Factors to consider when building a local online presence
Studies have found that nearly half of all Google searches are local. And as more and more businesses recognize that optimizing for these searches is a requirement, the prospect of ranking is becoming very competitive. It is therefore vitally important that practices don’t remain static. The importance of local search will almost certainly continue to grow.
There are a number of key factors to consider with local search:
Claim Your Listings
Claiming your local business listing is important. This is because Google will look at this, link it to your company, and immediately start ranking you when people close to you search for your relevant keywords.
Use schema.org Mark-Up
Highlighting your location and contact details on your own website with schema.org mark-up is essential for showing Google that this is important information. Without it, Google will look at all your information equally when they crawl your pages, whereas you want there to be a real focus on your location.
Use Social Media
As well as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, also think about getting yourself on local community forums and websites to establish your presence and drive traffic.
Voice Search
Combining the advancements in mobile technology, virtual assistants, and voice-activated home devices, it’s estimated that 50% of all searches will be done with voice by 2020. With this in mind, there will be a much bigger emphasis on long-tail keywords and hyperlocal searches.
With the widespread adoption of voice search, this will require you to modify the SEO on your website content in a much more conversational tone. When it comes to creating web content around voice search, it’s about building context that answers the pressing questions.
Local Keywords
Monitoring relevant online conversations and interactions around local keywords is a crucial strategy to understand the way people interact with your business and content online. With this valuable insight, you can spot trends, identify issues, and learn the patterns with regard to users’ relationships with local keywords.
Get Involved Locally
One of the great things about local SEO is that getting out and involved in events and initiatives in your community strengthens your online performance. Whether you sponsor an event at the local school or provide special promotions at a local event, little things like this can have a big impact, particularly as you will get many social mentions, incremental traffic from attendees who become aware of your business, and links from local bloggers and media who want to feature you.
Consistent reviews
Local reviews are so powerful when it comes to your SEO. Everyone knows how influential online reviews are to customers. In fact, many people base the majority of their purchasing decisions around these tidbits of opinionated information.
Unsurprisingly, the search engines have wised up to this trend and factor local reviews into your rankings. The number one goal of the search engines is to place the best possible content in front of users. This type of user-generated content holds a lot of weight in local markets.
If you would like any further information then please give the Dental Design team a call on: 01202 677277
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