If you are a business owner, brewing start-up company or a digital agency with a concern for brand promotion or leads generation, my advice is that you embrace a Local SEO service.

In this lengthy but helpful article, you will get practical ideas about how you can position your website in a legit way that guarantees more search engine visibility and high-rate conversions.

As an SEO expert with over 3 years freelance experience; prior to the launching of SEOfingers, I find it pathetic that many local business owners, vendors or entrepreneurs don’t even have a basic grasp of search engine optimization.

In fact, a great number of local entrepreneurs often prefer to reach their customers via social media influencers who have acquired great followership over the years.

Others consider social media marketing using Pay-Per-Click Advertising to target specifics.

Regardless of how effective you think these business marketing mediums generate results, nothing connects you for free with both the local and global audience like you will discover when you optimize your business webpage(s) for the search engine.

What is SEO?

SEO is a short acronym for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ which simply defines the acceptable method of optimizing webpage(s) to gain optimum visibility on search engines.

Presumably, I believe that you are already familiar with the Google search engine and at previous times sent in a query that generated ranked results.

The compendium of search results as displayed on your screen are optimized results which web crawlers have indexed from various websites globally.

Often, the top-ranked or the first-page webpage(s) are believed to provide the best response to the query of an internet user. These pages get over 85% of search engine traffic related to that search.

About Local SEO

To demystify Local SEO for any dummy, I will simply put it that Local SEO connects with this proverb of ‘’Charity begins at Home’’.

Optimizing your business website for local SEO is a proven way you can market your business to your immediate community and convert them to leads.

In this article, I will deliver to you 7 blueprints Local SEO ideas that certainly works for any type of business.

#1. Brand/Domain Name

One of the fundamental ingredients needed to get your immediate locality to recognize what the business represents is via business branding.

In the case of Local SEO, the Domain name in which you register your business website is central to how quickly the search engine will understand it and more importantly, your prospective audience.

At SEOfingers, we often advise clients to include in their domain name-a phrase that easily explains what they do at a glance even without the visitor taking a trip to the landing page of their website.

Well, you might begin to imagine what other significance this assertion has to do with the visibility of your business in relation to the search engine?

• Significance of Custom Domain Names to Search Engine Rankings

Personally, I believe streamlining your Domain name to a near custom style will help your locality easily find you through the search engine.

For instance, If MR A intends to hire the service of a local Drycleaner and sends a query to the search engine to get the business contacts of available options around his location-say, Los Angeles, the searcher could also likely use synonymous keywords like, Washer and Laundry in his quest to reach a potential dry-cleaning vendor.

Hence, it makes much sense for a new business owner in this type of niche to register the business Domain name as one that nearly suits the products or service which it readily offers potential online searcher.

In this case, it could be LAlaundry.com or LAcleaning.com or LAwash.com.

Quick study about highly ranked websites on the search engine shows that about 80% of these webpage(s) have a phrase or keyword in their domain name which expressly defines what the business is about.

I vividly recollect those moments of brainstorming about the Domain name I wanted to register my SEO company with.

After much evaluations and name changing, I gladly settled to have my domain name @SEOfingers featured a phrase that easily resonates with the fulcrum of my agency which is Search Engine Optimization.

#2. Mobile Friendly Website

Some of the SEO audits we have carried out for some of our clients at SEOfingers often show that many got it wrong right from the scratch, especially in the choice of the content management system of their website or the type of web design theme integrated.

Infact, after testing some of these websites using some site speed testing tools, we advised for a total revamp of the unresponsive web theme to a more responsive theme.

Our in-house web designer and developer did a great job in this regard to give the site a seamless user experience as they navigate from our landing page through to the service pages.

In addition, another key element of a user-friendly website is the hosting package you signed up for. I have seen a lot of newbie online marketers ignorantly birthing their website using a free website hosting package.

Permit me to break your heart at this juncture, by telling you that ‘’nothing offered for free gives absolute freedom’’.

You’ve got to invest some funds into your website design and development because it deserves to be handled and managed like a physical office space where you display your wares or goods.

A slow website will increase the bounce-rate on your analytics because new visitors will grow out of patience to bounce out of your ‘still loading’ landing page once they realize that the website is as slow as a moving snail.

Quick Tips on how you can keep your website User-friendly.

Central to an improved website performance is to ensure that you keep your landing page Simple.

 Yes, I understand that you want to get into the heart of your visitors-but in trying to achieve this purpose, you do not want to frustrate their access to easily gain a view of that landing page.

