Local SEO is a relatively new method of promotion, which is still under development. The essence of the technique: obtaining regional customers located in close proximity to you.
What is local SEO
Local SEO is a promotion method based on geolocation, yours and the buyer. Based on the location of the client, search engines automatically display companies located nearby in its TOP.
Advantages of local promotion:
- you can compete with major market players, get ahead of large sites in search results;
- traffic consists of interested buyers who do not want to travel far for small goods;
- optimizing the page is easy – just fill out the page correctly, set the necessary tags and register in several services.
We will talk about how to influence the ranking factors of local SEO a little later.
What affects issuance
When displaying sites in the TOP, search engines are guided by standard ranking criteria – keywords, site optimization, average time spent on the page. However, local SEO factors also play a role.
The release is based on:
- The physical address of the organization. The closer you are to the buyer, the higher your position in the search results will be.
- Information about the company in third-party services. An important role is played by registration in Yelp, Google Maps, Google My Business directory and other authoritative resources.
- Link profile. The mention of the site on large regional resources, sites with similar topics has the greatest weight.
user activity. Search engines promote companies that have high ratings and many reviews on Google Maps and Yandex Maps. At the same time, reviews should be left by regional buyers. Fake profiles are quickly calculated. - Semantic core. Add regional issues to the list of key issues – indicating the region, city, district. Headers and urls can be optimized for them.
- Domain zone. In Ukraine, sites located on the .ua domain are better promoted. The same rule applies to other country/domain zone variations. Although now there are a lot of very diverse domain zones, so this rule no longer has such a clear effect as it was before.
Keep in mind that local SEO is not for everyone. If you plan to expand your business to other areas and cities in the future, a narrow promotion strategy can only get in the way.
Methods of local SEO promotion
There are several methods for legal local SEO. Let’s analyze each of them in detail.
Title and Description Optimization
The first step in optimization is filling in the tags correctly. Titles and descriptions should include city and region.
The title should be short, clear, reflect the main idea of your company. It must indicate the city, specialization. You can reflect several key advantages – for example, “inexpensive”, “fast”, “guarantee” and so on. Please note that the maximum title length is 70-90 characters.
Description – a short description of the page. Here the emphasis is no longer on keywords and the name of the city (although you should not forget about them either), but on the benefits. If the description is enticing, the user will visit the page.
Micro markup
Micro-markup is small tags, thanks to which search robots analyze the type of content. Thanks to it, an extended snippet is formed, in which the most important pages of the site are emphasized.
For local promotion, the classic Schema.org is suitable, the type is “Local Business”.
Link building
In order for a site to rank first in search results, it must have a so-called “link weight”. This is the number of mentions of the resource on other donor pages.
Naturally, any links will not work. The choice of “donors” must be approached very carefully.
The links placed on the following categories of sites have the greatest weight:
- with the target audience from your region;
- with a similar theme;
- having credibility, good SEO-indicators, high attendance.
Registration in Google My Business
Google My Business is an advanced directory containing information on companies. Any business owner can enter their company details, address, name, hours of operation, and other information.
Users, in turn, can leave their ratings and reviews. The better the general opinion of buyers, the more likely it is that the site will be in the first places in the regional issue.
Important! Don’t try to cheat reviews. Moderation in the service is very strict. Fake profiles are quickly calculated, and due to cheating, a company can quickly fall in the search results and even get banned.
Promotion through social networks
Another effective way of local SEO is promotion through social networks. Create a company profile on Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte, place advertisements in local publics. Use contextual advertising tools, they can be extremely effective.
Do not forget about hashtags and geotags that will help you attract interested buyers.
Local SEO is a simple and effective promotion method. It is suitable if in the near future you will not expand the sphere of influence to other cities or countries.