Local SEO Drives Local Business

If many of your marketing clients are small businesses, you already know it’s important to have an ongoing local SEO strategy. After all, about 46% of all Google searches have local intent.

You want your clients to rank high in search engine results for location-specific searches. Local SEO can be instrumental in driving increased online and foot traffic to your clients’ businesses. It’s not just for online businesses. For example, many people may be out and about when they Google nearby restaurants or shops. If your client’s business doesn’t appear when someone nearby performs a search for their product or service, that’s just lost money.

Let’s say you have a barbecue restaurant in Dallas. Local SEO can enable your restaurant to appear near the top for a search for “barbecue restaurants in Dallas.” And we know that top of page Google search results ultimately means more business.

There are a lot of strategies and tactics to implement local SEO. But before we get into that, let’s further explore the benefits.

What Are the Benefits of Local SEO?

There are several benefits of local SEO for businesses, including:

Increased visibility: Local SEO helps your client’s business appear in relevant search results for users searching for products or services in their geographic location. This increases brand awareness as well as website and foot traffic.

Improved credibility: When prospects see your client’s business at the top of a search engine results page (SERP), they instantly see the business as credible and trustworthy. After all, Google (or Bing, etc.) appears to be recommending it!

Increased traffic: Local SEO can help drive more traffic to your website by optimizing your website content and meta data to appear higher in search results. But not only does your client’s website enjoy more traffic, so does their local brick and mortar stores.

Better user experience: Local SEO also involves optimizing your client’s website for local users, such as providing accurate and up-to-date information about your business, including hours of operation, location and contact information. This can help improve the user experience and make it easier for potential customers to find and interact with your client’s business.

How Can I Improve My Client’s Local SEO?

Here are some key steps you can take to improve your client’s local SEO:

Be Clear About Locations

Is this business primarily online or walk-in? Does it have just one location or multiple locations? You need to understand your client’s business before you can begin to implement local SEO.

Optimize Your Client’s Website

• Research relevant local keywords to use on your client’s website and metadata.
• Make sure to also include your contact information on your client’s website.
• Be sure your client’s website has an about page and a home page. Contact information should be complete and all locations should be listed. If your client has walk-in business, be sure to list all addresses. But if your client’s business is such that they do not want to publish addresses due to privacy, be sure other information such as phone numbers are clear.
• Don’t forget to put a Google Map on the Contact Us page.
• Use Schema structured data markup to help Google understand your content and help users find it in search.

List Your Client on Google Business Profiles and Local Directories

Google Business Profile enables you to manage how your business appears in Google search and maps. Make sure to fill out all the relevant information about your business, including your address, phone number, website URL and hours of operation. You can also post as you do to social media.

Be sure to also list your client’s business on relevant local directories.

Build Local Citations and Backlinks

A citation is any online mention of your client’s business name, address and phone number on other websites. A backlink is a link from another website to your client’s website. Building local citations and backlinks can help improve your client’s local search rankings.

Encourage Customer Reviews

Positive customer reviews can help improve your business’s visibility and credibility in local search results. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your client’s Google Business Profile directory, your client’s website and on other directories and review sites.

Make Your Client’s Website Mobile-Friendly

More and more users are using mobile devices to search for local businesses, so it’s important to ensure your website is mobile-friendly and provides a good user experience on smaller screens.

Publish Content That is Locally Oriented

High-quality localized content gives your client’s audience a reason to visit their website, and it also attracts backlinks that help build an audience. Both content quality and backlinks are extremely important to search engine ranking. Therefore, if you want your client’s website to feature in local searches, for good local SEO, you need to customize content to be relevant to the location.

In addition to using local keywords, you will want to have content that is specifically local. So, for example, if you own a local restaurant, you might want to write content about nearby entertainments or shops your client’s audience might visit after they dine. Also, in addition to photos and videos of the business, you will also want representations of local attractions to more firmly place the business in that location.

Ready to Increase Your Client’s Local Visibility and Traffic with Local SEO?

Umbrella white label services can help you with your clients’ local SEO so they can grow their business and increase their profits.

Contact us for a free consultation through this Umbrella website form or by calling 1(866) 760-2638.