Every business knows that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is paramount for getting results from their online presence. For small businesses, local SEO is even more critical.
If you’re trying to outpace your competition you must understand and utilize local SEO to your advantage. But how can you do that?
Let’s find out…
Target Local Customers with Your Content and Keywords
Your website should be fully optimized with keywords that include your area, business name, and greater geographical area (i.e. construction company in Houston). The good news is your local competition likely hasn’t done this. Start with your landing page and then work on other parts of your website. Use keywords naturally throughout your text to gain the greatest visibility.
You should also write blog posts on your website that target your local area. Subjects that matter most to your audience are always a hit, but be sure to provide valuable information if you want to improve your SEO.
Use Keywords Strategically
Yes, keywords are the bread and butter for optimizing content, but they aren’t valuable if you use the wrong ones.
Think like someone who is searching for your services. What questions do they need answered? How would they go about getting those answers? For example, if you were looking for a construction company, what keywords would you use to find one? Most likely you would search, “construction company in (name of city here),” right?
Once you have a list of 10 or so keywords get to writing but don’t stuff your posts full of them. One to three per article is typically sufficient – as well as ensuring keywords are found in your titles, metadata, and paragraphs.
Microdata and Schema Data
Search engines, social media sites, and independent site indexing is more frequently scanning for ‘Schema’ data in pages. This data provides a structure for your business information, as well as information about the content that is readable, and indexable by servers. For more information, visit http://www.schema.org or contact Microtek about our SEO Services.
Build Quality Backlinks and a Social Media Presence
Quality links are links from sites in a similar niche that link back to your website. A few ways to get these links include:
- Guest posting
- Claiming your business on Trip Advisor and Yelp!
- Networking with other local businesses with high rankings
- Use social clout by building profiles on all major social media sites
- Sending a link to your content to site authors with related content, and asking!
Once you have quality links to your website, you should start to see a serious rise in your rankings on search engines.
With so many techniques available it can be difficult to know where to start with local SEO, but these tips are the core of what you need to do to get your feet off the ground.