SEO for Local Visibility
Is it rare to find a person without
hearing the word SEO? It’s just a common
term ‘Search Engine Optimization,’ but here we are going to discuss something a
bit unknown to many, which is called ‘SEO for local visibility.’ It’s unknown
because appearing in the local search result is desired by most of the
companies, but the process is not that simple.
It’s the very first step after going
online. To get exposure in the lucrative digital world & appear top in the
SERPs(Search Engine Result Page), you have to focus on SEO. If your business is
locally based, then you should have the understanding of SEO for local
visibility. Yes, there is no shortcut unless you want to spend a serious amount
of money & time to appear on the first page of search as SEM(Search Engine
Marketing)! Here I am going to dive deep & try to discuss best tips &
tricks to SEO for local visibility.
Why should you know about SEO for local visibility?
Suppose you are a local business
owner and after going online, you want to appear on the top page of SERPs. Or
you can be a person who is working on SEO for a local company & the very
first thing you need to know is SEO’s importance for local visibility.
You already know that Google uses
your location & whenever you search for something, it shows the result of
local sources. To appear above your competitors in the search, you should have
a clear concept of SEO for local visibility. After the Pigeon update of Google,
it’s now clear about the importance of SEO. The fascinating part is that you
can appear on SERPs at organic search without investing huge money SEM. Organic
results are the free & efficient way to spread your website.
What are we going to discuss here?
Considering the competition on the
market & a lot of effort on SEO, there is no other way rather focus on SEO
for local visibility. You can spend less money online and reach maximum
customers considering the cost of offline marketing. And in this era of the
digital age, you should focus on your presence online. But what you need to
learn? What are the basics? You will find this article helpful if you want to
know some first knowledge of SEO for local visibility.
What will we not discuss here?
Here we will focus on pure SEO and
its impact on SERPs. Remember, focusing on SEO will let you win in a long-term
run & it’s cost effective. Here you will not find any direction about SEM.
I will discuss it in my future articles. Though I have kept a small section on
content writing considering its importance, I have also avoided detail
discussion on it. To learn more about content writing read here.
The core of SEO for local visibility:
You should always remember the
importance of SEO for local visibility to your business’ success on the
internet. People every day spend time on the internet to search their desired
product or service. If you don’t concentrate here, you are likely to lose
potential customers of your website or service. There are several important
factors of SEO for local visibility, but here I am going to discuss the
essential steps for long-term success.
Most
important steps to SEO for local visibility:
1.
Secure your
place at Google My Business Page
2.
Website
& landing page preparation
3.
Relevant
contents
4.
Focus on
citation
5.
Organic
Links & Penalty
6.
Nourish your
review
7.
Emphasize on
Social sites
8.
Strategy
based on your opponents
1. Secure your place at Google My Business page:
Have you heard of Google My Business
Dashboard? Here you need to input your
company profile & your NAP (Name, Address & Phone number). If you
already have a My Business Dashboard then you’re halfway done. You need to be
sure that you own the account.
Duplicate entry
If you find any duplicate entry,
just destroy them without any hesitation. How will you find the duplicate
entry? Just search on google map using your business phone number. If you find
more than one entry, then you need to remove others and keep the original one.
It’s necessary to SEO for local visibility.
Accurate NAP
Name, Address & Phone number
needs to be accurate & same at all positions. A slight change can lead your
customer to an entirely different location. Google even said that you should represent
your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. All over the internet
world, your NAP should be same.
The address should be physical and
also accurate. If you have changed your office, then you need to input it &
verify your page again. Suppose you have a big business and you have different
offices at different locations. Then you need to input the local office address
here. It’s mandatory to fulfill the SEO for local visibility. After the Pigeon
update, presence in local search is not possible if you are not in the area.
Phone number needs to be accurate too & landline number is preferable.
Associating proper category
When inputting your Google My
Business Page, be extra cautious selecting your business type. You need to
input them in 2 different location. Suppose you have a restaurant then you need
to choose associating business type “restaurants” twice. It’s the most
important thing at google listing & for the SEO for local visibility. You
need to ensure that your primary category is your core group.
