6 Local SEO Experts Share Their #1 Ranking Tip & Local SEO Tools
Your store may currently buzz with customers who rave about your service quality and products. But will that be enough for the long haul?
While their reviews and word-of-mouth can help you maximise the number of customers your business brings in, you need something more powerful. With every company out there relying heavily on online platforms and SEO, you need to play the game just as well. Even if you have a small Shopify store online that is driving your sales, apart from your brick-and-mortar store, you can never have enough customers!
Since Local SEO is the way to ensure that your local business dominates the SERPs, let us discuss more on it more and hear what experts have to say about creating winning local SEO strategies.
What is Local SEO and How It Works
Local businesses can no longer make do with just traditional marketing strategies and tactics. Search engine performance is crucial not just for online businesses but also for brick-and-mortar businesses that serve local communities.
No wonder many local businesses such as plumbers and electricians today have websites to drive this business. The reason is simple — people conduct searches on Google to discover businesses.
This is precisely where local SEO enters the picture!
Local SEO comprises strategies and tactics aimed at improving local businesses’ search engine visibility. Using local SEO, businesses can generate organic traffic, generate online leads and educate potential customers.
But before we talk more about how local SEO is unique and the things you should keep in mind, let us discuss some of the most prominent benefits of leveraging local SEO for your business.
Why Local SEO is Important for Your Local Business
Let’s dive into the most important benefits local businesses can get using an effective local SEO strategy.
First, a quick example to highlight the importance of Local SEO. Say, you are visiting a friend, and are looking for a hotel in Hobart - what would be your first move? You would probably search on Google for something like ‘best hotels in Hobart’, right?
Right. Let’s see what the results look like for this search query.
If you look at the results displayed in the local SEO 3-pack right underneath the paid ads, you will see that they occupy quite a bit of real estate on the SERPs, and in fact, are some of the top options that a user is likely to go for.
As a local business, this is one of the main things that you want — visibility and a higher likelihood of clicks by prospective customers. Those two are also the two major benefits that a local business stands to achieve with the help of local SEO.
SERP Visibility
One of the core benefits you stand to gain from local SEO is the visibility it can give you on the SERPs if implemented correctly. It may be difficult to stand out among the more established group of major companies on the SERPs, however, local SEO turns out to be a good equaliser.
As a local business, you can rule high above your local competitors by strengthening your local SEO strategy. You can secure a place in the top three results of the map pack or even among the coveted organic search results. That kind of online visibility is either expensive or impossible to achieve otherwise.
Lead Generation
As a local business owner, your focus is always on acquiring new customers who may not have discovered your business yet. Can you imagine the pain of accomplishing this offline?
You may have to go above and beyond on your marketing efforts and yet cannot tap into the kind of reach that you envision for your business. But online and on the SERPs, this is definitely possible and not that hard.
As long as your local SEO strategy is strong, and your website is ranking for the search queries with the right intent, you will generate qualified leads — consistently at that.
Boost in Organic Traffic
With more people discovering your business online comes the great advantage of that many more people visiting your website — and this local SEO benefit should never be taken for granted.
As long as you have a consistent influx of organic visitors to your website, and have high-quality content that can engage them, you can leverage this incoming traffic and how!
All you need to do is have location-based, conversion-worthy landing pages, and content that helps your visitors through every phase of their buying decision journey. Get that right, and you will have a bunch of loyal customers in no time.
SEO vs Local SEO — Let's Clear Your Confusion
If you have already dabbled in SEO for your local business before, you may have a pressing question on your mind at this point — how is local SEO different from SEO in general?
Good question!
It bodes well to think of local SEO as a subset of your overall SEO strategy so that all your efforts to dominate online are aligned. And while the two concepts are quite similar, here is a breakdown of the primary features that differentiate both.
SEO | Local SEO |
---|---|
SEO aims at boosting the quantity and quality of the organic traffic to your website | Local SEO is aimed at boosting the organic traffic at a more local level |
The goal is to satisfy and rank for different kinds of search intent. | The goal is to satisfy and rank specifically for queries with local search intent. |
Traditional SEO can take anywhere from weeks to several months to effectively implement and generate results. | Local SEO strategy consists of steps that can be implemented swiftly to generate immediate results. |
Suitable for all kinds of businesses — offline and online. | Suitable for businesses having a brick-and-mortar presence, targeting a local community |
There you go — these differences should clear your confusion and help you understand which approach is more suitable for your business.
