Local SEO Services Australia

Local SEO: Ultimate Guide to Improve Local Search Results

Running a local business is no small feat — you need to consider several factors and focus on promoting your business effectively on a budget. However, most businesses suffer because of concentrating just on offline efforts and paying minimal attention to their online presence. This needs to change. Why?

Over 72% of consumers who conducted a google search with local intent ended up visiting a local business within five miles.

Is that enough reason for you to pay attention to your local SEO performance? We thought so!

So, without further ado let’s dive right into the basics of local SEO and all it entails.

Simply put, Local SEO is optimising your website to rank on search engines for keywords that indicate a local search intent. Businesses that have a physical operating location in a specific geographic area can benefit from leveraging local SEO.

When done properly, Local SEO can act as a bridge between your business and customers who are in nearby locations.

If you are a dentist in the Darwin area, you ideally want to appear for any searches related to dental issues by people residing in Darwin, right? This is exactly what local SEO helps you accomplish.

Local SEO entails a bunch of actions that you may need to carry out to boost the local search visibility of your website.

So, now that you know about what local SEO is and what it includes, let us now talk a bit more about why local SEO is important.

Let us start with asking you a question — what do you do when you want to explore a new restaurant for dinner? Or you are new to Perth and want to know if there is a plumber in your area who can fix that leak under your sink?

If you are anything like us, you probably whip out your phone almost instinctively and ask Google.

You are likely to type something like “best restaurants near me” or “best plumbing services in perth”. At this point, you almost blindly trust the suggestions Google comes up with, simply because it can back up the recommendations with enough details and social proof.

But how does Google know which business to recommend? This is where local SEO comes in.

We already know that optimising for Local SEO ensures that your business enjoys better visibility in local searches.

But that is not all — here are a few additional advantages which make it important for your business to have a local SEO strategy:

• Generate More Traffic
• Target More Sales
• Improve Conversion Rate
• Compete More Strongly
• Build Online Reputation
• Increase Walkins

Important much?

Right from bringing more targeted traffic to your website to building a consistently strong online reputation, local SEO has a plethora of benefits to offer for your business. Investing in local SEO is not optional for a business with a physical presence — especially if you are a small business.

Speaking of keywords — how to ensure that you rank for the most relevant and high-performing keywords?

Well, that’s exactly what we are about to tackle in this chapter.

You may think there is a standard process of keyword research that can help your business’s SEO performance, and you are not wrong. But there are diverse approaches to conducting keyword research especially when you are just starting out with your local SEO efforts.

Local SEO keyword research focuses on finding relevant keywords with local intent that can bring more traffic and drive sales to your website. Not to forget, keywords are a vital part of your local SEO checklist.

Here’s what you need to do:

Research Your Competitors

Any time you think about keyword research, the one aspect that will always feature on top of your criteria is relevance. Ensuring that you come up with, and integrate relevant keywords is essential to bringing qualified traffic to your website.

So, you think of search terms that are most relevant to your industry and product/services.

A good starting point is researching and analysing your competitors. Identify companies that offer the same products/services and can be termed as your greatest competitors — on the SERPs and otherwise.

Once you have a list of competitors that you want to analyse, identify the keywords that are driving traffic for them. You can use a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to check and find out keywords that are performing well for your competitors.

The next step would be to analyse these keywords and find the ones that are most relevant to your business. Remember, to check the competition for each keyword that you choose so that you can calculate the likelihood of ranking for these keywords.

Use Google Autocomplete

How many times have you typed just a small part of your search query into Google in the confidence that Google will understand and recommend the rest? — we feel you.

Google Autocomplete absolutely saves time and even helps you out when you are confused about the search term that you should use to get the right results.

You can use the same trick just as effectively when you are doing keyword research. When you have identified relevant search terms for your business or product/services, use Google to find the related long-tail search queries and phrases.

As Google’s suggestions are dynamic — they predict the search term while the user is still typing it, presenting them with a bunch of suggestions that could best fit their intent. Plus, Google Search compiles the search terms from at least three browsers — Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

Considering these factors, Google AutoComplete should be a definite local SEO keyword research priority.

So, if you are looking for keywords related to computer accessories and peripherals because you are a wholesaler, you can initiate your Google AutoComplete keyword research may look something like this:

So if you are looking at using a transactional keyword such as “buy wireless mouse”, you now have a list of combinations that you can use this keyword with, to get easily discovered.

Leverage Keyword Research Tools

The other alternative that you have in the process of keyword research is using a keyword planning tool — no surprises here!

Indeed, Google Keyword Planner is the most standard and popular tool for keyword research by all kinds of businesses. Regardless of whether you are looking for keywords to plan out a PPC campaign or inform your content marketing efforts, Google Keyword Planner has a plethora of features that can be useful to you.

