A small business or big one that is located in a specific location needs to have their website or blog optimized for such. Local SEO means fine tuning your sites so that when people searching for your service or goods will find your site and not have to go to a competitor’s site or some far off location totally unrelated to their needs or wants.
To optimize your site for local SEO you’ll best achieve this by hiring an SEO expert. If not then there are some things you can do to tweak your site to maximize your potential. First of all does your site prominently display text and tagged photos of your location and surrounding region? If not then how are the search engines going to send you targeted traffic? You need to put the names of not only your city but any localities nearby and even noted landmarks and events.
This is because people searching for what you’re offering might not realize that you’re nearby another area they frequently shop online for. That or they might be searching around local areas and suddenly stumble upon your site by accident as it will pop up in the search engine results. This is an extra coup on your part as you’re diversifying your results and exposure by taking into account that your location is indeed part of a bigger picture.
Your website has to be laid out carefully but not so rigid that you lose your unique quality. Your location again, should be the most prominent thing on your site after your company name and description of your products and services. You can incorporate your location name into your business name like “Brooklyn Joe’s Market” or “River Glen Auto Parts”. That’ will ensure you’re site is encapsulated in the search engine’s algorithm that looks for location names. So if you’re selling auto parts in River Glen and that name is in your company title and you list River Glen, such-a-state, then you’ll double your chances of success. Now, putting up pictures of your shop and tagging them with the name of your location like “River-Glen-Auto-Parts-pic-1.jpg” has the name of the location and Google images and other search engines will list the images and links to your site too.
Don’t swamp your page with location text and tags, keep it simple and experiment. Make sure there’s a contact link on your page with the location name too. This helps the maps options at the search engines too.
Have your locality name and info on each page for each product and services. Use a template that has contact and company name and location on each page. Write text that favors and embosses your location with catchy slogans like “Best auto parts in River Glen, such-a-state” or “serving River Glen, such-a-state since 1900” or something like that. Another trick is to have testimonials from customers and have their location in their testimonials like, “I like River Glen auto parts! They’re the best-Joe Smith of River Glen, such-a-state”. And remember to tag the testifying person’s pic or avatar or graphic the same way.
There are many variations to the rule so look at what you have and how you can improve them. Either study on your own or get an SEO expert for local SEO. Local SEO is fine tuning a site to the utmost and can make or break your success on the web. Remember to get links back to your site and put up links on your site to local websites of interest as this will add additional attention to your site. Done carefully and precisely you’ll see some results soon and definitely in the long term thus increasing your ROI aka “return on investment”.
Overall, doing some fine tuning local SEO means you’re taking things responsibly and maximizing the potential of your website.
