Five Ways to Optimize Your Website for Local SEO Opportunities

Many businesses miss out on local seo opportunities and never realize that it’s actually much easier to optimize your website for local search than more generalized terms.

local seo

Local SEO is a brilliant way to bring in targeted leads without having to go after competitive keywords. It’s designed to target keywords that are local to the area (i.e. best acne products in X city) instead of general keywords such as “best acne products.”

If your city is large enough, there is a good chance that people are not only searching by city but by neighborhood as well, so it would be a good idea to implement keywords based on neighborhood.

Check out these examples of searches in a neighborhood called “Wicker Park” in Chicago – If the business had only used Chicago as a geo-locator, they would miss out on these searches!

local keyword optimization

Businesses should place a considerable emphasis on local SEO campaigns, because the ability to rank and capitalize on search traffic is far greater with this type of strategy.

 

So, what should a local SEO campaign include?

 

According to Matter Solutions there are five ways to prepare your website before moving forward and building a great local seo campaign. As long as you are incorporating these into the setup, you will be well on your way to a great marketing strategy that will yield good results for years to come. Think about this before moving forward!

 

1) Setup “Google My Business” Account

 

This is a good first step because it will integrate with the rest of your website and can be used to launch forward. The ranking process isn’t all about finding keywords and with Google, you will want to set up your “Google My Business” account as soon as you can. This account is used to flesh out essential information that customers look for when it comes to the business.

Google My Business

Let’s assume you run a restaurant in Boston, and it is going to be searched by potential customers. By creating an account on Google My Business, all relevant information can be provided in one place. This information includes the business contact number, address, hours of operation, and anything else that is needed to identify the business. It saves time and will help push your business ahead in seconds.

 

2) Integrate Social Media Accounts

 

You will also want to focus on your social media accounts when setting the scene for local SEO. A lot of website owners are reckless when it comes to their social media accounts and don’t incorporate them into their marketing strategy.

 

The goal should be to have links on your website that connect to each social media account. This is going to create a small network of links that can be used to direct traffic to your website. Google is going to appreciate this because it showcases a relevant business that has taken the time out to build something valuable.

 

If you are not doing this, you are simply not going to see results with your local SEO campaign, and that’s when you will be disappointed!

 

3) Maximize On Page SEO Tactics

 

It’s time to move forward and think about your on-page SEO tactics because they are just as important as anything else. The goal is to focus on finding the right local keywords but also thinking about presenting them in the right way on your website. This can include infographics, captions, written content, and general images.

 

You want to do a little bit of everything to make sure the site is mapped out appropriately. If the website is too heavy in one category, it is going to have an impact on the local SEO campaign. This is why website owners are asked to optimize their setup as soon as they can because the damage can be immense.

 

Your on-page SEO is going to build out something that will last and is going to add value to your campaign. Keep this in mind as you move forward.

 

4) Audit Citations

 

You will want to spend time auditing local citations that are on your website. These citations will matter because a lot of website owners don’t even look into them as soon as they should. Be smart and audit right away to get more out of your website.

 

The auditing process should include taking a look at any contact information that has been put on the website. If it does not match up with the Google My Business account, then you will lose out on a lot of leads for such a simple mistake. All you have to do is keep an eye out and make sure the changes are made as soon as possible. This will improve the chances of your site ranking.

 

5) Use Meta Descriptions

 

The final step is to optimize meta descriptions and pinpointing the right keywords for your local SEO campaign. To do this, Google will want websites that do include meta descriptions with each page. The premise behind meta descriptions is to help highlight, via a 160 character snippet, what content is on the page before someone goes ahead and clicks the link in the search results.

 

Meta descriptions help increase a website’s user experience and is also an important component of SEO. If you are not thinking about the meta descriptions of your website, you may end up in a situation where the site looks good but doesn’t have enough juice to impress in Google’s search results.

 

The investment of your time has to be done with this in mind. Look at building out proper meta descriptions that will be easy to read and are going to include the local keywords you are after. This is how you optimize the website and make sure it is prepped for what’s to come. Until you do this, you will not have enough leverage to move forward and rank correctly.

 

 

These are the five ways to build out a website that is going to improve your visibility in local search. Take the time to focus on these details and optimize your site as much as possible to give you a leg up over the local competition. This is an ideal option for building out a good campaign, but it has to be done with poise.