While the tool is completely free, the catch is that you will need to have a Google AdWords account to conduct the keyword research. Even if you do not have an active campaign, you would need to have a registered Google AdWords campaign to access the Google Keyword Planner.

Doing so is easier than you think! All you need to do is register on AdWords with your business name, URL and a few additional details.

There are other keyword research tools that you can explore instead including the ones offered by SEMrush, Moz and Ahrefs. These tools have an easy interface and offer the same insights and metrics pertaining to each keyword as the ones provided by Google Keyword Planner.

Let us now look at the process of finding and selecting local keywords, using the Keyword Explorer by Ahrefs. Almost every tool has a similar interface with minor tweaks so you can easily navigate any tool once you have got your basics figured out.

Steps to Identify and Select the Local Keywords

Once you have signed up for an account on Ahrefs, and have your basic plan sorted, you can use the Keyword Explorer to shape your keyword research strategy. Here’s a quick rundown of how you can conduct keyword research for your local SEO strategy.

Find service-based keywords

There are many businesses that suffer as a result of choosing the wrong or irrelevant keywords for their strategy. The first step in the process of any kind of keyword research — local or otherwise, should be to find keywords that are highly relevant to your business or the products/services you offer.

For instance, if you work for a real estate firm, keywords that are related to buying or selling properties might be highly relevant. On the other hand, integrating keywords that talk about building materials, or architecture may seem relevant but may not exactly appeal to your target audience.

Check Search Volumes

Ideally, the keywords that are likely to bring the most traffic to your website would be the ones that perform well on the following metrics:

• Search Volume: This metric indicates the average number of monthly searches for the specific keyword. You must ensure that you pick keywords with a moderate to high search volume. Ensure to check the global search volume as well as that for your specific geographic location.
• Competition: This metric shows that a lot of websites are already ranking for the specific keyword. This means that you will face tough competition to rank on the SERPs. You need to pick keywords with lower competition.
• Keyword Difficulty: This is an additional metric that some tools provide as an alternative to the competition. The keyword difficulty score shows how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. Higher the score, the lesser the chance of ranking for that keyword.

When you strike the perfect balance between the above factors while choosing a keyword, you are likely to reap more benefits from it.

Check for Local Intent

Don’t forget — we are talking specifically about Local SEO today in this guide. So our aim is to guide you with the considerations you need to have for conducting keyword research when you want to rank for local search queries.

Remember that local intent in keywords could be implicit as well as explicit. For example, for keywords such as “packers and movers” or “bus services”, Google is likely to present results based on the user’s search location. These are keywords with implicit local intent and should definitely be a part of your keyword list.

On the other hand, there are other keywords with local intent specified explicitly. We are talking about search terms such as “best restaurants in melbourne”, “top lawyers in perth”, and the like.

Keep Local Voice Searches in Mind

Why do you need to deal with voice searches? Well, for starters, voice search results load nearly 42% faster than the average search results page.

Plus, with smart home assistants, and mobile phones, voice searches have risen like never before. The technology has evolved to the extent that users can shop for things or find shops/businesses with a voice command. So, keeping local voice searches in mind can help your business in more ways than one.

To optimise your business website for voice searches, you can take simple steps such as making it more mobile-friendly, adding structured data markup, and using natural language in your content.

When you are looking for keywords, ensure that you think of terms that a user is most likely to use as voice commands to search for something you offer. For instance, if you run a Thai restaurant in Melbourne, including terms such as “best thai food in melbourne” or “fast food delivery in melbourne” can actually help you in terms of voice searches.

Assign Keywords to Pages

When you are conducting keyword research for your business website, it is natural to come across situations wherein you are overwhelmed with keyword suggestions. There is such a thing as too many keywords — especially if you have not organised your keyword list.

It is a good idea to have a list of your web pages ready when you are carrying out keyword research. This list will help you identify keywords that are most relevant to a specific page and assign them to it.

Doing so will also help you find out which specific primary keyword you want your page to rank for so that you do not confuse the search engines. Plus, irrelevant keywords can diminish your content quality, and even contribute to a higher bounce rate.

Local SEO is such a game changer for businesses for good reason.  It can make or break your online reputation and visibility and can transform the way customers perceive your local business.

But like every other business, local businesses require a balance of on-page and off-page SEO. If you are not putting any effort into upgrading your website or making it user-friendly, all the resources that you otherwise pour into bringing traffic will not help.

With that in mind, let us start with the steps you can take to strengthen the on-page SEO for your local business.

Add Specific Location Pages

As your local business grows and scales, it is natural for you to want to expand it to different locations. After all, you want to be accessible to customers from different locations.

However, to bring more customers to your business, you will need to have dedicated location pages on your website. With the help of these location pages, when customers visit your business website, they will be able to find the nearest location to reach you.

