Local SEO Strategies

How to improve your business with local SEO strategies

SEO is a key element for your strategy. Above all, local SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase the visibility of a business with a physical store, where it is necessary to consider how to improve organic SEO positioning locally in the SERPs of Google.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO focuses on optimizing the online presence of a business and improving its local traffic, visibility, and brand recognition. This objective includes optimizing the company profile, finding local keywords, and generating locally relevant content.

How to do local SEO?

If your business has a physical location or provides services in a geographical area, it is necessary to have SEO optimization. Local searches, according to Google, depending on the intent, will depend on a local ranking factor, such as relevance, distance, and prestige.

Relevance: This factor indicates the coincidence of a Google Business Profile listing with the user’s search intention. They consider categories which impact the positioning of the Google My Business listing and describe the local business activity, keywords, one of the main signs of relevance, photos geotagged with EXIF data with business coordinates and keywords within the code of the images, and on-page SEO, which must be optimized based on a title that pursues a keyword with geolocation, the entities corresponding to the province or locality where you want to position, the NAP, the data marking, and the longtail keywords.

Distance: It is unalterable at the SEO level since it only considers the proximity of the user, and the search intention, and it does not work the same for all business categories.

Prestige: Here, the reviews in Google Business Profile influence, as well as the reviews of third parties or platforms external to Google, since these are also shown in the Knowledge graph. Links to the web page and citations or mentions are also important.

The map vs. local organic

The searches that are carried out under the local search parameter or “visit in person” are resolved in Google through the Google Business Profile tabs, followed by the organic positioning referring to a province, neighborhood, or city. The impact that Google searches have on local businesses is very large; for example:

• 46% of all Google searches include a local intent
• 97% of users search the Internet for a local business
• 28% of local searches result in a purchase
• 70% of consumers visit a store because of the information they find on the Internet

Who gets the most clicks?

To carry out an effective local SEO strategy, the following elements must be taken into account, which must be divided into two types:

• The organic: Where the authority of the web page stands out, the relevance of the URL that ranks for the local keyword, and the location of the user who searches on Google.
• The maps: Where the popularity of the business comes into play, the relevance based on the justification snippets and the user’s proximity.

To generate a successful local SEO strategy, it is recommended to use the optimization guide on the Google Business Profile tab, formerly Google My Business.

NAP + W- The factors that are needed to have good NAP consistency and coherence in the different places where business citations are made are:

• Name: It must be the same one that appears on the facade of your business, adding the keyword to rank the tab itself in front of the name of the business.
• Address: It must be the same one appearing after searching for a said address in Google.
• Telephone: Preferably, it should be a geolocated fixed telephone since it will be relevant to the file itself.

Listing data within the location URL

You must enter the NAP, the business hours, its coordinates, and email, with a link from the location page to the Google My Business tab itself. 

Finally, it will be necessary to embed an iframe of the Google map indicating how to get there or important points in the province or city from which you can go to the local business.

CATEGORIES: You can choose up to 9 categories, where the main one must be the most exact in terms of your business type. Likewise, we will use the other 8 remaining categories as secondary keywords that must be related to the main business type.

IMAGES: They must be geotagged with EXIF data to increase their relevance, but they must also be of good quality to improve the conversion of the Google Business Profile tab.

SERVICES AND PRODUCTS: They will depend on the main category of this. In addition, they are a relevance factor, as well as a factor that will help conversion.

 ATTRIBUTES: They are a factor that will help the file’s relevance. Depending on the country where the business is located, as well as the categories that are selected, you can find, for example payment methods, accessibility, and acceptance of pets.

DESCRIPTION: This will help conversion, so the text must have a persuasive tone that encourages the client to want to know more.

PUBLICATIONS: Publications allow you to keep your Google My Business tab updated and are also important to launch offers or events within your company. They are a factor for secondary keywords.

 REVIEWS: They are an element of relevance and important semantics, which are used to trigger justification snippets within the file itself. It is therefore necessary to include the reviews of satisfied customers and of the service to help the secondary keywords of the tab.

 The keyword research and it’s objective: Finding the correct keywords for which users search for your services or products will help your local business appear in the top positions and allow you to create a correct architecture, both at the information level and the technical. The objective of keyword research is to attack the queries made by users in Google, focused on the type of business, products or services, and brands.

Structure and content of a location page 

The correct way to structure this type of URL is: 

• Title: will carry the exact keyword, the brand, and also the location.
• Description: despite not being relevant for positioning, it will help us to get a snippet within the Google Business Profile file.
• Content: where the main keyword should be in the first paragraph, as long as it can be inserted naturally.

Images within a location page

The images will help you improve the relevance within the location page, and to be helpful for local SEO, they must include the ALT attribute with the main keyword and EXIF data. EXIF data is the most important part since we can enter the coordinates of the location of the premises, the description of the photo itself, and even some keyword that interests us.

A blog as a great ally for local SEO

Within corporate or service websites with few URLs, a blog provides a lot of visibility to the business and allows you to discuss topics in which you demonstrate your expertise.

 Final conclusions on local SEO

In 2022, 87% of consumers used Google to rate local businesses, and 42% of local searches involved clicks on the Google Map Pack. Putting all these techniques into practice will make the visibility of your local business grow and strengthen your strategy to expand reach and visibility in potential customers.

Read more about SEO best practices and everything Globant’s Create Studio is doing to combine creativity, AI, and technology to empower your brand.