Is there any penalty?
What you need to check is there any
penalty in effect. How can you check it? The most possible and hustle free
process is go to google map & search using your phone number or keyword or
business name. If it appears but doesn’t appear at google search then “Houston,
we have a problem!”. To remove a penalty, you need to work with a penalty
expert. If there is no penalty, then you are ready to launch, and you can work
further on SEO for local visibility.
Page verification
Your Google My Business Page should
be verified to get all the benefits of your business listing. There is two way
of verification, one is by phone & another one is by postcard. Usually, the
postcard process needs several weeks to reach the postcard to you. Phone
verification is not available for all countries.
Email for contact
You need input a public email
address under the contact information box at Google My Business Page. It will
help your customers to communicate with you. Your domain email address is
recommended.
Accurate & proper URL
At My Business Page, provide an
accurate & proper website URL of your website. If you have a single office
at a single location, then you can use a single URL, but if you have multiple
offices, then you need to use appropriate URL. Site construction should be
stable and user-friendly. A poor & inappropriate site structure can lead to
a bitter consequence. You need to provide proper URL of your website where your
customer will get best user experience otherwise your hard labour on SEO for
local visibility will go in vein.
Introduction of your business
In Google My Business page, you will
get a field to input a brief description of your business. The description
should be spam free, unique & at least 50 characters. It reflects your
business page & spamming is not recommended.
Other necessary information:
Add a high-quality picture and
locate your business at google map will let your customer get an idea about
your business without visiting your website. Office hours & days should be
mentioned carefully. You can check your profile completeness status and work
there to get the maximum percentage. You can hire a Google trusted photographer
photography & let your customer enjoy a virtual tour of your business
place. These are the first step of your SEO for local visibility.
2. Website & Landing Page preparation
Here comes to hard parts. You need
to optimize your website and landing page for better user experience as well as
let google crawlers get information from your site. This will lead to a better
page ranking on SERPs.
Already you have provided an URL at
Google My Business Page, and now you need to make sure that it’s well managed
and easy to read for Google crawlers. For better SEO for local visibility,
always remember that Google is not a human being but a code, which crawls in
your provided location & tries to read & identify your submitted data.
Website or Landing page?
You may have provided a website link
or a landing page link but first, let’s find out what website address is &
what is landing page. All website have a landing page. Whenever you click on a
web address, it shows you a page, and it calls landing page. If you have a
single location business, then it’s recommended to use web site address. But if
you are using multiple locations then you should customize different landing
pages so that customers from a different location can get appropriate data.
NAP at your landing page
It’s natural that you have provided
your business name, your address, your phone number and other information on
your landing page. But is it readable for Google crawler? Remember that Google
can see the picture and read it. So if you keep your information on a picture
at the landing page, be 100 sure that Google crawler has failed to read it. The
result will be severe. Try to use ALT Text so that crawler can read it. Even don’t forget to mention
your business hours at our landing page for a better SEO for local visibility.
Site structure
The place where you are going to
bring your potential customer should be prepared for that. Site construction
should handle the viewers. It should have enough information about your service
as well links to different pages. The presentation should be attractive so that
viewers can find your website interesting. If they just leave your site after a
staying there for a short time, your bounce rate is going to climb high. High bounce rate
will let Google mark your site an irreverent website, and your hard labor on
SEO for local visibility will go in vein.
Content is the most important part
of your landing page. It should be spamming free & unique. It should
describe your nature of business as well as a short description of your
business. Content is a very important part of a website & I discussed how to create high-quality content in another
blog. If you are needed then go through.
Meta title, Meta description & indexing
Meta title & Meta description
are the most important part of a proper website. Meta title lets Google read
& decide your website’s name. As well as Meta description shows what the
website is all about. It’s also an essential part of a proper website. How can
you know what is your website’s Meta title & Meta description? Just go to
your website or landing page & press Ctrl+U, and it will show website’s
Meta title & Meta description. Both Meta title & description should
have your Business name, city or state name as well as your contact number.
Avoid grammatical mistakes for a better SEO for local visibility.
