Local Awareness: SEO Methods To Increase Local Involvement

Let's pretend you're up for a cup of coffee and checking open coffee shops on Google Maps. What coffee shop would you rather choose? I bet the one that is currently open, within 10 mins walk, with high rating and good reviews, has outdoor sitting option if you'd like to enjoy your coffee outside or has a takeout option.

Now, let's take a look from the other side — you are the owner. You'd have way less visitors to your coffee shop if such information were not available for your potential customers or you were not displayed on Google Maps at all. And you'd have more customers if you included information about payment, delivery options, if the mask is required or if it's a pet-friendly place, etc. This way, you're setting correct expectations for your potential visitors, which will directly affect customers' satisfaction. That's why you need to improve your local SEO.

Like with the regular SEO, you will need to do a research for local keywords. A local keyword is a keyword that potential customers are typing into Google whenever they're searching for products and services just like yours. When you start to rank for these keywords, you can drive targeted and highly qualified local traffic away from your competitors — and towards your website.

When optimizing your content with local keywords, it's important that you research them the right way. A good way to start is by brainstorming and then listing all the different services you offer. For example, a dentist might offer teeth cleaning services, emergency dentist services, root canal services, and more.

If you're not sure about all the services you offer, or which a customer might inquire about, consult your team and existing customers. Then, once you've got your terms, check out any synonyms that might be useful, and which your customers might be using when they type your business into Google. You may find Serpstat's Related keywords report useful for this.

Listing your business on Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare and other directories essentially means that your business is suddenly much more visible in search results. After adding it, people searching for your product or service in your area will see it listed. They will see your address, your phone number (if you've added it), any other contact details, as well as your opening hours, and customer reviews.

For instance, if you're a plumber in New York and someone types in “plumbers in New York," there's a big chance that your business will appear alongside the other plumbers in New York.

One of the most effective strategies to improve your rankings in local SEO is to fill out as much information as possible in your listings profiles. This ensures that all the important data about your business is being presented to the right audience. If all your listings are up-to-date and contain accurate information, you're less likely to experience any negative effects from an algorithm change or update.

Your location profile needs a title and a description. It should include your business name, address, and phone number. In addition, you should include your website if you have one and a short or long description of your business. Finally, you can include a few keywords strategically sprinkled throughout your text to increase the odds of your business showing up when someone searches for your product or service.

Online reviews are such an important SEO method for raising local awareness that they should be non-negotiable.

In other words, if you want to rank higher in the SERPs and get seen by more customers, you have to generate as many online reviews as you can.

How are online reviews related to SEO?

Online reviews obviously help potential customers decide whether to choose Business A over Business B. Moreover, if you don't have any reviews at all (or just a handful), it's very hard for a first-time customer to choose you over a different business.

Naturally, you can't generate customer reviews all by yourself. Instead, you have to find ways of encouraging your customers to leave you a review. Here are some tips:

• Ask! There's nothing illegal about emailing your customers to ask them to provide a review. The main thing is that you wait for a few days after they've made their purchase;
  
• Make it easy for them to leave a review. Include a link in the email!;
  
• Explain to your customers why their reviews are helpful;
• Win-win — reward users for sending feedback. It could be extra options to services, mentioning in your blog, merch...be creative.

Publishing news, offers, Q&As, and events will also help you improve your local rankings. Make publications consistently to engage with your customers.

Localized content marketing campaigns are a tad different from general content marketing campaigns. It increases your brand awareness and attracts the targeted traffic to your site. As such, you need to focus on content that contains local information that people in your targeted area would be interested in.

However, while you need to keep your geographic region in mind, you can still be open to producing content that's shareable — such as "best of" lists.

Local SEO can be both simple and complex. It's simple in that it doesn't require you to massively deviate from your existing SEO campaign, but it's complex in that it still requires a lot of work to get up in the SERPs. Building consistent listings across directories, generating reviews, and publishing localized content together help you climb local SERPs and stay visible to nearby customers.