Most likely this is the first time you have heard of this and nobody has explained it to you. That’s why, at Lifting Group, we want to tell you what it is and how local SEO can help to position your company on the Internet. Many people think that when they do SEO they are also doing local SEO, but in fact they are mistaken. They are two different things; one does not necessarily entail the other.
In fact, implementing local SEO brings benefits that many do not know about. For example:
- Appearing on SERP in two ways: as organic positioning and on the thumb tack map.
- Improving the positioning by Google searches made with a mobile phone.
And most importantly, how to apply local SEO to your website:
1. ADD THE CITY OR PROVINCE IN THE MOST KEY POSITIONS OF THE WEBSITE:
- In the target tag headline: This is one of the most important places where information should be inserted about your company’s location.
- In the metadescription:Including the information on the city/province will increase the % of clicks for local search results.
- In the H1 header: It is essential to include the name of your location in every header of your website.
- The URL: must include the name of your city/province.
- The content: it is fundamental that information should be displayed on the city and/or province on the website.
- In the tagging (Alt Tag) of images:Make sure you have alternative text for all your images and that you include the location of your business.
2. OPTIMISE YOUR PAGE IN GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Google My Business is the ideal platform to manage your local business from a single tool, as it includes Google Places and the Google Plus business page. If your business has various locations, you should register in each of them, that is, create an account in Google My Business for each location.
From here, you can insert or amend the information, add photographs and even share your Google page. What’s more, you will be able to see all the reviews of your business on Google, and respond to users.
You will also be able to create simple adverts that are easy to integrate using Adwords Express, automating them via the Google advertising platform at the local level
3. ADD THE GOOGLE MAP EMBEDDED IN THE WEBSITE:
You must ensure you do this correctly. Not only do you embed a map that indicates your address; you must embed a map in which your “thumb tack“ appears, that is, one that includes your business’ page on Google+ (Local).
4. INCLUDE RATING OF REVIEWS IN GOOGLE SEARCHES: RICH SNIPPETS
The rating of a product or service can appear as a “rich snippet”. To implement this, you have to go to Google WebMaster Tools and sign up for this functionality.
5. OBTAIN REVIEWS/COMMENTS
Reviews are a fundamental part of Local SEO. If we want to be among the top positions of the “thumbtack map”, one of the factors that the Google algorithm takes most into account is the reviews with a good rating (4 or 5 stars).
It is important to have many good reviews to increase the hit/customer conversion rate, as Google now displays reviews that appear in the list of “thumbtacks” in a single drop-down menu. Users will read your reviews before they see any other information about your business.
Google does not allow reviews to be purchased; indeed, one has to keep an eye on this because Google sees if there are many reviews from the same IP address, even if they appear as different users, and may delete them all.
