How to Improve Local Search Rankings of Your Business Website

How to Improve Local Search Rankings of Your Business Website

Do you own an offline business? Is your business (online or offline) tightly connected to one location? Or do you want to expand your geography and sell your product/service in different regions?

Whatever of these cases is yours, improving your local search rankings is the best answer for you. Marketers refer to it as 'local SEO.' But what is so special about it?

It is one of the best ways to find customers and adapt to their needs in a particular location. It brings you real clients that need your services or products here and now. That's why it is a go-to strategy for stores, beauty salons, fitness clubs, and hotels.

But where do you start, and how do you make it successful?

That's our topic today, so tune in.

Importance of Local SEO and Regional Optimization

Optimizing your website for regional promotion is one of the primary growth points for any company (big or small). Why? There are multiple reasons for that: 1. Search personalization. Most big players target everyone. But what people want is just getting some personalized attention and a tailored service. So, while you think it's impossible to bite giants like Amazon, you can get your market share. And the key to this is to offer a human approach and valuable insights. 2. Help Google trust you. Search engines use algorithms to distinguish your company from many others. But how do they know if they can trust you? There are many factors, and one of them is mentioning your company on local sites. It can truly work magic. Where can you get those local sites? Here is a helpful reference if you need to find business blogs that accept guest posts. 3. Location is key. Search engines get increasingly tied to the location where the request came from. There is no point in promoting a beauty salon, let's say, based on general requests without specifying the area. Text relevance, backlink profile, and other crucial SEO factors don't mean much when searching for nearby places. If you are standing on the street and looking for a hairdresser, you most likely don't need one on the other side of town. And search engines have learned to understand this, so they will show you a list of salons within walking distance. Clients will be received by those who better adapt their local search rankings to improve visibility.

How to Improve Your Local Search Rankings?

1. Do the Basics: NAP

   If you want to rank high in the regional market, you should remember one word – NAP, which is four words: Name, Address, and Phone number. Search engines consider this data when choosing the best local search results. This simple yet crucial information about your company helps search engines locate and categorize your business. That's why don't forget to add your business details wherever you mention your business online. This data is a must for local search monitoring: - Full company name. It must include your full name, no abbreviations, and a short description. Example: "building materials store, "Johnson and Sons." No abbreviations or "colloquial" names unless you are a brand known to absolutely everyone (we mean – absolutely everyone). - Full company address. Even if you have a couple of offices, mention either the most relevant one or all of them. But if you have headquarters overseas, your HQ address won't do much for local SEO. - Phone number. Choose one line that will be available for new and existing customers. A good idea is to specify your working hours. If your customer support is available 24/7, mention that as well. Pro tip: Ensure the PDF files containing your contacts are also optimized. SwifDo explains how to do it step-by-step.

2. Correct URL Structure

   Your website architecture is a must! It has to be clear and simple. For search engines, it is like a map. You want them to understand what your pages are about and what city or area they are intended for. Don't make their lives harder with messy architecture. Let's take a simple request for "plumbing services" as an example. In this case, you can follow a straightforward structure to promote your business in different cities: - your-site.com/regions/Boston/plumbing-services - your-site.com/regions/New-York/plumbing-services - your-site.com/regions/Los-Angeles/plumbing-services You will most likely need to get links from local resources for this part of SEO. You can use this guide to get backlinks from New York or Boston.

3. Prepare Detailed Content for Local Pages

   Now that you know how the URL structure is built, it's time to move on to preparing the content. For a successful SEO strategy, you have to prioritize the following: - Value. We are living in the age of oversaturation. There is too much information out there. Bring value to the table because nowadays, people will not read trashy text written for SEO. - Be specific. No one wants to read unnecessary information, so be clear about how you can help your website visitors. - Completeness. Being specific doesn't mean you don't need any copy at all. On the contrary, your website has to be complete, explaining what your business does and how. Please note: You have to pay attention to the word count. Let's say you want to rank for a particular keyword, and the pages that have top positions in search engines are long reads of 3000+ words. If you write 500 words, you won't be able to get to the first page, no matter how well you optimize your text. So, analyze the search results before creating content to dominate the local SEO.

4. Local SEO Without Regional Offices

   How do you do local SEO if you have a purely online business? The truth is that you don't need regional offices to ace the local search. Still, you have to shift your focus a bit. Remember that your page has to contain: - Include region-specific keywords in meta tags, headings, and content. But don't get spammy (yes, no one likes it still). Make your optimization as natural as possible. - You should focus on the review (aka listing) platforms, especially the regional versions. Add detailed product or service information, payment and guarantee data, reviews, and contacts. Ask your current clients to leave reviews. You can offer them a discount or a small gift for that. Let's face it – not having an office these days isn't a big deal. The world is turning online, so there is no need to stress over this. Just focus on the best local SEO practices and enjoy the benefits of this optimization tactic. Still, remember that any online business needs to have good customer support and seamless delivery. If you aren't there yet, check some real-life tips on improving delivery management and making it more efficient.

Concluding Thoughts

Today, optimizing your website locally is a little more complicated than before – we get it; the competition is tough. But not doing anything won't bring you anywhere closer to success. Yet, if you build a step-by-step strategy and stick to it religiously, your efforts will pay off. And hundreds of thousands of companies around the world prove it.