Sudheer Kiran

Sudheer Kiran

Marketer, Musician, and Philanthropist

Local SEO Tips for 2014: Improve Your Local Search Visibility

Targeting global market is not always good, and it doesn’t work for local businesses which targets on their local market. 82 percent of local consumers use search engines to find local businesses. And all SEO strategies were changed with the huge increase in usage of mobile phones for searching information in online. Mobile searches are totally different from Desktop searches. Mobile searches are showing based on the location of a searcher. So, If your local targeted customers are searching information from their mobiles, where will your business found in onilne?

Local SEO Tips for 2014

If you have a business which focuses more on local market, how you are going to promote your local business?

What is your local SEO strategy for 2014?

How many tactics you have for local SEO?

How your Local SEO tactics will work on your local business?

Do you want to know the answer for all above questions?, Then, start reading from first tactic…

Keyword Selection

The first move in SEO is proper keyword selection, Keywords are the collection of words or phrases which are used for searching information. Search engines can only read your content on your website to understand about your business, they can not see the information within images, videos and flash script like a normal human being. So, you need to place proper content including your targeted keywords to make the content better understand for search engines.

Use any keyword research tool for selecting proper keywords for your business which gives more conversions. When we are searching for keywords, we should search keywords within our targeted regions. Once you finalised list of your targeted keywords, you need to include location with your keywords and place those keywords in content, page titles, header tags, meta description and meta keywords for better local conversions. 

Multiple Landing Pages for Multiple Locations

If your business is in only one location, you can have same location everywhere in your website. But, If you have same business in different locations, it is better to have different pages for different locations.

Create a specific page in your website for a specific location of your business, and give all the information including the physical location of your business and contact details of that particular location of your business. This will give a clear information about your business and your business locations for visitors and search engines as well.

For Example, if your business is there in New York, New Jersey and in Delaware, then create a different page for New York Office and different page for New Jersey and different page for Delaware office.

Local Schema and Geotag

Schema.org provides a few different types of semantic markup for describing local businesses. You can also geotag your location by including your geocoordinates with your local business code. You can also use hCard Microformat for Local Schema and Geotag.

You can use this to markup your address and contact information on your site,

Example markup:

Local Business Markup  

Complete Local Places

Local Places SEO

For finding your business locally, it is very important to list your business in Local places of search engines. You need to list your business in Google places, Yahoo Places and Bing Places. You can go for Foursquare, Nokia Maps along with local places of search engines.

Provide all the information about your local business with phone number, opening hours, payment options and physical address.

Online Reviews

Online reviews are having major impact on local businesses. Every customer is searching for reviews about your business before going to buy services or products from your company. Encourage online reviews of your local business either good or bad. Every company has some unsatisfied customers, but it doesn’t mean that company not doing well in their business. Do not afraid of bad reviews, but try to find out the solution for that and communicate with him about his problem and solve it if possible.

Online reviews makes your business live in local market. Concentrate on Google Local Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local Places and one more very important place for online reviews is Yelp.

You can allow your customers to share their experience with your business in every local business directories or local communities.

Business Citation & Local Directory Listings

Your business contact information should be in a proper way and correct everywhere. You can not change your business address as your wish. Any reference of a business’s name, its physical address, local phone number, and website are referred to as a business citation. It is very important to have correct business contact information on your website as well as in other local business directories.

Local Business Directories

Search engines will give more authority if your business name, address and phone number are listed with correct contact information everywhere.

For reaching more people in your location, you should list your business in all local business directories. There are more than 500 local business directories are there to submit your local business information. But, I recommend only few major local directories which are related to your industry and which are more popular in your business location.

Provide all your business information while you are submitting your business information into local business directories, it gives you more expose of business in your location.

Social Media

Social Media is major strategy that you should integrated with every internet marketing strategy. Nowadays, it becomes very common in any online marketing strategy. Any strategy without social media is doesn’t make sense, infact it won’t work pretty well.

social-media-local-seo

Create your social media accounts and social media business pages for your local business. And, target to reach your local customers by interacting and by building relationships with them. Build awaresness of your local business on your targeted local customers. You can allow them to share their suggestions and experience with your business, it gives more transparency for your customers.

Participate in Local Events

Participating in local events as a local business will improve your local reputaion. You have to participate in some local events which are related to your industry, or you can participate in some charity events which gives you more reputation as a local business.

You can also host some events by your company instead of participating in other events. This will give more local awareness of your business.

Local Blogging

Using blogging, you can target more visitors from your targted location. People always search for useful information in internet, provide unique and useful content by blogging. As a local business, you should share some valuable information with your local customers.

Maintain good relations with reputated bloggers in your location. You can ask them to review about your business by offering some money. This is increase your online reputation as well as your targeted visitors also.

Mobile SEO

There is a difference between in search results of mobile search and desktop search. If you search some keyword in Google by using your mobile and your desktop at the same time, I’m sure you will get different results in mobile from your desktop results. The reason for this difference is, Mobile searches are more focused on local search factors while desktop searches are focusing on only some local factors while showing results.

Mobile Local Search

Desktop searches tend to less often be influenced by the location the person that who is searching a query in search engine. It seems, It is very important to optimise your website for localised search queries. But, Mobile searches tend to more often be influenced by the location of the person that who is searching a query in search engine.

Mobile searches must be more comprehensive in their optimisation, and there seems to be a preference towards showing Google Local place results with very short description including phone numbers and location.

Every Local SEO strategy will links with some other strategy in some point of time. It really make sense if you integrate all your tactics within one SEO strategy by prioritising your tactics. Have a target of getting more visitors to your website from your targted regions and go everywhere to promote your local business to get your targeted customers. You need to focus more on your targeted people from your targeted regions in social media. Don’t’ afraid of encouraging people to write a review about your business. A local business which has more reviews than other business which has less reviews is always better than their competitors.

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