 Another tip is to hire a professionally certified web designer who understands the best framework needed to launch your website. You can place an order for such on sites like Fiverr and Upwork if you can’t easily locate one in your locality.

 Sign up for a good and effective website hosting plan and there are some good ones that we often recommend for our clients. You can find them here.

#3. Content Marketing

Many website owner or entrepreneurs often show laxity when it comes to creating contents for their online business.

For others who create contents to promote their Local SEO service, they often fail in the techniques and approach of marketing the curated contents.

From time-to-time, I offer my clients this simple advice- ‘’Don’t just launch a website for the fun of having one, you must ensure that your website has something new to offer a new visitor in terms of solving their problem or meeting their immediate or future need’’.

A veritable way through which you can showcase your know-how and expertise in your chosen niche of business is to get your contents to them through the best and most effective social media channels.

The idea is that you must create a very helpful and relevant content consistently and ensure that you optimize for relevant Keywords.
How can you create Search Engine optimized content?

Peradventure you have asked yourself this recurring question on how you can create a helpful and search engine optimized content. Consider these bits below;

 Hire a Copywriter or Learn SEO Copywriting.
 Understand and engage in Keyword Research.
 Employ the use of relevant Keyword Tools.
 Keep abreast of good contents and industry leaders in your niche.
 Get topic ideas from SEO niche related forums on the internet.

Particularly, there are many formats in which you can curate contents for your new website other than through copywriting for Keywords.

Some of these alternatives include the use of Infographics, Webinars, Podcasts, and Videos.

Funnily, many think Content marketing is limited to social media sharing of post updates without realizing that it is meant to start right from the first letter written in the content.

So, the question that must be agitating your mind is how do you go about that?

 Optimise the content meta description

This point cannot be over-emphasized as it is quite important you keep a short but descriptive statement in the meta tags of your content.

The reason is that many internet users take a quick glance at the meta-description which often gives a summary analysis of the webpage result or an introductory statement about what the webpage focuses on and if done right, your website’s Click-through rate will show a significant surge.

 Ignite a sense of curiosity in the web searcher

You need to see through into the mind of a search engine user. Try to wear such hat before you click on the ‘publish’ button.

Mind you, the idea is not to deceive a searcher, rather, it is to get them to show more interest to click on your webpage result amongst other options available on the search engine.

#4. On-Page Optimisation

This section is hugely important to positioning your business website for an improved visibility on the search engine.

You must equally understand what you should focus on regarding your website’s landing page as it relates to on-page optimization.
Follow these quick steps;

4.1 Create a simple and easy navigation landing page to help your website user have a quick grasp of what your brand represents.
4.2 Optimise each webpage on your website with a focus keyword [if you are a newbie; consider optimizing for less competitive or long-tail keywords]. You can find out why here (link from Keyword research article).
4.3 Properly optimize the title and meta description tags.


#5. Google Business Listings

If you are reading this piece and discovered your business or website is yet to be submitted to Google’s Business Listings, you’ve been robbing yourself off many possibilities this simple local SEO idea can bring to your online marketing strategy.

The reason for my assertion is mentioned below;

Google Business Listing helps to promote the visibility of brands across their respective local communities with basic information such as the company or brand name, phone number(s), company address, operational hours often featured.

It makes sense to sign-in your business information on Google Business listings to ensure search engine visitors discover the information relevant to your business when they desire to reach a local SEO service provider.

#6. Build Domain Authority/Page Rank

For your webpage(s) to outrank other competing local businesses, you must be committed to building the authority of your domain through link building techniques.

Newbie content optimizers often assume that creating great content is the sufficient condition that gets their content to the top of search engine rankings without understanding that it’s only a necessary condition.

Link-building helps google algorithm to evaluate your webpage as authority webpage for improved ranking on the search engine.

This is achieved through the frequent use of Anchor texts and internal links within the structure of your text contents as well as links to other authority sites called-Backlinks.

If you stay committed to featuring this tip consistently on your contents, you’ll discover in a short while how your website pages rise to the top of others.

Ordinarily, it is expected you feature between 3-5 links on every content featured on your website.

These backlinks are expected to be some related topics to the same focus keyword you just created.

Check Wikipedia’s style of link-building.

Quick tips on building Backlinks to your website

 Send a short e-mail to other competitors requesting them to read your content and share their take on it.

 Join community forums like Reddit, NairaLand, and Quora or any other active Forums that featured a related niche and meaningfully contribute to any question related to your post.

 If permitted, drop the URL of your blog post after helping the members provide some solution to their question(s).


Source: https://seofingers.com/local-seo/