Want to outrank the competition? Here is an article with 12 local SEO
solutions to help you outrank the competition.
This is in two parts. Today this
article will cover solutions 7-12. Leave
a comment below.
12 Local SEO Solutions That Will Help
You Outrank the Competition – Part 2
Why should local SEO solutions matter to your business?
Out of all of the ways to market your business, more and more people are
focusing on local search. For the first few years of internet marketing,
business owners and marketers were all about SEO. Then around 2009, the
marketing topic was social media. Today, the big marketing topic is local
search.
There are a couple of simple reasons why it’s so important to your
business.
44% of clicks go
to the top search result. The top three results get on
average 75% of all of the clicks.
Are you starting to understand how improving your local search results
can mean more money in your pocket?
Would you like to know how you can make that happen?
Read on for 12 local SEO solutions you can use to improve your search
rankings.
What’s the
Competition Doing?
Knowing how and where your competition ranks in search results can help
you understand where your potential customers may be going.
You’ll also quickly learn what keywords your competition may be trying
to rank for.
Here’s what to pay attention to when you’re doing competitive research:
·
Your top 5-10 competitors
·
Each competitor’s GoogleMyBusiness Listing. Pay attention to the text
and images and look for keywords and locations they might be trying to rank
for.
·
Customer reviews – how many and are the reviews positive or negative.
You can either do
this on your own or use local SEO solutions like Crunchbase or SEM Rush.
NAP & Structured
Data Markup
We can’t talk about your website without a little geek-speak.
NAP is simply your name, address, and phone number. This cannot be
stressed enough to make sure that these fields are accurate and consistent
throughout your website and directory listings.
Structured markup, also called Schema markup, is code that you have on
your website that tells search engines how your site should appear in search
results.
This makes your search results more user-friendly.
This resource from Kissmetrics tells
you step-by-step how you can
add structured markup data to your website.
Customer Reviews
Matter
Not only can customer reviews
influence rankings, they can also influence a customer’s decision to buy.
Over 62% of buyers consider
online reviews to be important or very important when finding a local business.
You can ask your customers to leave reviews on Google and Facebook.
Also, search for existing reviews and respond to them. You’ll show that you
care about your business and your customers.
Let’s say you were looking up a pest
control service in Concord, North Carolina. So you search for pest control service reviews near
concord nc.
You find a company that you may not be familiar with, but you decide to
call based on a number of positive reviews.
Rank Images and
Videos
One overlooked aspect of local search is to try to rank videos and
images for keywords. This is probably one of the easiest local SEO solutions.
·
A few easy tips to rank images already on your website are:
·
Make sure the image is related to the webpage.
·
The image file name should be changed from IMG_4323425 to something
related to the keyword.
·
The higher the image is on your page, the better chance it has to rank.
·
Fill in the alt-text and description of the image. Preferably with your
keywords, but don’t keyword stuff.
This is one way to help you rank in local search results that your
competition probably isn’t doing.
Get Listed
Online directories are easy to miss as far as local SEO solutions go.
You can help your local search results by making sure your business is listed
in the main online search directories; such as Yelp, Citysearch, and
MerchantCircle and YP.com.
Does that mean that you should submit your website to every directory?
Absolutely not. Remember the earlier discussion regarding backlinks: Quantity
does not mean quality.
When you list your site, pick the main directories above and include
BingPlaces.
If you’re a member of business organization or chamber of commerce, take
advantage of your membership and make sure you’re listed in their business
directory.
It’s very important to make sure that your listings are accurate and
consistent. If you have listings all over the place with old addresses or phone
numbers, you’re diluting the potential impact of your search results.
Don’t Discount
Social Media
Social media
influencers tend to agree that social media remains one of the top local SEO
solutions.
It’s still debatable whether social media has a direct impact on search
results, but social media does help in other ways.
Social media networks are great for backlinks. They also have the
potential to create conversation around your company. This sends social signals
to Google’s algorithm.
The more positive the social signal, the more likely you’ll rank higher.
Finding Local SEO
Solutions Can Be Easy
As you can see, there are at least a dozen ways you can improve your
local search results. If you make these suggested changes, you should start to
see your search results improve.
You might be ready to hand some of those tasks off to someone else.
Source: by Dale Harris
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