It’s likely you have heard of local SEO and know how it is essential for individual businesses to optimize local SEO to improve search ranking, but hyperlocal SEO is a different kind of optimization. Hyperlocal SEO is more focused on smaller localities, such as towns, streets, neighborhoods, and spots near some well-known landmarks.
Benefits of Hyperlocal SEO
There are many benefits of hyperlocal SEO. It makes the search journey easier for your customer, and it’s also easier to compete with other businesses for any hyperlocal search terms. Many customers expect local search results to take precedence over the broader results, even when they don’t specifically search for local phrases.
Google has also become aware of these benefits.
In recent times, the search engine has responded to mobile habits of users searching for business “near to” or “near me” and are using these hyperlocal locations in their search phrases.
How Does Google Reward Hyperlocal SEO?
There are different ways that Google rewards websites that have been serious about their hyperlocal SEO.
The first is highlighting these businesses on Google’s map. The second is including these businesses in a “3 pack” box listing. Hyperlocal SEO also affects rankings.
If Google understands that you are a trustworthy website or even the sole example of a business due to your hyperlocal SEO, it also makes sure that calls to action, such as “share,” the website, and directions are then displayed in the search results so your customer can click on them.
How Does Hyperlocal SEO Work?
Having hyperlocal SEO work for you is about making sure that it’s easy for Google to know that your business is relevant to these hyperlocal searches.
Set Up Your Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is a free service to use and is essential.
When you sign up for a profile, you get to tell Google directly the name of your business, what it does, the exact location, what it looks like, openings times, and more.
This profile is going to be important when it comes to the 3-pack listings and the map result. For example, Google will tell the search user whether the business is closed or open right now and then give images to know what to expect. This information means that Google My Business makes it easier to know about your business and improves your customer’s experience. It gives more “at a glance” information for your business than it would if your business was just listed in a traditional directory.
With Google My Business, you can also post updates, so your customer has an idea of events and current offers from search results. You can use the analytics and insights to show you how well your hyperlocal SEO is working for you.
Use Onsite Content
Keywords are still important when it comes to hyperlocal SEO.
Hyperlocal terms also need to draw on the knowledge of the area where your business is located, so you need to research the area. Boroughs of wider cities or neighborhoods can be an excellent place to start. It may be worth it even to zoom in closer, especially if your business is near a landmark or prominent place, such as a sports stadium, monument, or university.
If this is the case, you should reflect this in your onsite content. Once you know what your hyperlocal term is, it should be shown in your descriptions, onsite text, alt text, and titles, so when Google does crawl your content, and your customers read it, they know where your business is located.
Add Structured Data Markup
Google makes it even easier to work on hyperlocal SEO with schema data on your website. When you include the relevant markup, you are making Google’s job easier to display calls to action and necessary information about your business.
Google will accept markup for opening times (including seasonal changes), location, and restaurant-specific properties. You should add a markup to content pages on your site as a best practice for the information in your Google My Business profile. Adding markup makes sure that as Google crawls your site, it delivers up-to-date and trustworthy details to your customers.
Customer Reviews
“Word of mouth” is incredibly essential for small businesses.
The importance of “word of mouth” is also true for hyperlocal marketing with customer testimonials and reviews. When a user searches for a local business, it also likely checks out reviews. Customer reviews are an important ranking signal for local SEO, so it’s also necessary to focus on reviews when working on hyperlocal SEO.
Google Ads
You can use hyperlocal SEO and marketing with your Google ads.
To do this correctly, you need to make sure that geolocation settings are correctly configured. You have to decide on a central point for your radius targeting. Most will use their physical location as their central point and then use the radius’s default distance.
However, for a hyperlocal campaign, you need to be more restrictive. Then think about keywords and the intent for those who are searching for your service or product. With this approach, you look at individual neighborhoods instead of entire metropolitan areas as a better starting point. This focus can also help you identify any negative keywords to exclude from your campaigns. If you are just focused on a 1-mile radius, you shouldn’t bid on specific keywords outside your target.
Use Hyperlocal SEO Terms as a Way to Stand Out
More and more users are searching for businesses using mobile devices. This means there is more reason now for Google to know what businesses are within walking distance of the user searching.
Hyperlocal terms are expected to be used more often. While you are adding hyperlocal SEO terms, you also want to analyze how the search terms are doing so you can tweak them if necessary. Remember that SEO is also evolving, so it’s important to note that your hyperlocal results may need to change as well.
If you are looking for help with local and hyperlocal SEO, contact us today.