Plus, they help search engines find unique information and characteristics of each business location. Ensure that these location pages are mobile-friendly since most users are likely to land on these pages while browsing on mobile devices.

We have done something similar by having a dedicated landing page for all our business locations and then individual pages for each location. Take a look:

Say you are seeking out an SEO agency in Canberra and end up on our website. You would be able to click on the page dedicated to Canberra and find all the relevant information required to contact us.

Simple ain’t it?

Unique Content for Every Location

Creating location landing pages is not enough — you also need to create unique content for all of these pages and avoid duplicate content to reap the SEO benefits.

Indeed, all the numerous considerations that you keep in mind when you create content for any webpage on your website apply to location pages. You would need to create unique content that incorporates keywords that combine your offerings and geographical location to be able to rank for relevant search queries.

You can find innovative ways to make your location pages stand out using different kinds of elements such as customer testimonials, location pins on maps, and answering the most common questions for that business location.

Use Schema Markup For Local SEO

For anyone initiated in digital marketing strategies, listening about structured data or schema markup is not new. You have probably been advised time and again to upload schema markup to your website for better SEO performance.

Well, we are going to suggest the same thing except with a focus on local SEO.

Implementing schema markup can make a huge difference in your website visibility and help you stand out from your competitors. Plus, contrary to popular opinion you do not need to be a coding expert to successfully add schema markup to your website.

Schema markup refers to a semantic vocabulary comprising metadata and tags. By adding these elements to your website code, you will be able to help search engines read and represent your website the way you intend them to.

Schema markup helps search engines identify different elements on your webpage, so you can specifically pinpoint your address, your contact details and other information to search engines. As a result, the search engine will be able to quickly identify and retrieve this information the next time a user searches for a relevant query.

The most common and manual process of adding schema markup to your website entails using Schema.org. You can select from the list of schemas and pick one that best suits your needs.

Alternatively, you can also use the Structured Data Markup Helper by Google to find and aid you in the process of adding the right schema markup to your website.

Optimising Meta Tags using Local Keywords

If you are not new to the content creation and distribution sphere, you will find yourself defining and optimising titles and meta descriptions quite often. After all, it is these elements that let users know whether your page is relevant to their search query.

Plus, search engines refer to these attributes to index your page for a particular search query.  With that in mind, websites use targeted keywords in the title as well as meta descriptions to rank for specific search queries.

With all this in mind, when you are optimising your content for local SEO, it is important to include keywords that are likely to rank for search queries that have a local search intent. This applies especially to location pages and any web pages that are dedicated to providing information about your operations in a specific location.

For example, if you are an electrician operating out of Sydney, you want to ideally appear in one of these search results when a user searches for “electricians in sydney”.

You will see that each website that ranks for this keyword has the term “electrician in sydney” in their titles and meta descriptions.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is quite an important part of your SEO strategy and should be taken seriously. After all, search engines do not understand how you have designed your content and website. It is the internal links that establish the relationship between your web pages.

Every webpage on your website should be internally linked to other web pages to let search engines know about the semantic flow of your content. Otherwise, you will end up with orphaned pages — or worse, important pages getting completely ignored.

Ensure that all your location pages are internally linked to other web pages including your blogs or contact pages. Apart from these considerations, it is a good idea to run regular SEO audits so that your website is always up-to-date with the latest norms and algorithm updates.

Include your NAP information on Your Website

This is an obvious, yet overlooked one.

Whether you have customer-facing operations at a physical location or not, when we talk about local SEO,  adding your NAP information to your website is one of the first steps that you need to take.

Firstly, users can easily get information about your official business name, operating location and how they can reach you. Plus, having this information on your website will assure that your business is legitimate and accessible in any case.

If you want to rank for local search queries, ensuring that NAP details are updated on your website, and are consistent with other sources on the internet is not optional.

So now, you have a relatively good idea of how to prepare your website and ramp up your on-page SEO efforts to start ranking for local search queries. But if only it were that simple — you still have to devote a lot of time and resources to off-page SEO too.

When we say off-page SEO, we want to highlight specifically the importance of local link building. You may already know how to build links for your website, however, there are a few more considerations when we talk specifically about local link building.

Let’s now look at the steps you can take in this direction.

Get Links From Other Local Businesses

If you have ever run a brick-and-mortar shop, you know how much value a recommendation from a fellow shopkeeper can bring for you. Businesses are no different.

Local businesses can thrive by receiving redirects and links from other businesses. More importantly, if you know that a particular local business’ website gets a lot of traffic and is authoritative, acquiring a link to your website from it is probably a good idea.

You may also want to consider local review websites that tend to have higher domain authority and are more often preferred by users who are browsing for a good alternative. For one, your website is likely to be considered more credible by attaining these links.

