There are plenty of ways in which you can do the optimization of your business site for local search. At the same time, it is crucial to understand that just as there are ample ways to optimize it, there are a great number of ways in which you can spoil it too. You wouldn’t want to violate the guidelines given by Google, as it can be a major downfall online.

Therefore, by keeping your local SEO in check, you can save yourself that hurdle and actually outperform in the market.

By gaining a deeper understanding of the concept of local SEO, you can create a winning strategy to make your business succeed. Keep reading to find out all about it!

A peek into local SEO

There is no doubt about the fact that the businesses that are more legitimate stand a higher chance of performing well with the search engines too. This means that a venture that is offering quality services or products and matches their business intent on the internet perfectly is at the top.

For instance, never indulge in fake reviews or other such techniques to gain popularity. Doing so will just land you in deeper trouble with your SERP performance as well.

The ‘Near me’ searches are increasing.

You must make use of helpful tools like the WhatsMySERP extension to keep yourself updated and perform well in terms of SERP. Another thing to notice is that consumers are searching more for the ‘Near me’ type of keywords. Thus, you can focus on this type of enhancing your local SEO and optimize the website accordingly.

Be accurate with your business listings.

It is essential to ensure that all your business listings are in sync with the NAP citations on your website. This should be in terms of both the appearance as well as punctuation. This plays a crucial role in deciding the accuracy of your site by the search engines.

In case there are discrepancies in these aspects, it can lead to challenges in locating your business.

Showing up the business page under the Knowledge Panel

The local structured data plays an essential role in achieving the knowledge panel in the SERPs. There, ensure a few things. These are:

• The structured data should be added appropriately.
• There should not be any indexing issues.
• It should have validation in the Structured Data Testing Tool of Google.

Assessing the market and your competitors

Doing proper research is always a bonus! When you do proper research on your local competitors, you learn a lot. You can determine how to attack or target a particular genre. It is crucial to first identify how you want to go about it.

For instance, you plan on running a local campaign to target the most popular locations. You need to first assess the market of the area and perform complete analysis. The budget plays a good role too. If your budget is good, you can target larger markets from the start. In case it is not, it is advisable to narrow down the region and then run the campaign.

This assessment helps in enhancing the rank on the search engines and thus, ultimately, the traffic you get on your sites.

How to assess your competitors?

When you opt to target the local market, understand that you will be competing with the local companies who are offering similar products or services. Here are the three main things you should be looking into when assessing your local competition:

• Their content strategy
• Their linking strategy
• Their website structure

How does an optimized local website page look?

Now, there are a few crucial components that are a part of an optimized local website page. Let’s discuss a little more about them.

• The title tag of the page

An optimized page will have a title having a length ranging between 50-60 characters. Make sure the title involves usage of the target location keyword that you have in mind.

• An optimized meta description

The ideal, optimized meta description should be around 156 characters in length. Also, ideally, the target location keyword that you have in mind for the page should be included in the initial part of the meta description.

A quick tip: You can include a local contact number in the meta description itself. Some people are likely to call you directly rather than opening up the page for a check.

• Proper headings and subheadings

It is crucial to include your target location keyword in the main title, which is H1 of your local page. Also, it is advisable to include it in the form of a long-tail keyword as a part of the subheading too.

Enhancing the content of the local pages

It is advisable that a website should have longer guides and articles on its domain to be able to rank better in terms of local activities. These long articles actually provide an in-depth understanding of the concept. Thus, the bounce rate of the website also reduces.

If the retention rate is good, it will automatically lead to better results in terms of fetching business locally.

Get your pages locally optimized. These are going to play an essential role in determining the reach of your business perfectly.

Written by Meghan Hale, a content writer and editing machine. She is writing content on Airbnb SEO. You’ll find me yelling at my dog to stop barking, whether it be at the neighbours or on a long afternoon walk