Top 5 Tips for Local SEO to Achieve Impressive Rankings

The secret of local SEO success is the right keyword research. Once you have a list, sort it by the potential amount of income that optimization in this direction can bring. Professional advice: if you find it difficult to estimate this figure, focus on cost per click (CPC). If a business is willing to pay a lot of money for a particular keyword, optimization for it brings even more profit. 

Be sure to pay attention to the potential volume of traffic. Choose those words that will bring you real visitors. If the search volume of queries is too low or the keyword popularity is declining, investment in this area will be unprofitable. And don't forget to compare your domain authority with the average of your competitors. The more you lag behind other representatives of your market segment, the more time and effort optimization will take.

2. Evaluate the competition in the search

To develop your business, you need to know what other companies are doing. And to do that, you should identify your real competitors. Using the competitor monitoring feature in Serpstat, see who is optimizing in the same direction as you are.

Highlight among them those companies that you work with on the same level. If you sell smartphone cases in a small store, you can't really compete with Amazon. But a similar retail outlet and a small chain of mobile accessory stores will be your direct competitors.

3. Create localized content and landings

One proven SEO tip that works effectively at this level is to use existing content instead of writing new content. Update it regularly — optimize the structure, experiment with new calls to action, add new details and clarifications, improve internal linking, and so on. 

4. Create and optimize your Google Business Profile (Google My Business)

A mandatory step for any company that wants to reach out to potential customers living nearby. It should sign up for a Google My Business account; otherwise, its profile will be generated automatically and might not contain the right content.

To increase local site rankings, add the following information to your profile:

• company name;
  
• actual address;
• contact numbers;
  
• website link;
  
• email;
  
• products and product categories;
  
• photos.
  

Update your Google My Business content regularly with useful and interesting information. Approach this task creatively — it should not be a mere formality for you. Don't forget about Google Maps optimization as well. Generate location-based and geotargeted content so customers can quickly find your store, office, or showroom.

Use a review tool to engage local consumers. Monitor feedback and provide responses promptly. Learn to work with negativity — if a customer is dissatisfied with the service, promise to fix the defects and offer them decent compensation. This will help you to increase the level of trust, automatically improving your search engine rankings.

5. Create high high-quality local links

Link building is one of the most effective SEO tools. Local backlinks can help you close the gap with your most successful competitors in a matter of weeks and months. To achieve a higher ranking, use the following sites to post your content:

• Blogs willing to publish guest posts;
  
• Affiliate resources;
  
• Local directories;
  
• Professional communities;
  
• Business Improvement Bureaus;
  
• Government agency and registrar websites.
  

Dealing with so many resources can be extremely tedious. Fortunately, Serpstat has a simple and effective local SEO tool that gives you access to all local directories in one section.

But the primary means of building local links will be reviews and ratings. They fulfill all the requirements of Google's E-E-A-T formula: build brand trust, increase authority, and contain a personal user experience. Motivate customers to post reviews on all available platforms — your website, Google My Business, maps, specialized platforms, blog comments, social media, and so on. 

To encourage the generation of reviews and testimonials, interact with your target audience. Participate in local events and sponsorships, conduct regular surveys, use hashtags to increase your reach, and integrate user-generated content into your marketing materials. To send the right social media signals, engage influencers. 

Perform technical SEO tasks

This point could be the sixth, but we'll actually put it at number zero. If you follow all the local SEO tips but forget about technical optimization, all your efforts will be in vain. To avoid such a fatal mistake, check your website using the following checklist.

• Connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics as early as possible;
  
• Index pages as soon as the content is updated;
  
• Use an effective technical auditing tool;
  
• Create backups to quickly restore the website after failures;
  
• Choose a hosting service with sufficient bandwidth;
  
• Monitor content loading time — check it with Google Lighthouse or other similar tools;
  
• Connect modern cybersecurity tools to protect against DDoS and malware;
  
• Eliminate 404 errors — use redirects with a 301 code;
  
• Fill robots.txt and sitemap.xml files correctly;
  
• Monitor the use of HTTP and HTTPS prefixes;
  
• Specify the canonical version of the page to avoid errors during the site crawling by search crawlers.
  

You should also understand that mobile optimization is included in the list of ranking factors. Therefore, you need to use a responsive design for the layout of each page and test it repeatedly with different screen resolutions. Also, focus on the convenience of voice search — optimize your content so that it is presented in the search engine snippets. Using Schema markup will also be a plus, helping the visitor navigate to the right section instantly.