Local SEO is vital to smaller businesses operating on a regional level. The strategy prioritizes appearing on SERPs in an exact location and relies on marketing your products, services, and brand to local customers and prospects. Because the strategy is more relevant to your local customers, when you optimize your local SEO, you’ll enjoy more traffic, leads, and conversions.

Here are our top 9 tips to make your local SEO more successful, starting now:

1. Create a Google Business profile: This is the most successful way to rank higher on Google Maps and boost your brand visibility in Google search local results. Read our Google My Business management tips here.
2. Consistently get reviews from happy customers: Glowing reviews from your customers encourage more local customers to buy from you. Surveys reveal that over 85% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal endorsements.
3. Optimize for voice search: Voice search will only continue to grow rapidly in the coming years. So, it’s essential to optimize how people ask questions when they talk into devices, as opposed to how they type their searches.
4. Optimize for mobile: Research has shown that mobile vs. desktop trends are occurring faster than expected and will continue to grow. You must optimize your website for mobile to be a participant in local SEO, period.
5. Focus on local keywords: Google’s Keyword Planner allows you to categorize searches based on precise locations. This helps you create a list of locally relevant keywords to focus on.
6. Utilize a location-specific “About Us” page: Location pages are a must-have if your business occupies more than one location in an area. You need to create unique content for each page.
7. Utilize online business listings: Online business directories include sites like Foursquare, MapQuest, Yelp, and Yellow Pages, to name a few. Getting your business listing into these directories not only aids visibility but boosts your local SEO as well.
8. Get high-quality backlinks: Link signals are the first and second most important factors for local pack results and localized organic results. You need quality link signals that point back to your site.
9. Create a webpage for each product and service you offer: While combining all of your products or services on one page is tempting, don’t do it! Dedicate one page to each unique product or service you offer.

SEO changes rapidly, and you never know when Google will introduce new criteria for local searches, but the changes will come. Implementing these 9 tips will ensure your business has a solid foundation when introducing new SEO features.

Don’t have the bandwidth to do it yourself? Blue Orchid Marketing can help! Contact Blue Orchid Marketing today to schedule a consultation, and let us take the guesswork out of your local SEO marketing strategy. We take pride in staying on top of all SEO changes and trends.

Call us at 203-746-5901 or email us at sales@BlueOrchidMarketing.com to schedule a consultation.