A local SEO company can help demystify local SEO and maximize your chances of securing a coveted spot on your Local Pack results. With over 48% of searches contained to a specific area, a local SEO company can help you maximize your local visibility, significantly increasing the volume of buyer traffic walking through your doors.
How do they go about all of this? That’s what we’re here to find out.
Before you begin shopping around for a local SEO company, the first crucial step you must take is establishing expectations. Sure your local SEO company should have all the answers as per what to expect from your local SEO. But you need to go in knowing a thing or two about local SEO already so you can tell when an answer doesn’t tally well with your goals.
How will they go about creating and implementing a tailored strategy for you? Which areas of local SEO will they focus on? What tools and techniques will they deploy?
Here are some of the most important things to look out for when you begin consulting with a local SEO service.
Local Search Audit
Kick off your partnership with a local SEO company starting with a local SEO audit. This refers to an x-ray of the current state of your local SEO. Just like a doctor’s diagnosis, your local SEO company must be able to deeply analyze your current local SEO first before offering recommendations or starting off on anything.
A local SEO audit takes stock of factors like:
- Rankings for your local search keyword
- Your citation statistics
- The health of your online reputation
- An analysis of your inbound and outbound links
- Localized competitive intelligence
- Your Google My Business profile
With all of this, your local SEO company can then figure out the best way forward. This helps them find and explore opportunities to jumpstart your local SEO campaign.
Website localization
If you’re creating your local SEO strategy from scratch, the first place a local SEO service will likely begin is your website. Website localization is all about adding the name of your city, state, or region across your website. This includes in places like your headers and footers, product and service pages, meta descriptions, URLs, etc.
By ‘localizing’ your website, your SEO company amplifies the geo-location signals emanating from your site, leading search engines to hyper-categorize your site in terms of location. This significantly increases your visibility for location-specific keywords.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the bedrock of solid SEO strategies. Your local SEO company will thoroughly research the keywords that will anchor various aspects of your local SEO.
Local keywords will help them figure out your buyer persona and what resonates with them.
What’s more, keywords are a moving target, changing in many regards over time. Your local SEO company should treat keyword research as an ongoing process where they continuously find and monitor the most valuable keywords for building robust local SEO strategies.
Local content creation
After building a framework for your local SEO strategies, an SEO company will then bring it to life with local content. They’ll help plan, create, and publish local content consistently to fuel your local SEO strategies. Helpful, valuable local content can significantly boost your site’s reputation, increasing your credibility, trustworthiness, and conversion potential.
Not only does local content help you excel in local search territories, but it also maximizes your conversion capabilities, making it more likely for visitors to buy from you. According to a recent report, educational content can make visitors 131% times more willing to do business with you.
Engaging local content revolves around things like local trends, local events, news, etc.
Local link building
Link building is one of the quickest ways to boost your site’s standing on search engines. A vibrant local link-building strategy involves actively engaging with your local community.
When your links go up on authoritative local sites, their domain authority rubs off on you, boosting your search engine visibility. Plus, you also get loads of referral traffic from the sites.
An SEO company will help you conduct a link-building outreach, identifying and exploring potential opportunities to share your local links, from local media outlets to business forums, social media groups, and other online communities.
Creating and managing your Google Business profile
Another indispensable component of a local SEO strategy is a Google Business profile. If you haven’t yet claimed your Google My Business profile or it’s half-done, your local SEO service will help you perfect it.
People are nearly three times more likely to trust your business if you have a complete Google My Business profile, 70% more likely to visit you, and 50% more likely to buy from you.
However, ‘complete’ here shouldn’t just stop at the information that Google directly requires, but just about every element that can boost your chances of succeeding with your local SEO.
Besides your contact details and product and service pages, your GMB profile should also include valuable local keywords, Q&As, and regular Google posts.
Implementing a local citation strategy
Like with backlinks, local citations can also significantly boost your site’s local ranking. Your local SEO receives a major boost whenever your business details go up on an authoritative local site.
The best local SEO company can help strategize your citations effectively and efficiently, ensuring that every mention is valuable and consistent.
Also, citation management is an ongoing process where your local SEO service needs to monitor and tweak your citations regularly to keep them sharp and on edge.
Online reputation management
Another major factor to consider when working with a local SEO service is your reviews. It’s one of the major ranking factors and oftentimes the first thing a searcher looks at when they see your business.
Are your reviews good enough? Do you have enough of them? How do you get your customers to leave you more good reviews? How do you maximize your reviews to build your credibility?
How do you handle negative reviews? What about spotting and addressing spammy reviews?
The best local SEO company will help you figure out these and much more.
The best local SEO company will help you find a roadmap to success
An excellent local SEO company will cover your local SEO on all fronts. They’ll analyze your local SEO’s current state of affairs before recommending the best move forward.
They’ll help your website send out hyper-localized ranking signals to boost your chances of ranking for high-value keywords. They’ll proactively manage your GMB profile, citations, backlinks, and online reputation.
Consult a local SEO company today to learn more about local SEO strategies that could work best for you.
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