When you think about improving your local SEO, do you think about content?
Maybe not.
I’ll admit, it’s not always the first thing that comes to my mind.
But here’s the thing – content directly affects local SEO, and overlooking it is a huge mistake.
Local search is an integral part of any SEO strategy targeting customers in a specific region, city, or neighborhood.
Simply put, local SEO is where you focus to improve your rankings and visibility in local search results such as Google’s Map Pack/Local Pack.
Organic SEO is how you improve webpage rankings in organic search. How your website ranks in those organic results can positively influence your Local Pack rankings, as well.
If you’re looking to dominate your local market, it’s essential to optimise your Google My Business listing. This will help your business show up in relevant search results for people who are looking for businesses in their area. In this article, we’ll discuss five tips for optimizing your Google My Business listing for local SEO! The first step in optimizing your Google My Business listing is making sure that the business name and address matches your other listings across directories. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many local directory listings we find that don’t have the correct name and address. Keep in mind that consistency is key. If you’re spelling out Suite on your listings, then don’t change it to an abbreviation of Ste. on your Google listing. This will throw off the search algorithm as being incorrect. Remember that your target customers may not always live in very close proximity to your place of business. Instead, they may look up your business category and enter a city name in addition to that in order to find you. It’s important that your listing has all the potential service areas that make sense for your business so that you have a better chance of showing up where it counts. Adding images to your Google listing will help it appear more attractive and appealing in the search results. This can be a great way to increase conversions on your site by having people click through from their local search results page rather than scrolling past them looking for something better! When adding images, make sure that you’re uploading high-quality photos of the interior or exterior of your business location so visitors get an idea what they’ll see when walking into this establishment from outside. If you are a dentist, you should say that in your description. If you’re offering a certain kind of food, you should say that too. Remember that keywords are king for search, so you should litter keywords throughout your listing. Also, it’s a good idea to mention primary service city locations in your description as well to help your listing pop up for those terms. If you weren’t aware, Google My Business allows you to post updates on your listing very similar to a social media account. Google search values the most recent and relevant news, so make it a priority to have someone at your company be in charge of posting on your listing several times a week to help make your listing relevant.
1. Get the Name and Address Right!
2. Add Any Relevant Cities in Your Area
3. Add Images of Your Business
4. Write a Description that Uses Keywords and Locations
5. Post Several Times a Week on Your Listing
Inbound links, or backlinks as they’re commonly referred to, have mattered to SEO for as long as Google has been using an algorithm to rank search results. Historically, having a greater number of inbound links has increased a website’s chances of earning high rankings in search results. Links continue to be important to Google, but there’s more nuance to it compared to the days of PageRank. Let’s look at the claims surrounding inbound links as a ranking factor, followed by evidence that either supports or debunks those claims. Inbound links refer to links pointing from another domain to your website. There are a number of claims surrounding inbound links as a ranking factor. The first is simply that inbound links are ranking signals for Google’s search algorithms. In other words, Google assesses the links pointing to a webpage when determining how to rank it in search results. Other claims about inbound links relate to the strength of the ranking signals generated by the links. Quantity is said to be one of those factors, with more links creating stronger signals. The referring domain is said to be another factor, with high authority and relevant sources creating stronger ranking signals. The next section dissects these claims and goes over what matters to Google when it comes to inbound links. Google’s algorithm is founded on links. PageRank, the algorithm on which Google’s search engine is built, depended solely on links to rank content when it was first introduced. Describing to the public how its algorithm works, Google once stated:
“PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.”
Google’s algorithm has since been updated to consider other factors, but inbound links remain an important signal. The company says as much on its How Search Works microsite, which describes how Google’s algorithms assess webpage quality:
“We look for sites that many users seem to value for similar queries. For example, if other prominent websites link to the page (what is known as PageRank), that has proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted. Aggregated feedback from our Search quality evaluation process is used to further refine how our systems discern the quality of information.”
There’s no doubt that inbound links are a Google ranking factor. Now let’s look at the next claims. Does the quantity of inbound links matter to Google? The claim that the quantity of inbound links is a ranking factor has been refuted by Google. Google’s John Mueller states that the total number of inbound links pointing to a website is “completely irrelevant” to search rankings. Mueller explains why link quantity is not a factor, saying it’s a signal that can be easily manipulated.
He advises site owners not to focus on how many backlinks they have. Google may even choose to ignore most of a site’s inbound links and only look at the ones that are relevant. Mueller said: “We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much should we weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all. Because you could go off and create millions of links across millions of websites if you wanted to, and we could just ignore them all. Or there could be one really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link. I don’t know, maybe from like a big news site’s home page, for example. So the total number essentially is completely irrelevant.”
In that statement, Mueller confirms that the authority and relevance of referring domains are taken into consideration, as well. To recap, here are the verdicts on all claims based on the evidence we’ve presented:
The Claim: Inbound Links Are A Ranking Factor
The Evidence For Inbound Links As A Ranking Factor
Inbound Links As A Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
As website owners, we all want to increase the amount of traffic to our sites and building good quality backlinks is a good way to do this. In this article we’ll look at the benefits backlinks can bring to your SEO efforts and some of our top tips for attracting quality links.
A conversion occurs on your website when a visitor performs an action that is valuable to your business. Known as a goal, this can be anything from signing up to your newsletter, visiting a certain page, or purchasing a product.
When you write the text (or copy) on your website, every word should be written with these goals in mind. The aim of the copy is to convert visitors into customers and here’s how it works.
Irrespective of what industry you’re in, you’ll always have at least one competitor who has been around longer and has allocated more budget and resources to building their visibility on the web and in search engines.
It may feel futile to try and compete with them in the realm of SEO.
But local SEO plays by slightly different rules to the regular kind. You don’t need to have reams of funding at your disposal or hundreds of links pointing to your site to be visible and relevant to a local audience – you just need to understand the unique characteristics of local SEO, and apply a few simple strategies to cater to them.
Sometimes the factors responsible for your search rankings and traffic dropping can be difficult to detect.
It could have been a change in the Google algorithm, a technical error, your server not handling bandwidth properly, or links that were sending traffic before suddenly no longer sending that traffic, to name just a few examples.
Business owners and marketers who haven’t serendipitously discovered Google’s various guidelines are left wondering how to promote non-brick-and-mortar brands. Even where there’s awareness that such guidance exists, Google is continually evolving its stance. It’s easy to make mistakes, overlook updates, and miss out on opportunities.
The great news is, there are local marketing possibilities for almost every business type, but you have to know which pathway to follow, based on how the brand you’re marketing operates. In today’s column, I’ll help you identify your model along with the best opportunities available to you for being discovered by the maximum number of local customers.
As a business owner, search engine optimization plays a vital role in attracting consumers to your website. SEO can help grow your website’s online visibility on the search engine results page, thus bringing more organic traffic to your website.
