Local SEO Benefits for A Small Business

Website visitors are more likely to buy when they search locally. This locally focused traffic is generally better qualified, and results in much higher conversions and purchases.

For example, someone in Stamford, Connecticut is looking for Italian food. Instead of directing them to the main page of your Web site, they’re provided with the specific landing page containing your business address, phone number, and other information specific to that location. Land a consumer on relevant local information and your conversion to sale increases ten-fold!

Keyword research for local SEO is slightly different than for local SEM. To get the most benefit out of the keyword research, each location should be analyzed individually. While this process can be tedious, you’ll usually find that there are noticeable differences between how people from different regions search for products or services in their area.

For instance, you may find that in Danbury, CT the most popular query is “Mexican restaurants in Danbury,” while in New York the most common search phrase is “New York Mexican Restaurants.” This is especially true if you’re optimizing for a specific area or district within a city.

Through keyword research you may find that instead of searching for the city name, the locals search by neighborhood. The variance between the most popular search phrases might be small, but that slight difference in keyword targeting could open the doors for significantly more traffic.

Local business listings have made their way to the top of the first page in SERPs due to the pervasiveness of universal search. As such, local business listings have become an extremely important aspect of local SEO.

To create a strategic presence within these listings, each location should feature a title and description that is reflective of the localized keyword targets. Listings should also contain a link to the corresponding location page on your Web site. Don’t forget to include videos and images relevant to each location. These draw attention and help drive traffic.

How you go about creating and maintaining visibility within search engine results for localized search terms will vary based on the strategy selected. Whether you go with a test program or full implementation, you’ll need to focus your tactics around on-page elements, off-page elements, and local business listings.

On-page tactics for local SEO are generally the same as traditional SEO, but with a focus on the location being targeted. This means traditional SEO elements (e.g., page titles, page names, meta tags, keyword density) still factor in getting a page to rank. The difference here is the local focus of the keyword targets.

For example, with local SEO you’ll tend to focus the previously mentioned elements on a keyword target made up of the location and keyword. This would be something like “Danbury Mexican Restaurants.”

There are other local tactics that should be employed to round out your content. These include a geo meta tag, local address, phone, ZIP, and map within each page’s content. If you have several location pages, it’s important the copy is unique on each page to reduce any potential duplicate content penalties.

Finally, there should be a link to each location page in the sitemap. Careful though, Google suggests less than 100 links per sitemap. If you have a large number of location pages, consider creating a flat HTML directory of locations by hierarchy. In this scenario, start by linking the sitemap page to region pages (e.g., Fairfield County) continued with a listing of city pages that link to a complete listing of individual location pages.

As with traditional SEO, off-page tactics are important for local SEO as well. Inbound links should be created between your site and several relevant local sites. The link anchor text on these sites should be reflective of your localized keyword theme and the links should point to individual location pages and not simply to your home page.

Don’t forget to leverage social media. There are several local opportunities in the social space that should be considered. Take a look at items like blogs, images, videos, Wikis, and local groups. These areas provide an opportunity for increasing awareness of your local presence and they can provide another outlet for driving traffic.

Local SEO is an often overlooked aspect of Internet marketing that contains an increasing amount of opportunity for most companies. With a little research a strategy can be developed, tactics can be defined, and implementation can begin on what will likely turn out to be a highly beneficial endeavor.