What matters for local SEO?
Relevance
Search engine results pages will always be curated with relevance in mind; Google is looking for results that closely match a search query in order to rank it highly for that term. It’s within your power to tell Google all about your business via your website and your Business Profile (more on that later), so that it can gain a great understanding of your relevance against search terms.
Distance
Distance is defined by Google as “how far each potential search result is from the location term used in a search. If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, we’ll calculate distance based on what we do know about their location.”
Prominence
This is all about how well-known Google judges your business to be; how prominent it is amongst your competition. It’s one of the most complex ranking categories in local search, and there is offline reputation to consider too.
Our local SEO services
As an SEO agency that covers the full spectrum of SEO activities, local SEO is a feather in our cap that can help make you a popular choice in your area. Here are some of the local search engine optimisation services we undertake for clients from all industries:
GBP Optimisation
As you may have gathered, your Google Business Profile is an integral part of your local SEO strategy, so it’s important to get it right. We know exactly how to make the most of a Google Business Profile, how to thoroughly fill one out, and keep it updated.
Local content
There is nothing our content team likes better than to get stuck into some local research, crafting content based upon it that makes your site an authority on relevant local topics. If there’s one thing Google’s fond of, it’s an authoritative site.
Location pages
Individual pages that focus on the areas that you serve can help you be found by local customers – we can create them, and we can write the content. We work with you to ensure every page is as helpful to your users as possible.
Local competitor audits
Think you know who you’re up against? If not, we’ll find out for you, and regardless of whether you’re familiar with your competitors or not, we can also measure your local SEO success against theirs, working hard to make you top dog.
Local business citations and NAPs audits
You need your business name, address and phone number in all the relevant places, so you can literally be found everywhere! We can help with this too.
Location-based keyword research
You can’t work blind with keywords, and that’s as relevant in local SEO as it is in regular SEO. We can accurately find the geographical search terms your potential customers are using, so that we can weave them naturally into your content.
Online reviews
We’ll take a look at where your reviews currently are, and how you’re managing them, advising you on how best to approach them going forward so that they positively impact your SEO efforts.
Local search schema
Schema speaks a search engine’s language, and sits behind your web pages to tell the search engine exactly what they need to know. If you’re appealing to the local community, there’s local search schema (also known as Local Business schema) for that – and we can handle it for you.
What are the local SEO ranking factors?
Google Business Profile
Formerly known as ‘Google My Business’, Google Business Profile is a kind of shop window in the SERPs, giving searcher’s the vital at-a-glance information that they’ll be looking for. Remember telephone directories? Google My Business is the modern digital equivalent.
Optimising your Google Business Profile is key to the success of your local SEO strategy, and it involves keeping it detailed and up to date, managing your reviews, and uploading images.
NAP citations
A NAP citation refers to the essential information about your business: its Name, Address, and Phone number – hence NAP. These usually appear on business directories, and on social media platforms.
Reviews
Many consumers won’t even think of becoming a customer of a business unless the testimony of happy people who have gone before are visible to view online. Reminding customers to leave a review about their experience, and responding promptly when they do, marks you out as a trusted and active business to Google.
According to Global Newswire, 95% of users read online reviews before making a purchase. Of these, 58% say they would pay more for goods which have positive reviews.
Links
Just as they are with regular SEO, backlinks can be valuable for local SEO strategies too. Pursuing backlinks by creating genuinely helpful, useful content for your users can help your local SEO
On-page SEO
What you put on your web pages has bearing on your local SEO. These can be optimised, through the content, meta descriptions and images, to appeal to local search intent.
SEO Case Study
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