The internet allows you to reach people around the world. This means you can purchase items from another country, communicate with people from all over, and live and work in two different locations.
In some situations, though, your business may not want to target customers who are so far away. A better strategy may be to target people in the local area and nearby towns.
If your market is the local area, then investing time and effort into local SEO will pay off. Keep reading for some tips to create an effective local SEO campaign for your business.
Tips for Improving Local Visibility
If you have sufficient knowledge of SEO, you can create a local SEO campaign on your own. However, if you don’t, outsourcing these services may be best.
One of the first things you should do is to conduct an SEO audit. See how visible your NAP – name, address, and phone number – are in search results. You should also look at other factors, including your Google My Business account, keywords, and content.
After the audit, there are a few other steps you can take to improve local search visibility.
Keyword Research
You can find several tools online, including Google’s Keyword Planner, that will let you see the keywords that are relevant to people in the local area. Use the tool to discover what keywords to use on your website and in the content you create. Putting time and effort into keyword research is important to determine what words will work and what words won’t.
Optimize Your Content and Site
Once you know what keywords work in the local area, you have to include them in your content. To make this strategy effective, be sure to include the words naturally. Never engage in keyword stuffing, where words are used to try to push your content up in the rankings. Create content that addresses people and the questions they have.
Along with optimizing your content, you also need to look at the meta tags and titles. Be certain pages have the name of the local area where you provide services or products. This is going to ensure your site is found when someone searches for something locally.
Your URL should be optimized, too. When saving your web pages, make sure you give them relevant and appropriate names to ensure they are visible.
Use Video and Visual Images
Video is now considered an important way to engage your audience. If you use video, your website will gain revenue faster than similar sites without videos.
Keep in mind that the images and videos have to be relevant and need to be optimized. Be sure to choose file names that will be picked up in searches and add text and tags to them. Be sure they are high-quality and that they load quickly.
If you want to ensure your site shows up in local searches, use the tips and information here. This will pay off and help ensure you get the results desired.