6 Great Ways to Improve Your Local Search Rankings

Whether you’re a local bagel shop or a national Domino’s pizza chain, the key to driving more customers to your doorstep is adopting a local SEO strategy that gets your business ranked on the coveted Search Engine Results Page.

Ever since Google rolled out the Hummingbird Update, local results have evolved - they are more relevant, personalized and geo-targeted. Yes, Google has become a lot smarter!

Let’s have a look at some statistics:

• 4 in 5 users perform search queries on search engines to get local information
• 50% of customers, after doing a local search, visit the store within a day
• 18% of local searches on smartphones lead to offline purchases

These statistics demonstrate the importance of local SEO for both online and brick-and-mortar local businesses.

Local SEO requires a bit more effort beyond your traditional and average SEO campaign. The graph below points out the local ranking factors. It breaks down the weight of various factors that affect the local rankings on the SERPs.

One thing you will notice is that, although some local SEO factors differ slightly from the average SEO campaign, links and on-page SEO still hold a prominent place. However, the type of links that you will focus on here will be different.

I’m going to discuss some Local SEO techniques that will help you get an edge over your competitors.

1. Get on Google Places

If you want to get your business displayed on the Google Local pack, it’s essential to create your listings on Google My Business to establish a strong presence on Google+ Local and Google Maps.

Google My Business

For those of you who are not aware, Google My Business helps local businesses become visible and searchable on the web space for users who belong to a particular locality (where your business operates).

If you do not have a listing here, it’s high time you create one and claim it.

Here are a few takeaways while creating your Google My Business Page:

• Please include a detailed and unique description of your business, format it =and link to your website and social media profiles.
• Always choose the most relevant “primary category” for your business and the most relatable category for your “Sub-category”. This affects your rankings based on competition within the category.
• Upload photos of your office, employees and products
• Include your local phone number
• Add the physical location address of your business (this should be consistent on your website and other local directories).
• Include other important details like your opening and closing days and hours.
• Include a high-resolution profile picture and cover photo. Do not forget to add your logo.

Still confused over how to create a Google listing, check the guidelines here.

2. Get listed on major directories

Creating citations or business listings on critical local directories and review websites plays an important role in expanding your visibility on the web.

There are millions of local directories out there, but that does not mean you have to spam your business details across each one of them.

To begin, target the most important directories:

1. Yelp
2. Better Business Bureau
3. Angie's List
4. Merchant Circle
5. YP.com
6. Whitepages
7. Superpages.com
8. Yellowbook
9. CitySearch
10. MapQuest/Yext
11. Local.com
12. Foursquare
13. CitySlick
14. USDirectory.com
15. Dex Media

3. Be Consistent with your NAP

NAP is an acronym for Business Name, Address and Phone Number. This trinity of information represents the first interaction between your business and users.

The key here is Consistency. First, ensure that you have an accurate and complete NAP (Name, Address, Phone) on your website.

Furthermore, your NAP details should be complete, accurate, and consistent when you mention them on other directories or websites.

In addition to creating citations, maintaining consistency in these citations and correcting any inaccuracies is equally essential. Now, manually checking all your citations is a significant undertaking. I suggest that you utilize automated tools to simplify this task. These tools identify inconsistent citations and automatically correct them for you. There are many tools, such as RankWatch and Moz Local, which compare your NAP against your citations word for word to leave no room for errors.

Additionally, I recommend using Schema markup for your NAP so that search engines have all the necessary information to display your business details accurately.

4. Work on getting Reviews

Local reviews directly affect your local search engine rankings. You should invest some time in getting good reviews for your business. Now, obtaining reviews does not mean just Google reviews, but also reviews on Yelp (which are used by Apple Maps) and other directories. Still, you should also add Google reviews to strengthen your online presence and improve visibility in local searches.

To begin, start contacting your existing customers/users to see if they’d like to leave a review for your business. Offer them incentives, such as discounts and freebies.

Create a page on your website that gives clear instructions on how to write reviews for your business. You can also hand out flyers with information that provides directions to people for visiting your business.

Include review links on your web pages and email signatures.

5. On-site Optimization

1. Target the right keywords: Your audience reaches you through these keywords. Your targeted keywords should always include your location. For example, if you are a salon in Dublin, you should always include 'Dublin' in your short- and long-tail keywords. Perform a quick Google search on the target keyword and target location, and research further using the Google Keyword Planner. Then, come up with keywords that have a high search volume and low competition.
2. Meta Title and Meta Description:  This is the first information that your customers view on search results. Optimize these elements and ensure that you include your target location-specific keyword in the meta title, within 65-70 characters, and in the meta description, within 155-160 characters.
3. Heading tags: Google bots look for keywords within H1 tags to get an idea of the page's content. Keep the most important keywords in the H1, then the H2, and so on. For example: <h1>Taste of Spices Restaurant</h1>

<h2>Book a table right now</h2>
<h2>Menu</h2>
<h3>Special Drinks</h3>

4. To begin, businesses with multiple locations should ensure that they create separate landing pages for each location. Additionally, each of these location-specific landing pages should have unique and relevant content (Otherwise, it will be deemed duplicate content). Include a small gallery of photos of your employees, shop front or products. For example, if you’re a restaurant, you can add photos of some of your famous dishes.

Always embed a Google Map on your website to make it easier for your customers to locate you.

Ensure that you have your complete NAP details displayed on your website. Additionally, include other essential information such as working hours, email, discount offers, promotions, customer testimonials, links to review sites, product descriptions, and more.

6. Local Link Building

Getting links from local websites is extremely important for better rankings, but is often overlooked by marketers. Local Link building is not about obtaining links from high-authority websites, but rather acquiring links from local websites that do something similar to you.

The best way to get started would be to get listed in local directories.

Here are some other ideas:

1. Find local communities and look for a list of local events relevant to your niche. Contact those websites about sponsorship. If they accept your request, you’ll earn a highly authoritative local link from their websites.
2. Create a quality local resource (local guide, map, to-do list in the city and so on) and get in touch with local press for coverage.
3. Arrange interviews with reputable and high-quality online publications.
4. Offer scholarships to get links from local universities
5. Research local awards.
6. Offer discounts to local organizations as incentives for mentioning your citations on their websites.

Over to you! What are your strategies for Local SEO?

Please let us know in the comments below if any of the above strategies were effective for you.

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