How to Optimize for Local Search
According to the latest statistics, approximately 50 percent of mobile users who conduct local searches visit the stores that pop up in the search results within one day. Ranking well for local search terms can mean the difference between making a profit and losing money. Here are five things San Diego digital marketers suggest doing to optimize your web presence for local search traffic.
1. Put Your Address Everywhere
When people search online, they typically append a city and/or state to the search term to narrow the results to specific geographical areas. You can increase the odds of being included in the search results by adding your address to all of your online listings. For instance, put your full address on your website and your city and state on your Twitter and Facebook profiles.
2. Fill Out Your Google Local Listing Profile
When people search for businesses in their local area using Google, the company pulls information from local listing profiles if they’re is available. Although it may take some time to fill out this profile, it’s worth the effort because Google ranks completed profiles higher than incomplete ones.
3. Encourage Reviews
Inviting customers to leave reviews of your business online can help you in a couple of ways. First, people factor in reviews when deciding whether to patron a business. Second, reviews can boost your search engine rankings in Google. Businesses with high ratings are seen as more trustworthy and are typically featured more prominently in the results pages.
4. Target Specific Keywords
When writing content for your website, target the specific keywords your customers will use when searching for your business (e.g. coffee shop, latte). Be certain your city and state also appear on the same page as those keywords to increase the chances they will come up in the search results.
5. Clean Up Duplicate Results
If your business has moved locations or you changed the web address of your website, use Google and Bing’s content removal tools to eliminate the old content. This unnecessary content can dilute the effectiveness of your SEO and frustrate customers with inaccurate information.
For more tips on ranking well in local search, connect with a San Diego SEO company like Saba SEO that can help you improve your site’s optimization and increase your online visibility. Give us a call at (858) 277-1717 today!
