12 Proven Local SEO Tips to Dominate SERPs and Rankings
To attract new customers, you need to make sure that you are in front of local searchers who are looking for your products or services.
If you are not optimized for local search, you are missing out on a great opportunity to reach customers in your area and drive more revenue, traffic, and sales.
In this article, we will explain why home research is important and how you can ensure your business is well-suited for home research results to improve performance.
1. Get On A Local Search Platform
Many local search platforms can fit your budget, including Moz, Yext, RIO, RenderSEO, Chatmeter, Uberall, and SweetIQ, to name a few.
Using the platform makes it easy to manage all your listings. This includes getting your name, address, and telephone number (NAP) accurate and listed in hundreds of local search engines and directories and removing duplicate listings.
Managing this manually is time consuming and tedious and can lead to inconsistencies in the local search environment.
Bonus Tip: If you’re an ecommerce brand, you’ll probably want to take advantage of Google’s new feature, See What’s in Your Stores (SWIS).
This is done by integrating the product directly into Google Business Data.
Take advantage of the large number of users who search for your products and services every day by letting them see items in your store in unpaid product listings in Google properties, including Photos, Shopping, and Maps.
Fewer platforms include this in their core features, but it’s worth checking out while it’s free.
2. Use Structured Data
We all know structured information is important to help Google understand your content better and can help increase clicks, views, and conversions.
The same rule applies to home searches.
That’s why you should implement specific data types such as local businesses, geocoordinates, postal addresses, and reviews to help improve performance.
3. Tap Into Google Business Profile & Optimize for It
If you’re not using and optimizing your Google Business Listing, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to get your products and services seen where it matters most.
When updating your Google Business Listing, make sure you fill out all the information you can, including images, menu items, descriptions, and service lines.
Great graphic content, in particular, can increase user engagement with your listing.
It is best to add new photo content regularly and include photos of the interior and exterior (including the business logo), as well as cover photos of types related to your business type (rooms hotels, food and beverages for restaurants, products). for sales, etc.).
Your storefront photos and branding are important to include in your listing to help prevent Google’s algorithm from suspending, disabling, or flagging your listing as a duplicate of another business.
In addition to quality image content, you can include short video content on your listings that will appear alongside your other image content or can be included in your Google content.
You’ll want to make sure you follow Google’s guidelines when adding image and video content.
I see many brands not taking advantage of listing their business in the right categories.
If you are a pizzeria, you can list your business in restaurants and food.
A restaurant can optimize for a specific type of food, and Google is always adding new categories.
It’s always a good idea to check to see if a new category can be used by your business listings to keep up with your competition.
This is one of the most important aspects of developing a home search, so take the time to fill in your menu information, description, etc.
In addition, always keep your information up to date.
For example, if I’m looking for [a model near me] and I find a convenience store that appears to be open, but I drive there only to find it closed, I’m going to have a bad user experience.
If it reopens, I may not want to give the shop another chance.
Image from search, Google, December 2022
This is why it is important for businesses to update their home search results – to communicate clearly to potential customers that they have been closed.
In addition, Google has started to show activity indicators in maps.
Large retailers with multiple in-store departments can use GBP to combine the two hours, as we see below.
As appropriate, use this feature to update:
A list of restaurants can now add different hours for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch.
Image from search, Google, December 2022
Don’t forget to update the Q&A in your Google Business Profile with any relevant or timely information, such as:
4. Update Event Status
If you have an event, always make sure you use the event format. EventStatus is a new feature that will let users know the status of their event.
Event information can be pulled into your business database through the event schedule on your website or external sources such as Facebook events, Eventbrite, and Meetup.
5. Audit Your Listings
Always check your bill for the following:
Google evaluates the feedback it receives from users and will often make changes to your business listing based on their feedback.
Unfortunately, Google users don’t always get it right, so it’s important to regularly check the recommended lists to make sure they’re valid.
6. Manage Your Reputation
Getting positive reviews and customer experience is essential to a high ranking in the Home Directory. I have seen many companies that have negative and positive feedback with no response from the business.
If I want to hire a painter and I see 20 four-star reviews and two five-star reviews that are unanswered, I might be hesitant about hiring that painter.
People trust reviews, and bad reviews are worse if the owner doesn’t take the time to respond.
If they do, this response can build more trust from other users and can help generate more business.
Takeaway: Always monitor and respond to your feedback – good and bad – and focus on getting positive feedback. Also, add first-party reviews to your website.
Image from search, Google, December 2022
7. Use Hyper-Local Content
SEO is all about providing a great content experience across all devices and platforms to help end users meet their information needs.
Always focus on adding quality and unique content that is targeted to specific areas. This in-house content can help increase visibility among nearby customers.
Also, make sure you include keywords in your site’s optimization strategy. This includes headlines, titles, metadata, image alt text, and text.
In addition, you always have things related to COVID.
This will build trust from a user perspective and help you get a great review.
