Could there really be someone in their right frame of mind that would seriously not care to have their hard-worked businesses proudly ranking at the pinnacle of Google search engine results? This question certainly deserves some solemn thinking. Yet, being able to achieve and still retain high online visibility are undoubtedly two separate things. The process is a lot more complicated than the unassuming SEO acronym makes it really look. And when multiple locations are added to this new mix; the net outcome starts to further compound your difficulties.
In the previous one year alone, Google for one brought around more than 500 diverse changes in how business websites are ranked and indexed by its search engines. Now with latest updates from Google’s Hummingbird, which has literally rewritten its search engine entirely, they are practically on a course of collision to improve on that number before the close of this year. As such, there is an intimidating high probability for the changes that you might have wisely considered most favourable for your website during the last few years are now a sad obsolete story, if not banned downright; while best practices and new standards prescribed for local SEO might be missing altogether from your revered off-page assets such as business and social media listings, as well as from your website. In this respect, should you have of late felt an inkling that a key portion of your company’s online visibility appears to be nose-diving; sad as it may sound, the assumption is in all probability closer to the actual truth.
Yet, areas of difficulty always espouse new opportunities. So if you too find yourself among the many that are beginning to indicate resolved dissatisfaction with the results of their local search, I will be privileged to show you four proved SEO guidelines that are configured to attract more local attention to your own business enterprise; regardless of the fact whether you deal with just a single location or, let’s say, even if its locations in their multitude.
1. Keywords
Contrary to common expectations, a single element that helps drive traffic to various websites is usually not an integrally visual component of that website; it’s rather the wording itself. In principle, search engines never look at the parts of a website that are plainly visible; again it’s only the words that they see. Now having established that fact, it would be simple logic to focus maximum attention in this particular area.
Primarily, it is keyword research which helps you find words and/or phrases that best suit in assisting search engines to know more about what you deal with, i.e. your product or services, and a location from which you run your business, other than identifying precise words typed in by others on their computer search bars while attempting to locate businesses that have similarity with the one you operate. A free handy tool available for building up a good keyword strategy is the Keyword Planner from Google. With a tool like this, you are now able to easily download an entire keyword list onto Excel, which you can moreover further edit and filter whenever desired. A review on quarterly basis works best but most certainly not fewer than two times each year. For a large majority of marketing, business analysis and performance KPIs, I would personally favour quarterly audits.
A huge hundred keyword ranking that is searched by no one is simply a sheer wastage of your time. Its identifying words that have much higher probability of driving the preferred variety of traffic towards your own business, in addition to building your site as well as its off-page activity centred on those keywords, is what will actually have a greater significance. It certainly makes more sense to attain higher rankings for just 6 words that can help to drive traffic to your site, when compared to 100 words that drive no traffic. The later option obviously helps to simply fuel your ego – nothing more.
SEO TIP: If you filter Keyword Planner results by different geographic regions, such as country, state/province, city, etc, not only will you have a regional demand displayed for those specific keywords, it also helps in showing you a projection of just how competitively you will have ranked for those keywords at a local search level as well.
2. META & Keyword Mapping
Once your selected keyword strategy is down, it’ll be ripe time to put this strategy to optimum use. So let’s start by first looking at your Excel spreadsheet keyword list. It’s easy to notice that by grouping similar keywords together, you will be able to form new categories. Give them a fancy name if you so prefer.
See that the website has a separate page for listed for all categories on the spreadsheet. That’s really important. It’s not essential to have pages by their hundreds on your website, yet the pages must target your business’ primary aspects effectively. Your starting point is the keyword list. A well favoured best practise demands that your website should contain 6 pages at the very least, and be as short as permissible. If it’s not going to be read by someone, it’s hardly desirable.
Taking a moment to look at the keyword list again, ensure that primary keywords used for each page appear closest to front section of your website’s opening sentences. The option to highlight and make your keywords bold is also worth giving a thought. Again, this equally applies to your website’s administrative elements, known as META – a part that’s not seen by people, yet search engines particularly can and do.
META stands for metadata in short; in other words: data related to data. Generally, your sole concern here revolves around a website’s following three META elements: Meta Title, followed by Mata Description and Meta Keywords.
Ensure that every page of your website contains each one of these distinctive Meta elements. While completing these elements, positioning of your main keywords closest to the front section of the website’s opening wordings is just as vital.
SEO TIP: As Meta Keywords play no role in ranking, make sparing use of these, i.e. under ten words/phrases. Avoid unnecessary attempts to sell-your-shop amass by listing all your main keywords; giving your competitors an opportunity to discover them easily. Two overwhelmingly widespread SEO errors made by small business owners are non-optimized META and/or META which is non-unique on every page of the website.
3. SCHEMA
One comparatively new local marketing tool deals with use of an HTML code known as Schema. To easily identify as well as classify your website’s most important info like your contact and location to the search engines, it is also known as microformat or structured data.
As the code finds universal acceptance by Yahoo, Bing and Google, it is definitely a must for all local businesses to have. When it comes to search engines, it’s worth noting that as an option, Google isn’t exclusively worth every bit of your attention. As things stand, Yahoo occupies the Number One spot for search engines, when compared to Google. On the other hand, Bing too has managed to pick up search traffic in huge loads since Amazon Kindle. Moreover, a large number of smartphones are now set on default for Bing as their local search engine tool. Facebook too has a new search feature known as Search Graph integrated this year. Now with astounding one-in-every-seven users worldwide owning an account on Facebook, technically this makes it the largest site on the globe, as a search engine.
SEO Tip: If option for using the HTML editor is forehand, don’t hesitate to put it to good use. Alternately, copy this code onto the Microsoft Notepad and proceed to make the edits desired here. When done, directly copy it to your website from the Notepad. Avoid copying it to Word as this simply adds some extra and undesired code lines as well.
4. Footer
Regrettably, underused in every sense of the word, the bottom portion of a website, or what’s known as its footer, simply holds limitless SEO value and usability.
Firstly, if your website’s header contains more than its due share of the HTML code – commonly the validation codes – some of it can be easily moved here. Executing this move largely reduces HTML coding which search engines would otherwise need to slowly read through while loading the page; resulting in much faster page loading. The speed at which the page of a website opens is also a potential element for SEO purpose, as this too affects your page rankings. So, the faster it is; the better for you.
SEO TIP: As an additional advantage, providing your contact information on each page further enhances your website’s local indexation by the search engines; enabling local searchers find you more easily. A win-win situation all the way!
Now if your intention is to achieve better SEO results for your local search, my sincerely advice to you is: start following these SEO guidelines; starting NOW! If you still need some help, we are right here to give you that extra nudge – May you have a successful local search!
Creative Commons : Sean MacEntee