Plus, most people rely heavily on online reviews for decision-making, so by earning links from local review websites wherein customers can read reviews and ratings for the business — you make your customers’ decision-making easier.

Get Links Your Competitors Have

By now, we have talked a lot about the importance of earning links and having a strong link-building strategy. But where do you start is the real question.

Well, a great place to start would be to analyse your competitors. It is a good practice to audit your competitors’ websites and content regularly, to find what they are getting right and what they are not.

You can also use tools like Ahrefs to find where their traffic comes from. This will help you narrow down a bunch of websites that have linked back to your competitors’ websites. These are the websites that you can approach for links as well.

Reclaim Lost Links & Claim Unlinked Mentions

More often than not, built links fail to stay intact for a long time – they either break or worse, completely vanish. It is not new for businesses to experience that backlinks that used to bring traffic do not exist anymore.

The good news is that you can reclaim these lost links. Reclamation is not just necessary for retaining that hard-earned backlink, but also to ensure that the link value remains intact.

We will cut straight to the chase — there are two ways to deal with this situation. One, you can look for new opportunities to acquire links that replace the ones that have been lost. But let us warn you — this is not an easy undertaking, and it can take time.

However, there is a silver lining even in this scenario. Seek out unlinked mentions to your brand, and claim them. Ask for a link on websites that have mentioned your brand but have not linked back to you.

The second option to reclaim lost links is applicable specifically if you have a case of broken links. You can use tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to find broken links and reclaim them by replacing them with a working link.

Get Local Citations

Moving on — as a local business, you can not take local citations for granted.

If your NAP data is partially or completely mentioned on a website, you are looking at a local citation. Citations have a key role in helping users discover local businesses that may be relevant to what they are searching for. Plus, it can significantly boost your ranking in the local search.

Google puts a lot of emphasis on having at least a basic citation on multiple platforms. Of course, these citations have to be consistent and you will have to invest in actively ensuring this periodically.

City-specific Sites and Directories

When we talk about local citations, we did mention “online websites” and it is true. Any mention that your local business is on an online platform is great!

But you can truly benefit from featuring on city-specific websites and online directories. Think websites like Yelp and Yellow Pages. Registering for citations and listings on these platforms ensures that you multiply the chances of appearing in local search results.

After all, these are some of the common platforms that people visit when they are confused about which vendor to settle on. Needless to say, have an updated and comprehensive NAP citation for your business on such platforms to truly benefit from them.

Local PR

Your local business needs a strong community presence to thrive. But to have access to that community, you will need to invest in efforts that will help you reach out to them effectively. More importantly, you want to communicate with them about your business values, as well as the products and services you offer.

Having a strong local PR strategy will help you do just that and more.

Think about the primary aspects related to PR such as maintaining a positive brand image, engaging with the target audience, and portraying an ethical front to your brand. Now, if you apply it specifically to target your local audience at a community level, it is termed local PR.

As a growing local business, you will definitely benefit from local PR as long as you narrow down on the right audience and tailor your communication to them.

Sponsor Local Events

What says you are a part of the community than to actually participate in the community? And the best way for local businesses to do this is by being a part of local events. Local events offer the unique advantage of bringing local businesses and customers together on the same platform.

Consider sponsoring a community event, webinar or even promoting a local cause that your brand aligns with. Such events can put your brand in the spotlight and ensure that you are able to achieve traction if utilised effectively.

If you have a local business, you have surely dreamt about having a successful enterprise that consistently grows and scales in terms of revenue. Moreover, it is important for businesses today to focus on staying relevant, and establishing a strong online presence.

Even with those goals in mind, many local businesses have a limited budget and hence cannot meet those goals. However, local SEO is one strategy that can help you meet all these goals, and ace them organically.

By following these strategies and ideas, we are sure that you could step up the performance and revenue of your local business. But if you need extra help from experts, get in touch with us so that we can discuss more.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is a strategy that local businesses use to improve their online presence and boost their online visibility and reputation. It is a strategy that will ensure that your local business secures one of the top positions on the SERP for local searches.

What is local SEO vs SEO?

There is no difference between local SEO and SEO, except for the fact that local SEO is a subset of SEO. Local SEO focuses specifically on local businesses whereas SEO is for brands having any kind of target audience and scope.

What are local SEO strategies?

There are many local SEO strategies that local businesses can implement to secure a good ranking and performance on Google Search. Leveraging keyword research, registering on online directories, and building citations are some of the common local SEO strategies.

Why is local SEO important?

Local SEO can offer several benefits to local businesses including better online visibility, qualified lead generation and attraction of potential customers, driving sales and increasing website authority.

What matters for local SEO?

For your business to perform well in terms of local SEO, you would need to have localised content on your website. In addition to that, you must also increase the link popularity and value.

Who needs local SEO?

Every local business that wants to have a strong online presence and increase its online visibility should use local SEO.