Show that taking the right steps can help sell more products and services when customers come to pick up food or shop in the store.
Use Google Posts on your business listing to increase awareness for special events or new business offerings.
Using the correct Post feature can increase user activity on your listing, which will help increase your local ranking.
Posts are also a great way to mention gifts that are definitely not related to your primary or secondary business category.
8. Connect With Customers Via Always-On Messaging
Download the Google Business Profile app and enable messaging as a way to help your customers reach you.
If you are not available by phone or after business hours, messages can help customers get the support they need.
Free Tip: Design an automated welcome message to let customers know about your business.
9. Monitor Trends
Carefully monitor Google Trends to understand changes in search interest and behavior around keywords and topics for your brand and industry since we live in an unpredictable world and things can change quickly.
Analyze the most important keywords for your business and see how searches are going for those things.
Then, monitor the performance of the website to understand how the users change during this period and update the forecast and report to the impact of the global factors.
Free Tool Tip: ExplodingTopics.com displays trending or “exploding” topics derived from Google Trends data. It is useful for market research and finding new business opportunities.
10. Optimize For Voice Search & Mobile
We live in a world where consumers are constantly asking questions, and your brand should provide the answer even when consumers are asking a digital assistant.
In addition, your website must be well optimized to deliver answers to common questions about your products and/or services.
For clues on what to include, look at internal search metrics and analytics to see the most common questions people ask about your business.
Also, use third-party tools, and Google’s People and Ask (PAA) feature.
And since most home inquiries happen on mobile devices, make sure your site is mobile-friendly with high-quality images, content, and fast load times.
11. Track Rankings & Build Out Local Landing Pages
Rankings aren’t the end-all, but they can help you track your local campaign success at the location and zip code level.
Always make sure you build home landing pages that provide a great user and page experience, including responsiveness, fast load times, new design code, calls-to-action, and design elements.
All of this can help position your brand for all locations and increase conversions.
Free Tip: Many local platforms have pre-optimized landing pages that can be built quickly instead of having your team build new page templates. They also host the pages for you, which is better and will require less involvement from your internal teams.
12. Don’t Forget Links Are Still Very Important
Always get quality links through local and general searches, blogs, etc.
Getting good links from good sources with good content and helping users solve problems creates trust and loyalty, ie, Authority and Trust in EAT.
Aim to get listed from local listings and blogs, too.
It is still an important factor that can improve vision.
Having a good local search engine is more important than ever, given today’s competitive SERPs.
Consumers are looking for products and services related to your brand, so you need to be visible and in front of your audience to drive increased visibility, sales, and performance.
Following these proven tips can help you get to the top of the SERPs and dominate the local results.
If your restaurant is still open for takeout, however, you can use local search to let customers know the restaurant is closed, but the kitchen is still open.
In addition, Google has started to show activity indicators in maps.
Image from search, Google, December 2022
Final Takeaway
All brands with physical locations need to be in front of their audience when end users are looking for your products and services or your store locations.
Staying on top of changes in local search and improving your listings and content can help your brand dominate local search results, reach more customers, and increase your annual performance.
Credit: silverkblackstock/Shutterstock
What are the 7 types of SEO?
So, the different types of SEO are:
- Technical SEO.
- On-Page SEO.
- Content SEO.
- Off-Page SEO.
- Local SEO.
- Mobile SEO.
- eCommerce SEO.
How many types of SEO are there? In this post, we will explain to you 12 different types of SEO & how important they are to plan your organic search strategy for higher ranking in organic search rankings among your competitors.
What is SEO and its types?
The three types of SEO are: On-page SEO â Everything on your web pages â Blogs, product copy, website copy. Off-Page SEO – Anything that happens away from your website that helps with Off-Page SEO strategies. Technical SEO â Any technical thing done to improve Search Ranking â site index to help bot crawl.
What SEO means?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process used to improve a website’s technical structure, content relevance and link popularity so that its pages can be easier to find, more relevant and popular for user search queries, and as a result, search engines favor them.
What are SEO tools and techniques?
SEO tools provide information and alerts about the overall health and success of your website. They help identify opportunities and identify weaknesses or issues that may prevent you from ranking and being seen in the SERPs. As each of these tools has a specific role, it is the same in SEO.
How many SEO strategies are there? If you want to improve your SEO efforts and rank better in 2023, follow these 12 SEO strategies. Let’s get started.
What are SEO techniques?
SEO techniques are classified into two main categories, which are White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. White Hat SEO: The techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design are called White Hat SEO. It contains beautiful and beautiful images according to the content.
What are SEO tools?
What are SEO Tools? SEO tools provide information and alerts about the overall health and success of your website. They help identify opportunities and identify weaknesses or issues that may prevent you from ranking and being seen in the SERPs.
What does SEO tools stand for?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process used to improve a website’s technical structure, content relevance and link popularity so that its pages can be easier to find, more relevant and popular for user search queries, and as a result, search engines favor them.
