Greg Gifford, column writer for Moz Blog, discusses the importance and necessity to understand, learn, and how to do local SEO. If you’re marketing for a business or even working for a company, SEO matters to your local internet marketing and ultimately, your company’s success . If your company has a physical location, local SEO is absolutely necessary to utilize.
Gifford provides us with a simple plan to help build SEO skills and fully understand what this Search Engine Optimization thing is all about.
Gifford provides us with seven elements that will help us enhance local SEO. Remember that if your business has multiple locations, you should have a unique landing page for each Google+ local listing. If your business has a single location, then your homepage should have these seven elements. Gifford also suggests these elements by locally optimized on product and service pages as well.
1. City and State in the Title Tag.
Gifford declares this as one of the most important places to include city/state information. Many small businesses may even rise in local listings from this alone.
2. City and State in H1 Heading.
Although Gifford says it doesn’t always have to be an H1 heading, whatever heading you do have on the page, it’s important to have you city/state information.
3. City and State in URL.
Although you can’t provide this URL on your site’s homepage, on other pages including your city and state information can be a significant signal of local relevance.
4. City and State in Content.
Gifford is right when he says that in your content on your website, always provide your city/state information.
5. City and State in Meta Description.
Although the meta description doesn’t dictate where you stand in the ranking system, but by including your city/state information, it can really result in higher click-through rating for local search results.
6. City and State in Alt Tags.
Gifford says its too common that local business fail to use alt text on their images. So, make sure your images provide alt text, and that you’re also including city/state information in your alt text.
7. Include an Embedded Google Map.
Don’t just embed a map that points to your address, Gifford says. Rather, you’ll want to embed a map that points to your actual Google+ local listing.
Gifford adresses the point that your business’s citations are incredibly important for your SEO strategy. A citation could also be referred to as “NAP Information”: Name, Address, and Phone number. Search engines like Google and Bing expect local businesses to have their NAP information on certain other websites such as social media sites. If you do not provide citations/NAP information on your company’s most important sites, this will drastically hurt your business in ranking.
Gifford states the point of importance for having customer reviews for your website. Reviews are vital for your local SEO, and they’re also important for local clickthroughs. Google now has a “reviews popup” that allows visitors to read your reviews before even visiting your company’s page. Hopefully, your customer reviews are positive and will lead people to your website.
The best local SEO practices for your business are well thought out and implemented through the mind of your customer. If you want customers to be able to directly find your company’s website through search engines, create a positive user experience, and receive a great review, then follow these local SEO practices. SEO is the future. SEO is the way people are going to be seen and heard on the web.
At Five Technology, our SEO experts can help your company with its own local SEO strategies. If you’d like to enhance your online presence, let’s talk!
Read the full article by Greg Gifford.