Local SEO is what generates you more customers from your local area. People who can access your products and services within 24 hours are more likely to buy from you.
This is the reason optimizing your website for local searches is of high importance. You cannot think of selling globally and expect fast results as you can for local sales. Getting your site on free local listings is one of the main ways to rank higher in local search results. Apart from this, some more factors help you rank higher in local search results which are given below.
Google My Business is one of the top sites that provide you free local listings on the terms that you provide accurate information about your business. You need to follow some of the top ways of ranking higher in local search results. Following are some more factors to do so:
1. Give complete NAP data:
Your business appears in relevant searches if you provide accurate NAP for it. NAP means Name, Address, and Phone number of your business.
When businesses provide accurate and complete information it gets easier for them to match relevant searches and appear in results. You must have you complete and accurate NAP on each of your web pages.
You must also make sure that most of your business data is entered into the Google My Business profile so that clients can find the right information to access you whenever they come across your website in search results. You must also keep updating this information as your business information updates to be able to provide relevant data to your clients at all times.
You should make sure that your site does not contain viruses, mistaken links, and overuse of keywords as these factors can bring you down in search results.
2. Be relevant and prominent:
Your appearance in search results will actively depend on relevance, prominence, and distance of your business from the location used in search terms.
To be able to rank higher you will have to utilize all three of these components. Relevance means how well the local listing matches what someone is searching for. By distance, it is meant that how far your business is located as compared to the location term used for the search.
And finally, prominence means that how much trusted and well-known a business is. Other factors like inbound links, directory listings, and links in the context used in articles also matter while ranking you higher in search results. You can also improve the quality of relevance and prominence for your business by responding to reviews and managing them carefully, by correctly keeping your working hours and by improving your customer service constantly.
You must have many reviews and feedbacks from people who have bought from you as reviews will gain your credibility and will help you gain more customers and leads. You should also recognize who your audience is and try getting your site in free local listings for the relevant keywords.
3. Free local listings
For getting your business in a visible area in search results for your clients you need to get it listed in listings websites. You must focus on getting citations and local link building. Citations are an online reference for the name, address, and phone number of your business.
The local SEO you would do for your business will majorly depend on these links you will be getting form local websites that are important to your business. For citations, you can get your website submitted in local listing sites in USA or by submitting it to the MOZ website to go through the citation listed there and submit your with complete information manually.
You can also get links from other websites by providing them your products and services in cheap and requesting them a link mention on their website in return.
4. Respond to your customer reviews with managed answers:
Many free local listings have the option of reviewing and providing feedback in them. Your customers may go to these sites to write a review about you or may also come to your social sites for this.
No matter what the reviews are, you are entitled to respond to them thoughtfully and professionally. You can also ask for reviews through Google. You need to be responding to these reviews in an hour as a customer expects to be responded within this time.
You can also get links to reviewing sites and ask your customers to leave their feedback on the linked sites, but you will have to respond to them everywhere. Reviews help you in becoming a trusted business and will also attract more people to shop from you.
5. Use high-quality images:
In these times quality is everything. You cannot expect people to shop form you just because you have quantity. You need to maintain the quality of your services and your websites as well. An integral part of your website is the images you use.
You need to have images on your website and also on free local listings sites you get your business submitted to. You need to add high-quality images, especially on the listing sites as this will make people either visit your site or ignore you altogether. The suggested size of the images is 720px Wide and 720px Tall.
This high quality and good images will help your business become more prominent, help you rank higher, and also makes a positive image of your business in online space. Through these images, you can highlight the features of your business and can represent the reality of your quality in products and services.
These are some of the top factors in 2020 that can help you rank higher in local SEO. You need to follow all of these to be able to rank locally and gain customers from this space. Free local listings will help you a lot in being apparent to people making relevant searches as the products and services of your business.