How Do Local SEO and Organic SEO Work Hand in Hand?
With all the aspects that we have discussed so far in mind, it is important to acknowledge an important fact. At the end of the day, local SEO is a subset of your overall SEO strategy and so they need to be in alignment with each other.
Organic SEO is the driving force behind your website ranking on organic search. And yes, your position and performance in the organic search will influence your position in the local pack as well.
It helps you appear in front of searchers that demonstrate local search intent, and your local SEO efforts will help Google decide which search queries your website would be right for.
So, while the optimisation tactics and strategies associated with local SEO and organic SEO may differ, it helps to think of them as complementary strategies designed to work for different kinds of goals.
Local SEO Tips
With that, let’s delve deeper into tips and tricks that experts suggest you should use while creating your local SEO strategy.
Optimise Google Business Profile, Bing Places, and Apple Maps
For any local business, having a powerful presence on Google Business Profile and Maps, is not optional. If you have a physical presence — be it a small sales office or a major retail outlet, these are the sources your platform would discover you from.
And it is not enough to register your business on these platforms for the sake of it. You need to ensure that you fill in the necessary information and then some.
“The most important local SEO factor at the start is making sure that you have optimized your Google Business Profile categories. Getting the primary category right is most important. But you also want to fill out the additional nine categories.”
Google Business Profile Optimisation ensures that when a potential customer comes across your listing on any of these platforms, they can find the information they are looking for, and find your business genuine.
Optimise Your NAP Citations
Customers of all kinds rely on the NAP information provided by businesses to discover them, and establish their credibility. Imagine finding a business on Google with no address or contact number associated with it — would you opt for it over a business that provides all this information?
With that goal in mind, you should always ensure that the online citations you build should have all your NAP information accurately. More importantly, ensure that these citations are updated every time this information changes.
“Remember you want consistent information about your business on every listing (name, address, phone). So be smart when setting up your top listings. Use the same name, address and phone number on each and keep them consistent when you set them up.”
You can also reap SEO benefits by having complete information on these citations and leveraging keyword opportunities in the process.
Research Local Keywords for Your Business
When your local business operates at a physical location, you need to tell people about it.
Say you have a store that primarily sells blinds and shutters in Darwin. What is the point of having a website, if you do not rank for search queries such as “blinds and shutters in darwin”, or “blinds and shutter store near me” by a customer in Darwin?
Ensure to conduct thorough research on local keywords that may be suitable for your business and integrate them into your content.
Optimise Your Business for Local Voice Search
Today, you have numerous voice assistants waiting to help you with everyday things — be it Siri, Alexa, Google or Cortana. A local voice search is a process of using voice commands to search online about a local business.
Nearly 75% of voice search results rank in the top three positions for that search query.
Even though customers are increasingly leaning towards the convenience of using local voice searches, a lot of businesses do not use them yet. This means that if you optimise your business for local voice searches, your business can stand out from the competition without too many resources or effort.
Optimise On-page SEO for Your Local Business
Before you get busy with creating citations and listings for your business, you must pay attention to your business website. While you require a combination of on-page, off-page and technical SEO to boost the performance of your website, it pays off to focus on its on-page SEO health.
“Focus more on the basics of your site than on things like your Google Business Profile, citations, and even reviews. Create a page on every specific service/product/treatment you offer, add plenty of detail to those pages, and link to these generously throughout your site.”
Some of the important steps in optimising your on-page SEO are defining optimised meta descriptions, headlines, HTML tags and header images. Other than these factors, ensuring that you have a strong internal linking structure is also quite crucial to getting your web pages discovered and ranked by search engines.
Remember to add location-specific information to your meta tags so that the search engines can discover it and know how to rank your web pages for relevant search results.
Prepare a Local Link Building Strategy
Building links can get complex but is easily one of the most crucial parts of your SEO strategy — whether your focus is local or global.
