Local SEO Checklist for Small Business Websites

Ever since the SEO comes into existence, people are getting more curious about how they can expend their reach locally in their area and generate leads.

They infect spend their time & effort in SEO but they should evaluate what wrong they are doing to promote their business online.

If you are running any local business & looking to generate leads from your area then you should invest in local SEO strategies.

Local SEO is completely different from general SEO practices. Here you need to focus on the activities which help to improve your business visibility in your local area.

Before we get started, we need to understand what is local SEO & how we can take leverage of it.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO belongs to the local search engine marketing. We should optimize the website for the local audience to win the business from your targeted local area. This is a 100% local customer-focused practice so that if a customer searches any service on your targeted area, your business gets visible to them & they ended up calling you’re for the job.

Here is the checklist which you should keep in mind when working on your local SEO campaign.

Optimize Your Website

So, as the first step of your local SEO campaign, you need to optimize your website for your local audience. Make your website easy for users, it will also help you to get notified by google as well. Remember, optimize your website for your audience & google will automatically follow.

You need to keep in mind these points:

• Mentioned Location on Your Website

Your website should clearly mention the area where you are providing your services or selling any product. Mention proper details about the area you cover for your business along with the address where you located. If you are selling your services in multiple areas or have multiple business addresses, mention this clearly so that users & search engine don’t get confused.

Your website represents your business, so make everything transparent.

• Update NAP Citations on Your Website

The full form of NAP is Name, Address, Phone number. Make sure you add full NAP across your website (on your all web pages). Make sure you use exact same address details/ format to them.

You also need to use Schema.org markup on your NAP pages to direct the search engine about your company information.

Here’s the script that you need to use to your website’s backend:

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”>

<p itemprop=”name”>COMPANY NAME</p>

<p itemprop=”address” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>

<p itemprop=”streetAddress”>ADDRESS LINE 1</p>

<p itemprop=”addressLocality”>CITY</p>,

<p itemprop=”addressRegion”>REGION</p>

<p itemprop=”postalCode”>POSTCODE/ZIP</p.

<p itemprop=”telephone”>PHONE NUMBER</p>

<meta itemprop=”latitude” content=”LATITUDE” />

<meta itemprop=”longitude” content=”LONGITUDE” />

</div>

Don’t forget to change the BOLD text to your business information.

If you do this, this will help search engines to determine what you are promoting your business in the mentioned area only & rank your website well.

• Create Separate Pages for Multiple Location

If you are selling your services in multiple locations, it’s better to create separate pages for them. It will be easy for you, your audience & search engine to keep things separate.

For you, you can easily target separate locations for the services & add location-specific content to them.

For your audience, they can easily understand the type of service & location you cover.

For search engines, this will help them to rank your webpage on your location-specific targeted keyword.

• Optimize Your Metadata

Metadata is a major ranking factor for the ranking of a website. Optimize your metadata (title, meta description, heading tags, etc) according to the webpage & mention the location you serve in it. Search engine shows title & meta description on the SERP according to the keywords a user search & if a user finds your title & meta description worthy, they will land on your website.

Get Listed on Google My Business

After you complete all on-site setup, the next thing is to list your business on Google My Business. GMB is a free business listing service by google which allows business owners to list their business information, photos, complete address, share an update.

When someone searches you by your business name or search for a service in your area for some keywords then your business may get appear on Google with your contact details.

If your customers want to visit the business location, they can easily reach there by using the map direction.

Once you list your business on GMB, timely share business updates, photos, reply on user questions. The idea behind this is to keep yourself active on GMB so that you do not miss any potential customer from there.

Get Reviews

In 2019, Local SEO is all about customer reviews. The more online reviews you have, more you have the chances to get the customer.

Try to get as much as reviews on your Google My Business listing profile. Approach your customers to do so once you give them a service. You can offer giveaways or next service discounts to them so they can leave good reviews on your listing.

Besides GMB listing, try to get the positive reviews on all your online profiles & listings.

In recent times, users search for businesses online for their service quality before they hire any business. So, it’s better to keep your all online profiles ready for them with good reviews.

You also need to reply to all the reviews you receive. This is a very effective approach & shows how far you can go to give a good experience to your customer.

Create Local citations

Local directory listing & citation building is very important for any local business. These not only create backlinks for your website but also build your online reputation & help you rank on your local keywords.

Make sure you submit the same information every time when you create citations. Despite the fact that this method is time-consuming but very efficient. Search for the local directories & list there. If you are not able to find them, just check your competitors which website they are using through competitive backlink research.

To perform this backlinks research you can use tools like:

1. Ahrefs
2. UberSuggest
3. Majestic SEO
4. Small SEO Tools

The list is huge, but above will help.

Once you get the list, start to submit your business on them. Remember, do not create a lot of citations in a single day. Make it a daily practice. Google loves smart & hard work and hates bulk submissions. Let’s google discover your local citations slowly & trust me this will work.

These local citations will:

1. Create backlinks for your website.
2. Create online profiles for reputation management
3. Drive targeted traffic to your website
4. Increase customer walk-in by giving them directly to your business.

This is a very important strategy for your local SEO. You need to start this right away.

Create Social Media Signals

This is another very important practice for local SEO. If you are not doing this then you are losing serious business.

Create your social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc & start posting there on a regular basis.

Having social media pages are very important as they represent your business & you should be active thereby relying on user’s comments, posting photos & stuff about your business.

Instagram is very popular these days & you should invest your time on it & other social media platforms.

You can check our complete Instagram marketing guide if you need to know more about it.

Conclusion

Local SEO is very helpful for all small businesses which are serving in any local area. If you spend time in all practices as mentioned above, you will definitely be a winner.

Focus on your customer service & satisfaction to get positive reviews, create local citation & make your website ready for users & search engine to find you.

So which strategy you follow for your local business marketing? Let us know in comments If you think I’ve missed any point here

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