Local SEO Tips to Improve Website Search Ranking

It’s crucial to land your business as high as possible in Google search rankings, however, Google’s algorithms are very complicated and continually evolving.  Even so, you have a good chance of having your business recognized by Google as popular (equating to a higher ranking) if you use our local SEO tips to improve website search ranking.

When your business takes advantage of these rank-boosting tips, not only can you expect increased traffic to your website, but more potential local customers will be able to easily find your place of business at precisely the time they need your product or service, translating to an increased opportunity to turn a potential customer into a loyal one. 

Your business can benefit greatly from positive local media coverage because media outlet websites tend to have heavy traffic and contain large numbers of built-in local SEO terms. This is one of our most effective local SEO tips for your business.

To get started, identify some local news outlets from your county and adjacent ones, and compile press contact information for all of them.  This information can come from the “Contact ” or “About Us” web pages of local radio stations, TV stations and newspapers.  Other sites (including blogs and social media groups) that are dedicated to local happenings can also be great outlets on which to have your business mentioned.

Next, you’ll want to “pitch” a unique story idea to all of your contacts via a press release.  Your “pitch” will introduce you and your business to each journalist.

Make sure to email each contact individually, rather than sending a mass email to all at once.  Personalize each message with the journalist’s name, and by mentioning the name of their media outlet within the body of your email.  The subject line of your email should compel each recipient to open and read the content.

Your pitch will include your press release.  The press release document should follow a specific format to ensure that the person reading the pitch has all the requisite information easily accessible. Your press release can announce the launch of a new service or product, the hire of a new team member, the receipt of a newsworthy industry recognition or award, or a community event your business is hosting or sponsoring.

Take advantage of the numerous available business directory sites (Google My Business, Yelp, and The Yellow Pages, for example), where you can help potential customers find you by supplying your company profile information, and then linking back to your own business website.  You should use consistent information to identify your business across all social and local business profiles.  Whenever possible, use each site’s authentication or process to verify that your profile is being managed by an authorized representative. Unfortunately, due to the way that some of these sites operate, your information is not locked down and can be changed arbitrarily by customers or data aggregators.

Additionally, you’ll want to be as forthcoming with information as possible on these profiles.  Use complete and correct contact and location information, and give as much detail as you can to fill in required or optional descriptions and other information.  Provide accurate opening hours, and keep them updated if they change.  Whenever possible, provide interesting, aesthetically pleasing business photos to beef up your profile.

Encourage interaction with your customers by creating a link for them to use to leave reviews for your business, then respond to the feedback they leave.  This shows that your attention doesn’t stop when they hand over their money to you; it indicates that you value your customers and their opinions and that they can expect attentive customer service before, during and after their transactions with your business.

As you rack up more of these types of directory profiles linked back to your own website, Google will begin to recognize your business as being popular, which helps your business climb in search rankings.

There are quite a few different profiles that need to be managed, both to set up and to monitor to stop unauthorized changes. For a unified dashboard that controls and locks your company’s local business profiles, access to additional media presentation options and detailed visitor analytics, take a look at LOCALSYNC’s Digital Information Management.

This is perhaps one of the most overlooked local SEO tips because many business owners aren’t even aware of how negatively-impacted search rankings could be due to “appreciably similar” content across separate pages.  What that means is that if you cut and paste content from one page of your site to another, search engines can recognize this duplicate content, and will not allow more than one of the pages containing that content to be displayed in search results.  (You may even find that none of your pages will be displayed due to this practice.)

Rather than using the cut and paste technique in crafting your local pages, your online marketing efforts will see a higher return if you use unique images and text (including titles and meta tags) on each and every page.  As an added bonus, a compelling, detailed website will keep your potential customers interested and clicking through more and more pages, and will offer them a lot more information about the products you sell or services you provide.

Even the most savvy of business owners can benefit from trying out the above suggestions, and LOCALSYNC is here to help with even more local SEO tips to improve website search ranking.

Call today at (954) 210-7800 for more information. You can also email us to schedule a free consultation to find out how we can help you build your brand.

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