When you are trying to create local clout for your business, it helps to create a buzz using local link-building strategies. You need to gain links from other websites that have authority and high ranking to give that extra push to your website on the SERPs.
Casey Meraz, Founder at Juris Digital recommends that getting mentions in local media and publications in any context or manner can be quite beneficial.
“Do anything you can to get in the local media regularly. Whether it's running a promotion, partnering with a charity or taking a stance on something controversial, these mentions lead to free exposure and strong local links.”, he suggests.
You may also update your website links on local online citations and directories as local link building.
Get Reviews from Your Customers
Word-of-mouth is powerful and any business that is not leveraging this marketing strategy is missing out. You may remember visiting stores that your friends recommended or visiting that mall that all your friends have been raving about, for the same reason.
Online reviews that happy or angry customers leave work on similar lines. New customers who have no prior experience dealing with your business are likely to form an understanding of what to expect with the help of such reviews.
Whether positive or negative, these reviews at the very least, prove the genuineness and credibility of your business.
Add Location-Specific Landing Pages
Your landing pages are important because many new customers who end up on your website from another source, landing pages are their first glimpse of your business. To drive effective results from your local SEO strategy, you will need location-specific landing pages, which should essentially rank for relevant search queries in that geographical location.
Location landing pages serve the unique purpose of redirecting customers to their nearest location and informing search engines about the characteristics of that location.
We wanted our client’s customers from various geographical locations to find them easily. One of the best proven method is to create dedicated location pages that list all the services that our clients provide in that location along with useful real information for their potential customers in that area.
Since relevance is a major criterion for search engines in ranking specific web pages, your business stands to achieve a lot by having location-specific landing pages.
Add Relevant Schema to the Site
Schema markup can be the factor that helps your website and web pages feature on rich results. Since schema markup shapes the way search engines perceive and rank your web pages, it helps to add local SEO values to them.
Adding your specific business category and NAP schema properties to your business website ensures that search engines rank you higher for relevant search queries.
Best Local SEO Tools
Now that you know the most vital information on the importance and process of local SEO for your business, the next step is to narrow down the major tools that can boost your local SEO strategy.
Greg Shadik, the Client Success Manager You will never find the "perfect" tool because even though some of them are very similar they all provide different options and solutions. One might do one thing well and another but do something else better so figure out what you want to accomplish then research the best option for your business.
Here are a few that the experts swear by, and you should definitely add to your arsenal —
Moz Local
If you are struggling to keep up with the list of items in your local SEO strategy, Moz Local is a great tool to help you. Right from managing all your business listings, to offering powerful insights on your local SEO game, Moz Local does everything and some more.
Key Features
- Comprehensive management of all your listings on the same platform
- Reputation management through monitoring and management of reviews
- Sentiment analysis and trend analysis through reviews
- Assistance in creating rich content, and posting updates on multiple listings
- Highly insightful reports regarding local SEO performance and necessary improvements
Pricing
Three pricing plans ranging from $14/month to $33/month.
Pros
- A comprehensive local SEO management plus reputation management tool for small and big businesses alike.
- Some of the most detailed and accurate reports you will find by any tool
Cons
- Non-technical and non-marketing users report they find the tool difficult to navigate in the beginning.
- A lot of users also report that there are mismatches between the keyword data provided in Moz and other keyword research tools
BrightLocal
BrightLocal is a comprehensive platform that offers features and tools for all operations and things local SEO. It is a dedicated tool aiding businesses and agencies to navigate various crucial sub-processes of their local SEO strategy.
Key Features
- Local Rank Tracker helps agencies and businesses track their SERP ranking for a specific locality or town, and narrows down on the improvements and insights.
- You can leverage Local Search Grid to understand what your searchers can see for specific keywords and control what you need to rank better for those queries.
- Conduct SEO audits of local searches, your Google Business Profile and other listings to control your online presence.
- Manage online reputation by managing your reviews on various platforms from a single dashboard.
Pricing
Different tiers of plans starting from $29/month to $79/month. Users can also choose to pay for specific tools rather than the complete suite of tools if that meets their needs.
Pros
- A highly intuitive user interface making listing and reputation management easier for all kinds of businesses
- A highly effective and praise-worthy customer service — a major factor of distinction for first-time customers.
