What Is Local SEO?
Imagine you’re the owner of a shoe store in Long Beach, California. There are other, bigger shoe stores nearby, like Payless, DSW, and WSS. How do you compete with their 12-foot light-up signs and giant mall store footprints to get noticed?
It’s all about local search engine optimization (SEO). These days, more and more searchers are looking for local businesses, especially since mobile devices make it so easy to look up businesses based on where a user is right now.
Search engines like Google have responded by automatically taking location into consideration when returning search results. Google knows that someone located in Detroit doing a search for plumbers isn’t likely interested in finding plumbers in Miami. So they give a boost to local Detroit plumbers for queries that come out of Detroit.
The best way to compete with the big guys is to focus on targeting those local searches.
How To Boost Local SEO
So how can you boost your local SEO? By paying attention to a few details that national corporations don’t always fit into those giant budgets of theirs.
NAP
NAP stands for Name-Address-Phone. These are the three keys to get right (and consistent) if you want search engines to give you that special local bonus. You can take advantage of it by making sure these three pieces of information are accurate and consistent no matter where they show up: each page of your website, on any social media profiles, and in any directory listings like Yelp and Yellowpages.com. For outside directories, you may need to create or claim listings on a variety of sites. Help ensure directories get your info right by using schema mark-up on your own pages.
Local Content
Another way to get a leg up on the large corporations is to create plenty of local content. Sure, the big guys have bigger content budgets, but those budgets are used to capture business everywhere, so they have less money to pour into locally targeted content. And you know what else? Their marketing teams in New York City (or where ever their headquarters are) don’t know nearly as much about your city as the locals do. Use your own knowledge of local trends, events, or hot spots to create highly targeted content – or tap the experience of local writers and influencers to offer a level of knowledge that’s just plain impossible to have without living right where you do.
Can a focus on local SEO help your business? Ask the marketing experts at cThru Media today!
