Local SEO Checklist

June 15, 2021
Kristian
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Marketing Manager at Aqueous Digital

If you’re looking to achieve maximum local visibility for your business then you need to get serious about your local SEO. How do you ensure that your business beats the national names and your independently owned local rivals when someone searches for what you offer?

The answer is local SEO.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is the process by which you optimise your website to encourage more visitors from people looking for what your business offers in your local area. It’s a package of tricks and tools that together get you noticed on Google and other search engines, ensuring that when someone is looking for your goods or services, your business is the first one they take a look at.

Getting local SEO right is the key to unlocking that all-important local web traffic. Here’s a simple checklist to ensure that your local SEO is working as it should:

1) Register your business with Google My Business

It only takes a few minutes to open an account for your business with Google My Business. It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your business visibility in your local area. When you’ve done that, within a few days you should see your business featured in the map that Google provides when someone searches for your type of shop or service in their local area.

2) Get your keywords right

Ensure that the keywords you use on your website accurately match what people are searching for. If, for example, people are searching for ‘holiday apartments’, then using ‘holiday flats’ is likely to be less successful. You can use a keyword search tool such as Semrush to find accurate keywords for what you’re offering.

3) Ensure people know where you are

Your location needs to be prominent on your website, not just for visitors to the site but also for the search engines. There are five locations that you should consider featuring your location.

These are:

Headings
Meta description
Body copy/content
Footer
Title tag (for Geo pages only)

4) Be specific

You also need to consider how wide you want to cast your net with your location. In general it pays to be specific, but not so specific that your target audience shrinks so much it no longer becomes worthwhile.

For instance, if you are a mechanic in a rural town, are you offering your service just to your local town or is your location county-wide? If you have a city coffee shop you may have a big enough audience just by referencing the suburb or part of town where you’re located. In some instances, this may be more beneficial, particularly if, for instance, your selling point is your cafe’s close proximity to the local park.

5) Create high-quality local content

Local content is key to featuring prominently in the local listings so be sure to update yours regularly. What’s happening locally, are there any initiatives and community events that your business is involved in? Even when you’re writing generic pieces pertinent to your business be sure to include a reference to your locality.

6) Generate local coverage

It used to be that the only means to get local coverage for your business was through the local newspaper, or perhaps with a mention on the local radio. With the explosion in online media, it’s now much easier to get your business name mentioned.

Invite local bloggers to your store or to try out your services, contribute to guest blogs and make sure that local media know about your promotional activities. The more mentions your business can secure on local websites the better.

7) Encourage local reviews

Gaining positive reviews on local and national review websites can have a positive impact on your local SEO. Reviews on Google My Business and Facebook can be highly valuable, along with review sites such as Trustpilot.

Positive reviews not only help you feature highly on the local search results, they’re also reassuring for would-be customers who see that you’re not only legitimate, you’re also delivering a quality service. Positive reviews can also help your business stand out on Google Map results.

8) Submit your site to high-quality local directories

Local online directories of businesses offering goods and services can provide a valuable addition to your online SEO. They can also give your local SEO boost, but you need to be confident that the directories are high-quality. Rarely updated, obscure local directories are unlikely to have much impact. Local directories can also provide a valuable backlink.

9) Make sure your website is mobile friendly

The way consumers access the internet is increasingly mobile based. According to research carried out by Hubspot 61% of all local internet searches now take place on mobile devices. If your website doesn’t perform well on mobile devices then you’re likely to lose out with customers who may look elsewhere.

Also, Google looks for websites that are mobile friendly when delivering their search results. The more accessible your website the more likely it is to feature highly. You can easily check how mobile-friendly your website is at Google’s test page.

It’s also worth noting, that Google already knows your customers location based on their phone’s GPS and will automatically deliver the best local results.

10) A long-term approach

It’s important to remember that local SEO is a long-term, ongoing strategy rather than a single, one-off event. At Aqueous Digital, we can develop a comprehensive local SEO strategy for your business that ensures you stand the best chance of appearing prominently in local search results. Even when your business is closed we ensure your SEO never sleeps.

Talk to our experienced team today to find out what we can do for your business. Call us on 0800 285 1424 or email us at hello@aqueous-digital.co.uk to have a chat about how we can support the success of your business with our award-winning search engine optimisation.