Local SEO – The Key to Search Engine Rankings, and Therefore Success!

While SEO is a technique that helps you gain global rankings, local SEO is a process that impacts your rankings on the local front, and precisely, the city or vicinity operations of your business. It wouldn’t be as sensible for someone who sells laptops in Mumbai, but ranks globally well with a short keyword search ‘the best laptops’. It would make more sense and also mean business, when someone searches for the best laptop stores in Mumbai and makes way to the website. With search engines turning more attentive and responsive towards long tail keywords, local SEO becomes inevitable, and that’s where our blog finds room. It talks about some of the vital dimensions of local SEO. It helps to understand the criticality of ranking locally, rather than irrelevantly appearing on SERPs of a person who can’t really think of accessing your product, let alone buying and using it.

Going global is one thing, however, getting local is another, and an important one. Fortunately, business owners don’t deny this fact, and therefore we don’t have to make them realize the significance of localization. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, not everyone does it right! Remember, search engine algorithms have evolved, and continue to grow smarter. Hence, it isn’t incorrect to target the global audience, but that doesn’t dilute the importance of local SEO either! Why? That’s because almost half of the Google searches today have local intent, and if that is case your emphasis towards targeting only global audience and ignoring the local ones would do no good to your business. In fact, as a blunt fact, it wouldn’t make sense SEOing your website, as it isn’t compliant to the ongoing trends.

5 Steps to an Effective Local SEO | Local SEO Best Practices

So, let get over with the preaching part, and turn towards the practicalities of local SEO. We would now proceed to look at the steps directing your business towards an effective local SEO. This would also indicatelocal SEO techniques and strategy in it so that you would always remain in control of your virtual ventures at all times.

• Localization Localization is something that has indeed gripped the entire world. It makes you look native, and appear more familiar when it comes to interacting with the users and helping them out with their concerns. For businesses that operate in multiple locations, localization is an opportunity and also a channel to rank well within the local searches, and thus tap the local market. So, one way of winning local search results is to localize your website, the website content, including the name of the respective city, and additionally, also engage with some of the local communities, so that the participation initiates the development of your local brand and reputation.

• Google My Business Listing Top rankings require business owners to be abreast of the local developments and trends. Efforts alone aren’t enough. Your efforts must be well-directed and claiming your Google My Business page is one of the organized efforts towards showcasing the business on local search results, Google maps, and so on. As with Google, Microsoft has got its own version for Bing, and that is Bing Places for business. So, get going with both of these today!

  
  
  

• Citations Remember, people want relevant local results, and that’s why they’ve come onto the search page. Hence, citations play a significant role in helping people find your business and also reach out to you whenever required. Citation building involves featuring your websites on various online business directories and citation sites. Besides, including the company’s name, coordinates, and physical address also contribute to improving the local search engine rankings.

• Backlinks Honestly when you talk about local SEO, talking about backlinks becomes inevitable. Backlinks from a reputed and a relevant source apparently work as an endorsement for the credibility of your website in the local context, thus graduating you to the more visible spots on the SERPs. Building organic links from various trusted sources such as local newspapers, reputed bloggers can help you locally rank better than ever.

• Review and Ratings Right from buying a hatchback to buying a hairdryer, users have become highly reliant on reviews and ratings from other fellow users. Hence, venturing into local SEO would require you to allow some space for users and to encourage them to post their review and ratings about your products. Honest feedback leads to multiple results including establishing credibility, reputation, real-time product feedback and letting the user make an informed decision while buying the product.

  
  

  So, if you wish to be a part of the local SEO revolution and integrate the best local SEO practices within your SEO endeavors, Contact us for your comprehensive local SEO partner.