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How Important It is to Optimize Your Website for Local Search Terms When Targeting Local Traffic

Get web traffic from your surroundings through local SEO practice.

Local search optimization is a sustainable marketing strategy that has become one of the aspects of SEO web positioning that can benefit more projects for a very localized activity in the territory. And it is that, as the great potential of web positioning on the Internet is being consolidated, and that there are fewer unbelievers, the specificities of SEO begin to be really important to get the local target.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO, social SEO, and mobile SEO are terms that increasingly sound more and that are slowly acquiring an entity of their own within the world of web positioning. Taking into account these 3 variables we are going to leave you some basic tips on how to optimize a website to increase local traffic.

In the first place, it is important because it directs your efforts to make yourself visible where your users are looking for you, because what good is it that they find you in Russia when your field of action is Australia?

In addition, local SEO turns out to be a very interesting sustainable marketing strategy for local companies. We say that this strategy is sustainable because it encourages local commerce, reactivating the local economy and taking care of the environment. Among some of its advantages we find that:

• Reduces the environmental impact of transport
• It generates employment for close people or local user intention.
• Revitalizes the neighborhoods improving their quality of life.

Local SEO on-page

After having carried out a situation audit to check where your website is with respect to geolocation, it is best to start working on GEO location, that is, the one you control the most because it directly concerns the content of your Web page. For this we suggest you take into account the following factors:

• Web data: The first place where you should review and update your data is on your website. NAP is a vital signal for Google to consider when it comes to local search. Make sure you include in detail the location of your business, along with the complete brand name and main business contact number. A good place to include them is in the footer, in this way you will get them visible in all the pages of your website.
• Geolocation keywords: It is increasingly common to include geolocation terms when doing a search. If we want our website to be relevant for this type of searches we must include geolocation terms on our website. For example, if your business activity takes place in the New Farm suburb of Brisbane, refer to this suburb’s name in the contents of your website. Use Meta titles, headings, texts, etc. to place the terms of relevance, you will see that little by little the quality of your traffic improves.
• Contact page: In addition to footer, it is convenient that you have an exclusive page where you can show your contact information in more detail. On this page, you can include, in addition to your name, address, telephone and your form, your opening hours, extra contact information (email, fax, Skype, WhatsApp, etc.), a Google Maps map with your location and the geolocation keywords that you have selected to position yourself.
• Responsive web: Searches from the mobile are closely related to local traffic. If you want to get more local traffic, optimise your website for mobile devices, gain relevance in the search engines and improve the user experience of visitors coming from this type of devices.

Local SEO off-page

After this, we can start working on local SEO off-page elements. To do this, follow the following steps:

• Google My Business: The most important and priority in this phase is to sign up your business in Google My Business. For some time Google had integrated various tools, such as Google Plus (Google suspended the operation), Google Maps, and some others, in the same platform, however, Google My Business is the most useful tool for local companies who want to boost their presence on the Internet. Through this tool, you can give visibility to your local project in Google Maps and in general, in search engines.

If you still do not appear on Google Maps, maybe because you are a local small business.. Before you can use Google My Business account publicly Google will have to verify that the business is really yours. For this, they will send a letter by mail to the address associated with your business, with a code that you must enter in your Google account so that it is verified. Google does this verification process using a phone call too.

• Local directories and geolocation platforms: Sign up also in other geolocation platforms. Because not all SEO is Google, remember that your potential clients or geo-targeted search optimisation will come from different places. Use Bing Places, Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and all the local business directories you find in your area.
• Reviews and comments: Finally, always keep in mind the reviews and comments made about your business on social networks, especially the Google reviews that will be more related to local SEO. When we have reached a minimum of 5 reviews, the ratings that these reviews have left can appear in the SERPs in the form of stars and will have a great influence on our rate of clicks received.

Following these tips step by step, you can see how the organic positioning of your website quickly improves in the geographical area that interests you. You will get more local search traffic and your conversions will improve.