Also, check your website for proper
indexing. Use a different browser and get the link to your website. Then just
copy past it into the search bar. If it appears on the search than your website
is indexed. If not then “Houston, we have a problem. Again!”
Others!
You can keep driving direction,
payment information & some other critical information on your landing page
for a better SEO for local visibility. Like all images should have ALT text
& reviews. Also, secure your authority on the domain address. Loading page
speed is also critical. You can easily check your website’s loading speed at Google Insight.
I will also recommend keeping the
business address at the footer of the website. It will help viewers to identify
the address of your business location. On a nutshell, make your landing page
easily readable for Google crawler. Also, keep in mind about making the website
mobile friendly. You can check the mobile view of your website easily and to
check its speed go to Google Insight again. Now the most important task for
you, install Google Analytics to get an idea about website’s traffic & all critical
information needed track conversions. Google Webmaster Tool is also very useful tool for tracking a different kind of
errors & penalty of your website. It will also show crawler related errors
& whether it is indexed or not.
3. Relevant Contents:
Relevant content is the most
important part of your SEO for local visibility. Google puts extra emphasis on
contents. Read this article on content to learn more about how to prepare content for a website. Let’s go some basics,
SEO friendly content
Content should be & must be SEO
friendly. There are several criteria needs to be fulfilled for content to be
SEO for local visibility friendly. Need proper keyword density (1-2.5 keyword
per 100 words), a big no-no keyword spamming, 100% unique, etc. If you can
mingle all these in a single content than its SEO friendly.
Relevant
Contents need to be relevant. If a
viewer finds your content irrelevant than he or she may leave your website
immediately and it will increase your bounce rate. As a result, Google will
mark your site irrelevant, and after making all efforts, your site will not get
a handsome ranking!
Proper Keyword density
Let’s check an example,
SEO friendly content is a must in
every website but to make it SEO friendly you need to work on SEO friendly
content.
In the example, the keyword “SEO
friendly” used 3 times in a single sentence which is called spamming. Such use
of keywords are not recommended for a proper content.
Make it simple & understandable
Always focus on the simplicity on
your contents. If you complexly write contents than it will be hard for your
audience and remember the internet is a place where every type of people
searches for different ideas. You need to write your content for every type of
individuals. If someone finds it hard then, they will just leave your site
which will not be a good sign for you. Otherwise, your hard work on SEO for
local visibility will go in vain.
Presentation
It is true that you can find tons of
articles on different topics on the internet. But never copy a content for your
website. It will just give Google crawler a wrong signal. You can read them
& create a new one. The presentation needs to be interesting & unique.
Since this article is on a different
topic, so I am not going to discuss any further about content. Go to the
provided link to learn more about content.
4. Focus on citation
After the Pigeon update of Google,
the importance of citation on doubt but not minimized. It plays a good part on
the algorithm of SEO for local visibility. Citation can be divided into two
categories. They are,
1.
Structured citation
2.
Unstructured citation
But before going deeper, let’s know
about the citation.
What is Citation:
Citation means the listing of your
NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) in the web. It plays a vital role to SEO
for local visibility. But how it works? Suppose a local newspaper has made a
coverage on your business & your NAP is also written in their online
article. It’s called unstructured citation. If you have listed your business
along with your NAP in a local business directory, then it will call structured
citation.
Quality over quantity
For citation, you need to focus on
quality over quantity. Tons of citation on useless places over the internet
will not fulfill your need. But citation on a quality directory is significant.
It can be done on local phone book listing, local association, local business
listing, quality news service, etc. Depending on your business you need to identify
top listing sites & areas for your citation. Google’s actions are very
severe & if they found guilty, then they will just remove the site or page
from the index & probably from their search database!
5. Organic Links & Penalty
Organic links bring visitors in your
website. To get more, there is a way of using backlinks in different sites. To
this one can use spamming way which is illegal. It will bring visitor for a
shorter period, but for a long time, my recommendation is to avoid spamming.
Google has emphasized on this after their latest update. They like high-quality
links to your website but not spamming. Spamming will ruin all the works in SEO
for local visibility.
