Local SEO in 2023: A complete guide

Local SEO is compelling for all small businesses, and around 46% of Google searches are local for local information. If your business is not optimized for the local search, you could miss out on the potential customers who are ready to shop in your area. Thus, local SEO is critical if you want your business to stay relevant in the market for the long run.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of improving search engine visibility for local businesses. By following local SEO practices, the business can improve organic traffic from customer searches in nearby areas. Search engines often rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, citations and links to provide the relevant local results to the user for gathering information for the local search.

With the help of local SEO, many businesses can position their products and services to local prospects and customers searching for them.

Following are some most crucial local SEO tips-

1. Optimize for Google My Business

Google My Business has become very important, and since Google supports, shares and verifies its content, it is an ideal tool for helping your business meet Google’s needs. You should ensure that you do the following-

• Create and verify Google My Business page.
• Make use of Google posts within your account.
• Encourage all your customers to share their reviews online.
• Respond well to all the reviews.

           If the search engine verifies your business as authentic, it can reward your business with a sidebar space in the local search. You should keep your contact information and operating hours up-to-date, and you should also improve the experience for potential customers to find you.

2. Engage on the social media platforms and add some posts to Google My Business

Google considers the content shared on social media more important now than before.

3. Ensure your name, address and phone number

NAP is the acronym which stands for Name, Address and phone number. Your NAP should consider crawlable HTML text on your website for the search engine to display it better according to the location-based search results.

You should also avoid the common mistake of only including the NAP within an image. The most common location for NAP is in the footer or the site’s header. It is also essential to have your NAP in the contact us page.

4. Optimize online directories and citations

Consistency is the key to long-term Local SEO success. You should verify the consistent citations. Discrepancies such as abbreviations, wrong phone numbers and wrong spellings can be very problematic. 

If the search engine cannot determine which information about the business is correct and it may not show your business in the search results.

You should also remove the duplicate listings you find in the online directories. 

Many people avail of the services of SEO Brisbane, a digital marketing agency that provides different types of SEO services to its clients.

5. Perform a local SEO audit

SEO is an ongoing process. You should perform a comprehensive audit to check where your website stands and what all you need to work on for achieving your goals. A local SEO audit is one which includes the following-

• Google My Business audit.
• Google search console audit.
• On-page SEO audit.
• Citation audit.
• Competitor analysis.

1. Improve your internal linking structure.

External links are the ones which point to your site, and you should also try to adjust the internal linking structure, as it will boost your SEO rankings. Internal linking supports website navigation. It also assists with information architecture and the website hierarchy. It also distributes the page authority and the ranking power among the web pages.

6. Optimize URL, title tags, headers and the Meta description

When it comes to content, every blog post is a new indexed page for your website. It is a new page on which one can target a geographic search phrase and a new opportunity for finding in the SERP. Every time you write any piece of content, you should optimize the content for the search engines by using the high-volume keywords in the URL, Meta description and the title header. 

7. Add location pages to your website

You should create location pages and they provide readers with your name, address, phone number and testimonials for happy customers.

You should avoid duplicate content across multiple location pages and for the single-location business, you should create a descriptive about us page.

8. Create local content

The content creators can write more for the users and less for appeasing the search engines. While writing about the general topics, sometimes, it is more important to write about the local industry to attract a local audience.

You should be the local authority for your industry by promoting the local industry gatherings and other educational content on your blog.

If you are a local security company and trying to attract the businesses new to the area, you should create a helpful resource for getting these businesses well-acquainted with your city. A map of the local service providers or a calendar could provide value for your person and also contain highly relevant on-page local signals. 

9. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Local and mobile searches always go hand in hand and some of the most common ways people will use your website in a mobile environment are to look up for the reviews and also find directions to your location. You should make it easy for your prospects and customers by making your site mobile-friendly. 

10. Get inbound links with relevancy and authority

Inbound links are the opportunities for boosting your local SEO and every inbound link tells the search engine that you are a legitimate company. The inbound links can also raise your domain authority.

You should also consider sponsoring a webinar or a meet-up. You can also host a community event and promote something local you love. You should try building relationships with influencers. It is also important to learn to feel comfortable reaching out to partners and see if they can feature you.

Being a guest blogger also attracts links and you should talk positively about other people in your industry.