don’t know about you, but I’d be much more likely to contact a mechanic in my own suburb or close to work than to have my car serviced miles away.

A great way to add more local SEO content to your website is to add a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page. Not only can you add loads of local-specific content under each question, but the content can also be neatly nestled in an accordion or toggle box that drops down when clicked. This is particularly useful when trying to avoid an overcrowded feel to a page.

Another great reason for using FAQs is that the question can be written to be optimised for voice search, a hugely popular consumer search method.

 

2. Optimise the Fiddly Bits

If you haven’t created a website as yet, a domain name incorporating your local area of operations (AO) might be worth considering. However, if you already have an active site that’s achieving a reasonable search volume, it may not be worth the potential drop in search volume.

Title tags identify and label the title of each web page and are displayed as part of a search snippet on a search engine results page (SERP). You’ll also find the title tag on the page tab at the top of your browser.

Title tags help identify what your web page is about and is an important factor in helping the viewer to decide whether or not to proceed to your site. If the viewer is searching for a location specific product, why not put it into the title tag. It makes perfect SEO sense.

For example, Digital Marketing Hub (that’s us) use the url digitalmarketinghub.com.au/seo-adelaide/ with the following meta tag:

SEO Adelaide – SEO, Web Design and Digital Advertising

A page’s meta description is the short blurb below the meta title and again, it’s worth adding your location to improve your local SEO in a SERP.

 

3. Ensure your NAPs are visible

Most website headers and/or footers will have the business NAP (name, address and phone) details. This helps search engines such as Google identify locations.

 

4. Add Location pages or sections

Further to adding business locations to headers and /or footers, a business location map on a page such as a contact page or in sections throughout the site carries a lot of weight in helping identify the business’ location.

Google Maps is a worthwhile inclusion to your location page or section.

 

5. Optimise for Google My Business

This one’s a no brainer for local SEO improvements. In our post How to increase local business , we explain Google My Business and show you how to set it up.

GMB is a free business listing platform provided by, wait for it, Google. An easy-to-use platform, GMB enables you to list your business location, services and other information, improving your opportunities to be displayed on local business and Google map searches.

Businesses can also add data optimised images and post existing blogs from their websites.

 

6. Optimise local directories

Local business directories are important in improving a business’ SEO within a given area. They display important information about your business and increase your visibility in the local area.

Yellow Pages is an example of a business directory, however it’s advisable to search in your own local area for other directories that may be more specific to your service. For example, a local Brisbane plumbing business would be able to list with some locally based directories that an Adelaide plumber would not use.

Local SEO is just one single part of an overall SEO campaign that every online for-profit business should be utilising.

For more information on implementing or improving your own search engine optimisation strategy, contact Digital Marketing Hub Australia.

Cam Dempster

Cam Dempster is an experienced web designer and search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist who has been developing websites since 2008. With over a decade of experience, Cameron has developed a wealth of knowledge and expertise in creating visually appealing and user-friendly websites that rank well on search engines.