5 Simple SEO Techniques For Local Businesses

Local SEO for small business : Local SEO is making your business visible for geographically connected searches

Digital marketing for local businesses typically includes a website. Getting yours noticed takes a bit of extra work, but if you implement a few simple SEO (search engine optimization) tricks, your website will not only get traffic, but it may become more popular than those of your competitors. In this article, we will cover five of the most important SEO techniques that will transform your online presence.

Local SEO for small business : 5 simple SEO techniques

Keywords Are Important, But Long-Tail Keywords Are Better
One Landing Page Is Good, Local Landing Pages Reach More
Turn Those Meta Descriptions Around
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Reach More Potential Clients With A Responsive Website

1. Keywords Are Important, But Long-Tail Keywords Are Better

Okay, you probably already know what keywords are. These are the words that best describe the type of business or service you provide. For example, if your website is promoting your dental service, keywords you would use would include dentist, dentistry, dental office, dental service, and so on. The primary keywords would be relevant to the type of service you perform within the community. Adding a local parameter to your keywords could help you attract more customers. For example, if you are an SEO agency in the United Kingdom, a keyword like “seo agency uk” would be a far better choice than a globally ranked “seo agency”. Long-tail keywords are phrases that are still relevant to your industry but say a little bit more. The reason why you want to add long-tail keywords to your SEO strategy is that research indicates that they provide 2.5 times better results than short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords could be things like affordable dentistry near me, dental office open weekends, dentist located in (name of community), as examples. As you can see, the long-tail keywords just expand on what the short-tail keywords say.

2. One Landing Page Is Good, Local Landing Pages Reach More

The page that first appears on the screen when someone lands on your website is called the landing page. It should say enough about the service you provide to cause visitors to go deeper into your website to find out more. What has been trending in recent years is the addition of several local landing pages on a single website. For example, if your business is in one community, but you provide your service to nearby communities, you should have a local landing page for each of those localities. By doing this, you personalize and localize content. Even if you don’t live in the next town over, but offer service to residents in that community, a local landing page will make you look as if you are a part of the community. You do this with content that is personalized to the area. The benefit of doing this as part of your small business marketing is that residents landing on a local landing page will feel confident in using your service as you clearly belong in that community.

3. Turn Those Meta Descriptions Around

Meta descriptions are curious things. The average website visitor can’t see them but probably ended up on your website because of them. That’s because meta descriptions are important pieces of information that search engines use to learn more about your website. The information found in meta descriptions helps the search engines find the best matches for website queries entered by internet users. So, with effective meta descriptions, your website may be offered as a search result more often. They also help with website ranking. The best way to improve your meta descriptions is to examine what search queries are used to locate your website and go from there. As an example, a solid meta description with actionable keywords could be something like buy new false teeth at local dental office. You have to think like a user looking for your service and tailor metas to match that type of search.

4. A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

There is something to the statement about pictures and that they are equal to a thousand words. Nowhere does that make more sense than in digital marketing. Your local business website can use images and other visual elements to get across details that would otherwise fill pages with text. But there is a bit of science behind the effective use of visuals on a website. First, the images must be relevant to the industry your website features. Second, the images have to be used in a way that helps website visitors to better understand what they will find on your website. You can use images in a blog to help explain something, use video on pages to describe something where visual cues can improve understanding, you can use images to help your website visitors to connect to you and your staff. Visual content is also something search engines gobble up and use frequently in search engine results provided the content is relevant.

5. Reach More Potential Clients With A Responsive Website

A responsive website is a website that responds to different platforms accessing it. We generally refer to responsive websites as those that are mobile-friendly. Essentially, when you have a fully optimized website, visitors can access it from desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smartphones, and any other internet device that displays websites. The reason why you would want a responsive website is that the majority of Google searches these days are made from mobile devices and digital marketing efforts should include this. If your website does not respond well to the screen size of a smartphone or tablet, you are missing out on reaching potential customers who use those tools to access the internet. It’s all about reach, and if most of the Google searches come from handheld devices, and your website is responsive, you can expect that about half of the traffic to your website is there because they can access your site on their smartphones or tablets.

Local SEO for small business: Final Thoughts

The internet has changed how we do a lot of things. It has made looking for information about local businesses a lot easier. However, if your business website does not include some simple SEO techniques, it may not appear in search results when a user looks for information about what you do online. The tips above are only just a few suggestions, but by implementing them, you give your local business website an edge over all other websites in the region, including those of your competitors. When you consider that competition is good for the consumer, you need to have a website that stands out for exposure and to be accessible by potential customers seeking information before committing to making any purchase.

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Marina Turea works as a content manager at Digital Authority Partners, a San Diego-based digital marketing and website development agency.

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