#1 LOCAL SEO SAN DIEGO

Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website for a particular geographic area. When your site is optimized for local queries, your business is more likely to be recognized by the local audience, and therefore, new customers.

Brick-and-mortar shops, such as restaurants, cafes, flower shops, and other local businesses, can benefit from local SEO services. By implementing local SEO practices, small businesses allow their customers to find them both online and offline, mainly if they are located in the same geographical area.

By optimizing your business website for a local search SEO, you are letting Google know that your business is located in a specific geographical area, and you want your customers to find you there.

What do you need for a successful local SEO journey?

First and foremost, you need a physical address in a region or a city to create local landing pages and allow people to find you through a store locator. But, as a small business owner, you won’t have to worry about all these details.

Focus on your business, and let local SEO experts take care of:

• Local Business Schema markup
• Local SEO plugins
• SEO writing for a local audience
• Adding industry-relevant and local links to your Google My Business account
• Local SEO strategies
• Local citations
• And more.

A local business listing is an Internet profile with your business name, address and phone number, and other essential information regarding your local business. You can create a free local business listing on websites like Google Business Listing, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, etc.

Local listings can help your business website drive more traffic and attract more customers.

Local SEO citations are any online mentions of the local business’s name, address, and phone number. These citations may be found on local business directories, web pages, apps, or social platforms. Citations allow users to discover local stores while helping business owners improve their local SEO rankings.

A local business directory is a website that contains a listing of businesses in certain industries, towns, or niches. These listings usually provide basic information, such as business name, physical address, website address, and phone number. They can be filtered by different categories, including the type of business, activity, or business size.

The most popular listing sites are Yelp and Facebook.

NAP in local SEO is an acronym for Name, Address, and Phone number. It has to be correct when optimizing your local business website because search engines value precise and accurate information for their users.

Be careful with your NAP since incorrect information in the listings may affect your rankings.

In these unsettling times, local small businesses are fighting for their survival. Since everything went digital, it’s time your business started implementing local SEO practices to attract more customers and stand out from competitors even in these COVID-driven circumstances.

1. Claim your business listings

Your business listing is quintessential for maintaining high rankings and reputation. Keep your business information accurate and up-to-date, remove any duplicates that might exist, and resolve any inconsistency within the listing.

2. Update Google My Business account

Any changes should be listed in your Google My Business account. Whether you’ve changed your business name, address, phone number, or hours of operation, you shouldn’t forget to update your GMB account and add new information your customers will find helpful.

Also, it would be nice to add a logo and update interior photos, exterior photos, and product photos. Make sure they are high-quality. Otherwise, the overall listing may look sloppy and unprofessional.

3. Take advantage of local business directories

Online business directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, and others can foster your site’s visibility and boost your local search engine optimization. Get your business name, address, and phone number into these directories and help your potential customers find you quickly and easily.

4. Add location pages to your website

Make sure you have separate landing pages for each of your business locations. That way, you allow search engines to locate your listing and provide an adequate location top the user.

Include street, avenue, road, and other vital local business information in the landing page and decide whether you want to write them in full or abbreviated. Keep in mind that the way you write will determine how you will be uploading your information everywhere else.

5. Get great reviews from satisfied customers

Don’t hesitate to ask your customers to share their positive experiences with your business on Google Reviews or Yelp. Reviews can significantly improve your local SEO experience but note that this is not one-way communication. Don’t forget to respond to the existing reviews promptly and professionally, whether you’ve received positive or negative comments.

Extra tip: Whenever you can, use target keywords when responding to reviews (but don’t spam!). It may help you improve the rankings a little bit.

6. Optimize your site for mobile devices

Mobile-friendliness, or responsive web design, is a vital ranking factor that may significantly improve your search engine rankings. Over 50% of overall traffic comes from smartphones, which is why your site may rank higher if users can access it from all display types and sizes.

7. Target local keywords

Use Google’s Keyword Planner to get an idea of the most popular search terms for a particular geographical area. It allows you to create a comprehensive list of locally relevant keywords you can use in your site’s title tags, description, headings, content, copy, URLs, etc.

8. Focus on getting high-quality backlinks

Getting high-quality backlinks can enhance your local SEO practices and make your local store more visible in organic results. Building backlinks can be a challenging task, but with the right tactics, nothing is impossible.

Here are some tips on getting valuable backlinks:

• Create high-quality content
• Guest blog on sites with high domain authority
• Collaborate with local influencers.

9. Create local content

Creating local content associated with your niche can be pretty beneficial to your local SEO experience. Write local guides, how-to articles, tips and tricks, and other popular SEO content forms to increase your website’s visibility on the web.

10. Use social media

Social media has become a huge market small business owners use to promote their products and services. Besides, Google can crawl search results from your social platforms, such as Facebook business page and reviews, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter account and recent tweets.