Understanding Local SEO Practices – What To Pay Attention To
SEO is an integral part of the website owner’s success when it comes to online advertising. To effectively compete and succeed for a good spot on search engine rankings, the business owner has to pay attention and implement local SEO practices into their overall strategy and take these factors into account:
1. Guideline compliance
When it comes to search engine optimisation, search engines like Google facilitate and include guidelines to users. By taking steps to ensure that all guidelines have been adhered to, this allows the business to be qualified as local by Google’s definitions. In addition, this also helps Google discern the relevance and reputation of the business.
2. Website Optimisation
Another crucial step in local SEO practices that business owners should take care to follow would be to properly optimise their website to benefit local and organic search. This can be achieved with the creation of user-friendly mobile responsive website that contain highly relevant/useful content, keyword analysis and injection in a natural manner, meta tag improvements, and more. Search Engines like Google will then be able to better locate and index the contents on the business owner’s website.
3. Citations
Perhaps one of the most common yet useful of local SEO practices, the auditing of citations and listings have proven to improve website rankings on search engines. Business owners are recommended to regularly take up the practise of auditing their existing citations for inconsistent/incomplete/duplicate listings and to ensure that the listings are developed on important local business data platforms instead of dubious sites. In addition, the development of geo/industry specific citations are excellent measures as well. This not only serves to protect the business’ reputation, it also gives businesses a big boost in terms of establishing identity amongst local search results.
4. Rich Snippets
Research has shown that the use of rich snippets have done wonders when it comes to increasing the website owner’s click through rate. While the whole fuss over structured markups have relatively quietened, the implementation of such SEO practices can still serve to refine and strengthen your whole SEO strategy. Structured markups are a great way of properly shining the spotlight onto your corporation’s services and products, with the inclusion of persuasive and accurate information that are likely to encourage conversions (reviews, number of ratings, price and more).
5. Links
Relevancy is one of the most important factors that contribute to the search engine ranking of the business owner’s website. While it is beneficial to have your website discussed, backlinked and shared, regularly checking for problem links should be one of the SEO practices you never miss. Make sure to disavow or resolve any problem links, and to seek out link opportunities only through safe methods like local editorial contributions, sponsorships and reputable industry links.