By How important is local SEO to your business? Nearly 83% of shoppers use Google to find local businesses. About 90% of those people make a local purchase within the next week of searching online.
Getting to the top of search results is no easy task. You’re competing with dozens of other local businesses for the coveted top three search results on Google.
Those top search results drive the most traffic to local websites. Optimizing your website for local SEO is essential if you want to grow your business.
Keep reading if you want to know how to get more traffic and leads to your website. You’re about to learn how to optimize your website for local search.
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1. Get Your Website Ready for Local SEO
Google takes certain elements of your site into consideration when ranking pages. Performance, security, and content are among the top three.
Google scans your site for HTML code to learn what your site is about. It indexes your site according to the HTML code. If HTML code is missing or inaccurate, you won’t get found in search engines.
Make sure your site has an SSL certificate installed and it’s optimized for mobile devices. The site needs to load quickly as well.
Before you start with this intense work, you might wonder if investing in local SEO is worth it? One tourism site reached the top search result on Google and earned traffic worth about $26,000 a month. Click here to find out more.
2. Know What Makes Valuable Content
Have you ever visited a food blog for an interesting recipe? Did you have to scroll down for five minutes, past the writer’s life story, and then get to the recipe?
That’s not a good reader experience. That’s predicated on the myth that you have to write at least 2000 words to get ranked.
That’s not always true. The key is quality content that’s valuable to readers. Get to the point and give readers what they want.
One of the most useful tools regarding quality content comes from Google. They hire Quality Raters to review web pages within search results.
It lets the search team at Google know if the algorithm works as it should. The Quality Raters use a set of guidelines to evaluate pages.
Read the Quality Rater Guidelines to learn how Google views quality content.
3. Off-Site SEO
There are local signals you need to send to Google to appear in local search results. Create a business listing using Google My Business. Do the same with other search engines and directories.
Make sure your business name, address, and phone number match your website and listings.
Get links from local newspapers and directories to your website. These links make your site credible and help your rankings.
Optimizing Your Website for Local SEO
Local SEO can become a huge part of your business. These tips for optimizing your website for local SEO help your business rank higher and earn more.
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