No manual webspam action
Quality backlinks are very useful on
the path to SEO for local visibility. But if there is manual web spamming then
it should be removed. But how? I have already discussed previously that your
page should be verified at Google webmaster tools & from there you can
easily find the manual webspam. Click on the manual action tab of Google
webmaster tools, and it shows any result then you need to remove them. If it
shows nothing, then sit back and relax.
Algorithmic penalties
Always keep an eye on the Google analytics.
If you see a sharp change (I mean a drop) on your viewers’ numbers than you
should check the algorithm. To track it properly you can keep a record of your
algorithm update & review the number of viewers can identify the algorithm
problem. You can also use the Penguin Tools
to do it easily. It will help a lot to SEO for local visibility.
Always be careful about penalty.
It’s very easy to get penalty from Google but very hard to solve & remove
the penalty. Penalty removal process is very lengthy so considering the long
run always avoid penalty from search engine.
6. Nourish your review:
For a better SEO for local
visibility, reviews are the most important part of your business or your
website. Even if you have a higher ranking at SERP but bad reviews from your
existing viewers will not help you in the long run. You need to read your
reviews daily & take necessary actions if it is needed. Google My Business
page also have a review system, and you need to focus on them also.
If the reviews are good, don’t sit
back and relax. You need to improve your service to keep that ranking
consistent. Having everything ok and a bad review can destroy all the hard
work. There are 3rd party review sites available depending on your business.
You can find them online & offline & even in the social site. You can
use these sites and get some review.
If the reviews are bad, then you
need to improve your service. You can do anything to get the review even if you
have bad service. Your service should be evolved according to the reviews.
Don’t spam and get the review from
the same person again & again. It will not help you in the long run.
Reviews should be natural & unique. If it’s negative, then work on it to
solve the problem.
7. Emphasize on Social Sites:
Considering the evolution of social
sites, you need to focus on them too. Facebook, Google+. LinkedIn plays a vital
role for your business. For a successful SEO for local visibility, you need to
secure your presence there using the same NAP of your company. Let’s have a
better look on this topic,
Get your reviews
You can get a quality review from
these social sites. They are the loyal viewers of your website who has already
connected to you by your social site pages. You can get their review from there
easily and take proper measures. They will provide the review on your every
service by giving you like or other appreciation signs.
Get a connected viewer:
If someone wants to connect to you
& your service they can easily subscribe to your company page on these
social sites. They are always connected to you don’t need to invest here twice
to let them know about your new services. Amazing isn’t it?
Share your new services easily:
Through a group of already
subscribed audience, now you can share your new service or any modification of
your existing service easily within minutes. There is no cost here. You can
also reach to a local community by paid advertising here which will help a lot
to SEO for local visibility.
You can also share pictures,
interesting videos & interactive contents to attract more audience to your
website. It will boost your audience as well as your business without massive
investment. Selling your service is also possible here and it’s a running
practice for different Facebook based companies.
A strategy based on your opponents:
Here comes the important part. You
have already spent time & money on SEO for local visibility but is it
finished?n No! The constantly evolving search engine, as well as endless
competition, will not over ever. So you need the practice running. You can
easily follow your competitors and analysis their strategy. Base on their
strategy you can easily modify your own.
After reading this article, SEO for
local visibility should be clear to you, and now you need to keep working on
them. It’s not a hard part but relatively easy part of SEO. Always focus on the
long run. Using cheating & automated tools, the success can be achieved,
but the penalty will be inevitable. If your opponent follows cheating, just
keep working on your own, you will get your reward.
After getting a good position on
SERPs, you need to keep working on some key parts such as,
- ● Keep your social sites alive
by regular interesting posting.
● Create quality content for your service.
● Analyze reviews regularly.
● Earn quality links.
● Focus on strong structured & unstructured citations.
● Keep developing your sites as well as your service.
I hope this article will help you a
lot to SEO for local visibility. Nowadays, presence in the online world is very
crucial for a business and even mandatory for its existence. Using the Google
Search Engine, millions of people search daily for different items. To get
their attention & make business, you need on focus on SEO for local
visibility. If this article helps you in any way, I will consider it a success
for my hard labor.