Local SEO is a marketing technique that helps you to improve organic traffic and gain new patients in nearby areas for a local business. Your brick-and-mortar business can easily be found with searches that include “near me”. For example, “Italian restaurant near me”.
As with any type of SEO there are specific local SEO ranking factors that you’ll need to follow in order to get listed in the search engines for local listings. And be sure that you always follow the local SEO best practices. Here are just some of the ways that you can improve your local search visibility:
- Create and manage your Google Business Profile
- grow your reputation
- optimizing your website for locations
- build citations
- local link building
Why Local SEO Is Important
Over 46% of Google searches are searches for local information whether it’s a place to eat, someone looking for a dress, or an event. This is a powerful tool for small businesses. So if your business isn’t optimizing your website for local searches you’re missing out on a ton of potential patients.
With the right local seo strategy you can begin getting more phone calls, more visitors to your store, and ultimately improve sales.
Here are some other reasons why local seo is essential to your business,
- Local SEO Puts Your Business Front and Center.
- Local SEO Will Give You A Competitive Edge.
How To Do Local SEO
Not every company wants to hire a local seo expert. Doing your own local business is possible, however, it is time consuming.
Here are some of the ways that you can improve your seo on google,
- Perform a local seo keyword research & placement strategy.
Finding local keywords requires keyword research. It’s important that you optimize your website with keywords that people are actually searching for. And for local seo keyword research the biggest factor is the location and place.
Here’s how you can find a list of keywords for your business:
- Start with a few searches for your valuable keywords + city name
- Copy the URLs of the top ranking websites. Start with 5 – 10.
- Use a local seo tool, such as Google to find Organic Positions for these URLs
- Sort them by volume, and you’ll have a list of keywords to use.
Once you have these keywords you’ll need to place them in the correct places on your website – page title tag, H1 tag, landing page URL, landing page content, and landing page image ALT attribute.
2. Get Visible Citations
Citations are a key factor to increasing your local visibility. They include your business’ name, address, and phone number on another website. There are plenty of tools that help you to uncover how many citations your competitors have so that you can beat them.
Google My Business is one of many citation websites, and probably the most important.
3. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
You’ll need to optimize your Google My Business profile to improve your ranking. You can achieve this by uploading high quality images of your location, team members, and facilities, adding relevant categories based on your competitors rankings, use image URLs that include keywords and regularly update your profile with relevant posts.
4. Focus on Local Link Building
Build a local link campaign through websites and local press coverage. More than likely there’s a local magazine website for your city or nearby cities that you can list your business on. Keep in mind that social media posts count as backlinks.
5- Local Reviews
Local reviews don’t only help you gain new patients, but they also help to improve your local SEO efforts. Be sure that you are helping your patients easily make reviews whether it’s a tablet in your store, or a QR code on the receipt.
How Much Does Local SEO Cost?
Local SEO services can range between $300 and $2,000 per month depending on your business needs. Some markets are more competitive and require more work to obtain higher placement in the search engines.
As a local SEO specialist Dispensary Growth offers a variety of local seo packages for your small business. Our services have helped businesses just like yours increase their visibility on mobile searches.
How To Improve Local SEO
You can find a local seo guide online for ways to improve your local SEO. Here are some of the best local seo for small business changes to make that will increase your local visibility by getting you listed in the search engines,
- Be sure to create citations listings consistently.
- Take advantage of Google My Business.
- Encourage reviews of your business.
- Add new keywords to your website correctly.
- Get local press to help with local backlinks.
Consider speaking with a local seo consultant if you don’t want to hire a company to handle these tasks for you. Local SEO marketing is one of the most important aspects of your company’s success online. In today’s world, everyone has a cell phone in their hand looking for local information right now.
Local SEO Ranking Factors
Proximity of Address to Point of Search
You cannot completely control this ranking factor, but it plays a major role in your business showing up in the local search results. This factor is determined by where the searcher is located in proximity to your business. If they are closer to your competitor then your competitor will likely show up before you.
With that being said, one way you can influence Google on this local ranking factor is through citation and making sure your business name, address, and phone number are on your website and on local business listings across all online business directories.
Your Reviews
Reviews give your business credibility, and play an important role in influencing your patients. Google understands this and that’s why the number of reviews your small business has can affect your ranking positively or negatively.
Developing a review marketing strategy can help to increase the number of reviews you get constinustly. This is something that Dispensary Growth can help you achieve.
Local Links
The number of high domain authority links that you have from trustworthy websites the more trustworthy your website is. At least that’s how Google sees it. Obtaining links from different domain authority and page authority scores will improve your ranking.
Local SEO Keyword Research
When searching for local keywords it’s important that you understand your target audience so that you know what keywords they are searching for. Then you’ll want to determine how many people are searching for those keywords based on their search volume, and how high the competition is for those keywords.
There are plenty of free tools to help you with this, including Google Keyword Tool.
Local SEO Tool
Local SEO tools help you to rank higher and grow your search visibility through effective keyword research, competitive analysis and citations. You can find a local seo service to complete every aspect of your marketing strategy for the areas that you’re not capable of doing on your own. This helps to keep costs low.
Local SEO Specialist
Dispensary Growth specializes in getting your small business showing up in searches. When your business shows up in the nearby searches your business reach grows and your business begins to get noticed.
Give us a call today and we’ll discuss your business goals and how we can help you obtain them.