What is SEO and examples?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting targeted traffic to a website from search engine rankings. Common tasks associated with SEO include creating quality content, developing content around specific keywords, and building links.
Will I get full state pension if I contracted out of SERPS?
Whether or not you are of state pension age, the level of state pension you receive can be affected if you are ever contracted out of SERPS or S2P. The new state pension was introduced from 6 April 2016. If you reached state pension age before then, you will get the old ‘basic pension’.
What happens if I contract from Serps? If you are awarded a contract, you will: no longer be contracted. pay additional National Insurance (standard National Insurance amount)
Do you get a State Pension if you opted out of Serps?
How does SERPS affect the state pension I receive? Whether or not you are of state pension age, the level of state pension you receive can be affected if you are ever contracted out of SERPS or S2P. The new state pension was introduced from 6 April 2016.
Will I get full State Pension if I contracted out?
Anyone contracted to pay less National Insurance so their state pension may be reduced as a result. You can contact your pension provider to see if you have been offered a contract at any time or you can view old payment slips.
What happens if you opted out of serps?
If you opt out of the SERPS pension, you would have invested the money into a money-purchase pension scheme or final salary (benefit scheme). It may appear that this part of your pension was copyrighted but this was abolished in 2012.
How many years do you have to pay to get a full State Pension?
You need 39 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions to get the full amount. You will still get something if you have at least 10 qualifying years, but it will be less than the full amount. You may be eligible for the Supplemental State Pension, depending on your contributions.
Does everyone automatically get a State Pension?
You won’t get a State Pension automatically – you have to apply for it. You should get a letter two months before you reach State Pension age, telling you what to do. If you haven’t received a letter, you can still make a claim.
When did they stop Serps?
In April 2002 the nine SERPS ended and was replaced by State Two. The main reason for the change is to provide a higher pension for those with lower incomes.
Is SERPS the same as State Pension?
Supplementary State Pension, also known as earnings-related pension scheme (SERPS) and Second State Pension, is an additional amount you can get on top of your basic State Pension if you are a person born before 6 April 1951 or a woman born before 6 April 1953.
What year did we opt out of SERPS?
In 1988, people were given the option of opting out of SERPS and putting their savings into either a personal pension or a company final salary plan. Those people who decide to opt out usually do so because they want the money to go straight to their pension rather than buying NI.
Do you get less State Pension if you contracted out?
The pension you receive from your workplace or your own pension scheme for the periods you are contracted out to should cover an amount which, in most cases, will be equal to the additional State Pension you would have received if you were not contracted out.
Will I get less State Pension if I opted out of Serps?
How does SERPS affect the state pension I receive? Whether or not you are of state pension age, the level of state pension you receive can be affected if you are ever contracted out of SERPS or S2P.
Will my State Pension be reduced by cope?
To clarify, your COPE is not deducted from the State Pension figure shown in your State Pension forecast. It is provided only as an indication of the additional retirement income you may receive in retirement from your Contract plan.
Will I get a full State Pension if I was contracted out?
Contractual Average Pension (COPE) The pension you receive from your employer or pension scheme for the duration of your contract should include an amount which, in most cases, will be equal to the additional State Pension you will receive. you would not have been contracted.
How many Level 9 local guides are there?
| Role of Home Leader | Special User Accounts |
|---|---|
| Step 7 | 254,248 |
| Step 8 | 42,796 |
| Step 9 | 3,585 |
| Step 10 | 1,325 |
How many Master Degrees are there? There are 10 Home Guide levels, and to improve the level you have to earn points, which you will get by posting reviews, adding photos or videos, adding new locations and so on.
What is Local Guide level 10?
Level 10 is the highest and requires 100,000 points. If your contribution is removed for violating Maps’ policies, your earnings will be forfeited. Google frequently refers to the benefits that you can enjoy as a candidate for Google local guides.
Do Google local guides get paid?
Local guides are not paid and local guides cannot earn money for their contributions, according to our program rules. The Home Guides program is for people who contribute to Google Maps who want to help others discover and explore their world. But they can get other benefits like: Early access to new Google products.
What do you get for level 10 in Google reviews?
Level 7 – 5,000 points. Level 8 â 15,000 points. Level 9 â 50,000 points. Level 10 â 100,000 points.
How many Local Guides does Google have?
With more than 24,000 cities and towns, we now have an active community of 120 million local guides on Google Maps who are eager to share their experiences by contributing reviews, photos, listings and more.
Do Google Local Guides get anything?
Home Guides selflessly contributes reviews, photos, videos, and more all for the benefit of searchers like yourself. Well, this is almost true. Local leaders receive a reward for their work. Google has developed a local guides program to encourage regular people to help keep maps updated.
How much do Google Local Guides get paid?
Local guides are not paid and local guides cannot earn money for their contributions, according to our program rules. The Home Guides program is for people who contribute to Google Maps who want to help others discover and explore their world. But they can get other benefits like: Early access to new Google products.