Cons
- The reporting tool lacks the kind of advanced features that a lot of similar tools offer at these prices
- Many users have reported that the interface and certain features can experience a lot of lags and get buggy
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Businesses and agencies alike use one of the most preferred tools for conducting technical SEO audits, Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It is far from being just a local SEO tool and actually covers a whole range of SEO-related functions and metrics that you can analyse.
Key Features
- A comprehensive website crawler that can analyse every element of your website
- Visualise site architecture and generate sitemaps to boost the SEO health of your business website
- Run highly detailed technical SEO and link audit for your website
- A log file analyser that can evaluate and generate reports based on your website log files.
Pricing
The free version of the app allows you to crawl and analyse 500 web pages on your website. The paid version costs $209/year giving users unlimited access to all the features and tools.
Pros
- All kinds of technical SEO analyses and audits are easily possible using the tool
- Generates highly useful insights about each page on your website within minutes
Cons
- The interface is a little difficult to navigate for users who do not know much about SEO and related processes
- Each scan or audit will take up quite a bit of your system resources, so you will need to perform them on a good computer
Synup
Synup, in its very essence, is a local SEO and reputation management tool that offers all the features you would expect from a typical local SEO tool.
Key Features
- Manage all your online business listings from a single dashboard
- Ensure that all your brand information is cohesive across platforms on the Internet
- Manage the online reputation of your brand by managing and optimising your reviews
Pricing
Synup offers custom quotes depending on your requirements. You can opt for a free trial before purchasing a paid subscription.
Pros
- Excellent and highly responsive customer service that has consistently kept customer satisfaction levels high
- Easy layout and interface which makes it easy for users to learn and use all the features of the product effectively
Cons
- Certain features such as bulk editing may not be as user friendly as the rest of the features
Whitespark
Whitespark offers a full suite of tools and features that businesses of all kinds and sizes can use to boost their local SEO performance. Take any task that you require for your business’s local SEO performance, and Whitespark can help you accomplish it better.
“Start with a simple Google Sheet that tracks the monthly progress of improved data accuracy, landing page performance, visibility of N.A.P. data, and reputation (quality, quantity, and velocity). That instrument alone forces accountability. I also enjoy WhiteSpark's Local Citation Finder tool and geo-targeted keyword tracking.”
Key Features
- Local Rank Tracking, and local search performance management
- Citation building and management on online platforms and directories
- Reputation management and review management tools
- Moderation and management of online reviews across various platforms
Pricing
Each tool has separate sets of pricing plans associated with them. Depending on the size of your business, these plans can range from $20 all the way up to $100 per month.
Pros
- Users can choose and implement tools that are most useful to their business without having to spend for the entire suite of tools
- Highly user-friendly interface that makes it easy for all kinds of users to learn and implement local SEO functions<
Cons
- There is no comprehensive plan that can give users access to all the tools.
- The quality of reports can be much better considering competitors are already offering advanced reporting features.
ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers is a smaller tool in scope compared to the ones that we have discussed so far. It is a cloud-based reputation management tool which allows users to manage online reviews — regardless of their business size.
Key Features
- Management and moderation of online reviews across platforms from a single dashboard
- You can track your competitors and their local SEO efforts to tweak your own strategy easily
- You will have access to a lot of performance analytics and reports that can optimise your local performance
Pricing
The entire experience at ReviewTrackers is customisable so your pricing will depend on your requirements, and package.
Pros
- Companies that do not require too many advanced local SEO features can benefit from the review management features
- Highly personalised quote so if you are a small business with limited requirements, the software could be affordable for you.
Cons
- It is a tool with a limited scope of features, and you will require others to take care of the other local SEO aspects
- Many users report they find the interface difficult to navigate in the beginning and require a detailed walkthrough
Final Remarks
Now that you know all about the major aspects of local SEO and how you can implement it for your local business, we are sure it will work wonders for your online presence. Take the suggestions and recommendations of the experts in this piece and ensure that you optimise your local SEO efforts for generating more leads and traffic.
If you need any extra help navigating your local SEO efforts, get in touch with us and we will be happy to help!
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