8 Easy Techniques to Make Your Business Local Search Ready

Search marketing is very important for all small businesses. But have you ever considered local SEO seriously as a separate entity? In this article, we will answer all your queries about local SEO. 

 

What is Local SEO:

 

Local SEO is a process of optimizing your website for local searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. It is a process of optimizing your webpages for searches, concerned with your business location or city. 

 

Look at an example below.

 

 

When we searched with “florists in Texas”, Google returns some local businesses’ webpages. The SERP generally contains organic results, paid ads, and local business listings.

 

 

Exposure for local searches: People search for a local business, when they are looking for an immediate and easy-to-find service with their locality. So, it’s very important that your business is optimized for these searches. Local SEO gives you that exposure in your business location. 

 

Creates business extension: For small businesses, the website is the main web property. With Local SEO, you can create a hub of information out of that website. People can find out about your location, services, and other details easily. Once you start adding content to your site, make sure it’s optimized for local SEO.

 

Encourages new connections: Once your website is optimized for Local SEO, you can enjoy a lot of new connections. It will also increase your business leads, clientele, and in turn your profit. 

 

Greater ROI: If you optimize your website for local searches, you can drive more value to your business, as your webpages are more likely to appear when people would look for services within a specific geo-location. It creates higher ROI for a small businesses. 

 

 

Optimize your logo: Did you know that one of the first things that Google crawls on your site is your logo? For this reason, optimizing your logo is very much needed in the process. 

 

Make sure your logo image file is properly named. Instead of logo.png, try something more relevant like YourBusinessNameLogo.png. It would help search engines create a unique identity for your logo. Also take care of the ALT text of the logo. You should always include your business name in the ALT text.

 

And last but not the least, don’t forget to add your business location in the title tag of your logo image link like <a title=” Your Business Name, Your Location” href=”….</a>. And make sure you use these attributes every time and everywhere you use the logo. 

 

Provide complete address details: You need to add your business location in details on every page of your website. Many businesses do it with image. But we recommend to include the address details in text to increase the visibility on the search engines. 

 

The header or the footer is a good place to keep your business address. Also add a Google map on your ‘Contact us’ page, so search engines get another local signal from your site. 

 

Work on every title and description: Check titles and description of each element of your website. They both help search engines as well as users understand about the website and business. Generally, titles should not contain more than 70 characters. But since we are talking about local businesses, you also need to include your location and contact details. You can use the space allocated for description to include your contact details. 

 

Register with business places with credibility: As a local business, you must register to all the relevant sites, where you can get the local SEO juice from. But make sure the efforts you are putting in, work for you. The best way to ensure it is, register with high-authority websites. Some of them are:

 

 

Join trusted local directories: Not all local directories are trusted and authoritative. So, choose the ones that are trusted by search engines first. Remember to include all the relevant details about your business including your address and contact information. 

 

Ask for reviews: Search engines value authentic reviews. They help boost your business visibility in local searches. So, encourage your customers to review or rate your business regularly. Offer them multiple options to share their feedback about you. Also respond to the reviews and ratings, no matter if they are positive or negative. It builds trust for your business. 

 

Go social: Social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, FourSquare, Twitter etc. send strong local signals to search engines. Create business pages on Facebook and Google Plus. Don’t forget to add your location on Twitter. Also register your business on FourSquare. 

 

Encourage media coverages: Try to get trusted online news portals to cover your business. They have a long-term impact on search results, because search engines value and prioritize media coverages. You also can publish a press release to let the media houses know about your existence. 

 

 

These are some of the techniques that you can use to send valuable local signals to search engines. Apart from that, Pay-Per-Click ads play a vital role in local optimization. So, if you want to run ads, based on location-based keywords, this is a very good idea to generate valuable local leads for your business.