What is local SEO?

Local SEO is about optimising your website to help it rank better for your targeted local audience. Of course, your website is your shop window to a potentially a global audience, however, if your target audience is located within a certain proximity of your businesses shop or office you’ll need to use local SEO to target them correctly.

Even if you’re not the goal isn’t to actively get visitors in your building, if you are targeting an audience that is located in the same geographical area you are based in, optimising your website for local is essential.

How do I do local SEO?

This can be achieved by optimising your website for your county, city or town, whichever is appropriate to the target audience. Basically, you need to optimise your website so people can easily identify where you’re located and so can the search engine bots.

The basics:

• A physical address – if you have a proper address within the county/city you’re trying to target make sure its visible on your website and reference its location where possible. For example, include your address on your ‘Contact Us’ and ‘About Us’ pages as well as in your footer.
• Keywords – research keywords appropriate for your local audience. If you were a florist in Oxford, your keywords could be as simple as ‘Oxford Florist’, expanding out to specific locations within that city or your specialism to target better.
• Content – whether you have a physical location in your target area or not, optimise your websites content to reference your targeted location. For instance, on your ‘Homepage’ reference the place you’re located in your introduction.

Remember also local SEO isn’t just about search engines. Online there is a lot of options to optimise your website, but it works best when you also have a good offline strategy like encouraging word-of-mouth and traditional print brochures which all help towards local SEO. Make sure to include all your online profiles within your offline communications to encourage people to follow you on platforms like Facebook and your e-news. This can help increase your following on social as well as increased your website traffic. Google will love this increase in local traffic to your website.

Local SEO – In-depth

Over the following months, I’ll be writing a series of blogs on how to maximise your Local SEO, keep an eye out on my Facebook channel for the next in the series.

We’ll be covering the following:

• Why is Google My Business important?
• How do I optimise my website for local search?
• What are inbound links and how do I get them?
• Why do I need local reviews?
• How does my social media help local SEO?

It might seem a lot to consider for local SEO, though once you get it right it’ll have a huge positive impact on your business.

Local SEO therefor is a mixture of tactics to make your location easily identifiable to your local target audience and help increase your rankings on search engines.

Have fun optimising your marketing plan and get in contact if you’d like us to help. SEO is my specialism and I enjoy getting your website in front of your local audience.