Organic SEO is something that is often overlooked by both customers, and also SEO experts, and it can be an excellent way to generate traffic to a website. Some people may think that if they have optimised their website, then this will cover them for local SEO also, which is not always so.
When looking at cost-effective online marketing services in London, or anywhere else in the UK, if you have a physical address where potential clients can come to you, then you need local SEO. An excellent advantage of local optimisation is that you will appear in the Map Pack listing that are above the organic listings, which clients love, and that means you should love them as well.
Optimising a Website for Local SEO
There are a lot of similarities to local SEO as with normal SEO, but there are also a few differences that you need to keep in mind. An extremely important thing to make sure that you do is to set up a Google My Business, and if your business has multiple locations, you will need a different page for each, as well as a different landing page on the website. With local SEO NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) are extremely important, and you need to make sure that all instances of these details appear the same all over the web. So any business citations that you add, you will need all of the same details, in the same format, on every website that you submit your company details for adding. Aside from making sure these details are correct, there are also things that you will need to alter with regards to the onsite work for the website as follows:
- Title Tags – By adding your City/State to your Title Tags you can have a significant effect on your local rankings, and I would suggest this is one of the most important changes to make.
- Headers – Within your H1 to H6 Headers, you also have an excellent opportunity to add your City/State, and help boost your local rankings. Ideally, you can place this in the H1 header, but it is also okay to use any of the other designated headers, as long as there is a hierarchical structure to the page through the use of headers.
- Geo-specific URL – Obviously you are not going to be able to use your city or state on your homepage, but you can create a unique URL for one of your landing pages and incorporate this information. Having the targeted local area in the URL can be a significant showing of local relevance.
- Alt Tags – Alt Tags are something that far too many websites ignore, and it is a perfect place to incorporate your City/State company details.
- Meta Description – Although the Meta Description may not play as a factor in the ranking algorithm, it can affect the click through rate and increase traffic for local search results.
- Embedded Map – It is also excellent to have an embedded map not only pointing to your business location but if done correct it will also point to your Google Plus local listing.
- Page Content – As well as including your City/State in all of the above places, it is also important to make sure that these also appear in the content of the page that you are optimising locally.
Good Quality Links
Once you have high-quality content completed and all of your onsite work completed, you will then need to look at sourcing some good quality links to point at the website. The elements of a good link can have a massive impact on local SEO. Although Business Citations no longer hold the power that they once used to, they are still an important part of any complete overall SEO strategy. You will need to source some good quality websites with a high Domain Authority, to submit your company details. It is important that you pay attention when entering the information into each website, and it may be best to have a template that you can copy and paste information. By doing this, you will ensure that your company information will look the same on every website that you publish your information.
You can use Moz Local to run an initial check on your current citations, and this will also highlight any issues or missing information. You can follow the links easily to be able to rectify any issues. You can then use something like Bright Local or Whitespark, and see what websites are available for a citation that do not currently publish your company details. There are services offering citation submission, or you can do this yourself, but it can be a time-consuming process. It can vary in time before your citation will become active, and some websites offer a preferential setup, for a nominal fee, to get your citation active a lot quicker.
Encourage Reviews
You will also want to make sure that you have a page specifically for reviews and customer feedback. A lot of citation websites also have places for clients to review your business, which you can show on your website. You can even have your customers fill out feedback and review forms via email, and have these manually added to the website. You may even wish to consider offering incentives for your happy clients to review your company and have these published online, as a positive review can have a big impact on any potential customer, just as highly negative reviews can also influence people.
If you take into account all of the above and incorporate this into your SEO strategy, then you are on the way to making sure that you have a locally optimised website, and hopefully, start generating lots of local enquiries. Just make sure that you follow all of the rules and guidelines set, as there are no real quick shortcuts, as with everything, local SEO still does take some time.