What is local SEO and How to Improve Your Local Ranking

What is local SEO? It’s the practice of optimizing your website and online presence for local search results. In other words, it’s about getting your website content to rank in front of people who are searching for your product or service in your city or state.

1. What is local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website and business to rank highly in local search results. Local SEO is a great way to attract a lot of relevant customers to your business. It’s important that you do your research before you start your local SEO strategy so you can be sure to get the most out of it.

Local SEO is a relatively new and evolving field. No one really knows how to set it all up or how to optimize it. However, everything you need to know about optimizing your website or online presence for your local search results can be found in this article.

There are a lot of different factors beyond your basic website content that will affect how well your local SEO campaign performs. One main factor is your category and keyword ranking. That is, how prominently your local search keywords appear on the first page of Google search results. There are four ranking factors:

According to this ranking factor analysis study published on sec.com, the most prominent factors affecting competitive position are the basic website technologies used by businesses and the relative prominence of search queries and content ideas.

For example, conducting keyword research may be the number one priority for your local SEO strategy. With Google, you can perform a keyword research survey or conduct keyword research interviews. Start by having a central list of keywords that you want to target to get an idea of what people are searching for locally. Your idealist will immediately show you where you can improve your website and overall performance to rank higher.

If you plan to employ a keyword research strategy into your local SEO strategy, you should do this as soon as possible after you establish yours. Your idealist will immediately help you prioritize your overall search strategy. Also, when creating your list of keywords and further priority factors, make a list of an initial set of 30 unique keywords and examine how they are performing on a competitive scale. You can adjust your keywords after you examine them more closely.

2. Improve your local ranking by creating relevant content for your target audience

The key to high ranking on Google is relevance. If you want to rank high on Google, you need to be creating content that is relevant to your target audience. This means writing about the things that your target audience would find valuable and interesting and that they would be willing to spend time reading. 

In addition to content that is relevant to your customer, you should plan on having hyperlocal pages. These pages will be the main landing pages that your customers will see on your website. They should have information about your business, including your address, phone number (NAP), hours of operation, and driving directions. You’ll also want to provide links to other web resources that will allow a customer to learn more about local events, businesses, and shopping options in your city. 

Step 1: Choose a service or product category

The research will tell you which categories are most popular in your city. Most likely, you’re going to target a type of business, such as cleaning supplies, auto services, counseling and medicine, and anything else in a similar category. For example, most people in Denver are house flippers, so our holistic cleaning service category is likely a good fit for our website. 

You can also overlap categories if they overlap. For example, if you offer lawn services the same as landscaping services, then you should also have a lawn category. Or if you offer plumbing and electrical services at the same time, then you can target the plumbing category.

In general, it’s best to choose categories based on what your customers are looking for. If you are a computer repair shop, it makes a lot more sense to create a computer category under your lawn services category than it would create a computer repair category. 

Step 2: Create category landing pages

Now that we’ve located our main categories on our website, it’s time to create page templates that will include all the important pages for our category.

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3. Optimize your website for mobile users

More than 50% of your website’s traffic could be coming from mobile users so it’s important that your website is optimized for mobile devices. This can be done by checking the “viewport” setting on your website. If you don’t know how to do this, just check with your webmaster. There are multiple tools that help optimize your site for SEO (such as Google Webmaster Tool and MozBar).

Operating your local website from a home position can remove a flimsy excuse you have for having a non-job or website. Your outdoor collection of outdoor plants provides you with a reason to put down the keyboard to write.

You can have the best of both worlds by having at least one physical location while having your off-site listings for SEO purposes. Once you do a proper SEO audit, you should evaluate which one you’ll choose. That decision can be made after you’ve made sure your local presence is helping you reach a potential audience you weren’t reaching before.

I was an affiliate marketer before I became a full-time writer for Find The Answer. I work with many large companies in the insurance industry and I provided SEO assistance. Before that, I was also a supervisor for a call center for several years.

There are so many tools online to help scale your local presence but the most frustrating to me have been places that told me “how to make money online on WordPress” without showing me how to actually make money on WordPress. Every online content creator knows the importance of SEO but many don’t seem to understand the most basic tools needed to stand out.

Instead of being frustrated myself, it’s good to understand some of the simplest things that can make a huge difference in how much money you’re making and how much traffic you’re bringing to your site.

Google loves websites that are accurate and use long-tail keywords. In a short auction conducted by Google, these are the terms your site will be compared against.

4. Get links to your site from trusted local sites and directories

Getting a link to your site from a trusted local site, like a “Best of” list or a directory, is a great way to build your reputation in your area. For example, if you work in tech, then you could get a link from a tech blog that is relevant to your business. Nobody knows what tech blog your competitors are using, but they will definitely know about your content.

Of course, an email will always be a contender. If your company uses email marketing, then you should try to optimize your emails for where they are going to land. The most important thing is to include information about where you’re located and your services or products.

Offline SEO, on the other hand, focuses less on where you are geographically located and more on your product and services. For example, your products, services, and/or expertise can be relevant to people in your local area, even if you’re not physically located there.

Your professional reputation, your customer reviews, and your site content can all be used to buttress and verify that reputation and clout. Virtual events like conferences and tradeshows can be valuable offline opportunities for local SEO.

According to Marc Wildstein, SEO expert and co-author of the upcoming book, it’s easier to begin local SEO through webinars than it is through email. This is because the content itself will more aptly represent who you are in the eyes of the audience. People will pay attention to cool, high-quality information. When someone makes a purchase based on listening to someone, they know they are getting value.

So if you discuss the advantages of your local SEO strategy in detail with those who will be running events for you, perhaps you will at least get a sense of what works with your brand.

Of course, your physical presence matters, too. If you sell products and services in person, then your presence matters just as much. Whether you’re attending an event or conducting an in-person SEO workshop, your presence matters.