Do you want to boost your small business SEO with ‘on-page SEO?’ I’m not talking about long-tail keywords or schema markup, let’s talk about pure, plain SEO that will increase your local rankings for free. We are going to look at key on-page factors, advanced strategies and the basics of your on-page presence. Also included are common mistakes I see on a daily basis which will help you improve your site visibility on search engines.
So, if you are ready to get into a great seo experience with me, here are few tricks you must envelop!
Create a Google My Business Account
Optimizing your Google listing (aka your Business Profile) is perhaps the most effective way to rank higher on Google Maps as well as gain visibility in Google Search local results. In order to get access to your Business Profile to make these optimizations, however, you need a Google My Business account associated with that profile. Once you provide all of the requested information in your Google My Business account dashboard, all of that information will be added to your Business Profile, which appears in Google Search local results, the Google Search Knowledge Panel, and Google Maps.
To optimize your Business Profile on Google, ensure that you:
- Create a Google My Business account and verify ownership of the business
- Provide accurate and up-to-date information
- Include your logo, hours of operation, acceptable payment methods, the product or service you sell, and plenty of images
- Encourage your customers to review your business online
- Respond sincerely to customer reviews
- Publish posts (announcing products, events, and special offers) to your Business Profile using the Google My Business dashboard.
Get Regular Reviews from Happy Customers
Getting your customers to write glowing reviews for your business doesn’t just optimize your Google My Business presence; it also encourages more local customers to buy from you. BrightLocal’s 2017 Local Consumer Review Survey reveals that 85% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Here are some tips to encourage customers to leave reviews:
- Ask for a review in person after the close of a sale
- Send a post-purchase email or text asking customers to write a review (but only after you’ve screened them via an internal survey to ensure you’re not approaching dissatisfied customers)
- Respond to existing reviews in a professional way, thanking reviewers and addressing complaints in not-so-favorable reviews
Note: Google says it’s okay to ask your customers for reviews while Yelp actively discourages it.
Optimize for Voice Search
Voice search will grow rapidly in the coming years. Therefore, in local SEO, it’s vital to optimize for how people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches.
Essentially, your customers use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches compared with regular search. Because of this, you’ll also have to adjust the SEO of your content to fit the more conversational tone of someone speaking. For example, you’ll want to account for the traditional question starters (who, what, when, where, why and how).
It’s also crucial to consider user intent when optimizing for voice, as these searches are most often performed when the user needs a specific piece of information. If they’re baking and ask Alexa to convert tablespoons to cups, they’re expecting a quick and useful answer. If a potential customer uses voice search to ask what your business’s hours are, this information should also be readily available
Create Content Based on Local News Stories or Events
There’s nothing quite like authoring content that speaks or relates directly to a local issue to grab your local customers’ attention.
Some strategies include:
- Writing blog posts around local news stories, activities, or events
- Creating videos about local charities or causes that your business supports
- Setting up location-specific webpages on your website with high-quality local content if you serve different parts of a region
Let’s say you’re a local real estate business. You can create different pages, one for each of your locations, where you can feature hyperlocal content around news events or changes in the local real-estate market. This strategy could also help you get ranked for each specific location.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
A 2018 Stone Temple study that looked at 2017’s mobile vs. desktop trends found that the shift to mobile is occurring faster than expected. Mobile visits to websites grew from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 2017, and the overall visits to websites from desktop shrunk from 43% in 2016 to just 37% in 2017.
Another 2017 study from Acquisio determined that traffic from local searches can be especially lucrative, with a remarkable 75% of all mobile searches that exhibit local intent actually producing in-store, offline visits within 24 hours.
This confirms that you have to optimize your website for mobile to be a player in local SEO (and, really, for good SEO period).
Here are some tips to achieve this:
- Ensure your website loads quickly (no more than three seconds)
- Use bigger fonts that are easy to read
- Use images and copy sparingly, conveying only the information you need (no room for filler on a mobile screen!)
- Ensure intuitive UI for great UX
Hone in on Local Keywords
Your keywords should be relevant to local customers. It only makes sense, doesn’t it?
Google’s own Keyword Planner lets you filter keyword searches based on location so you get an idea of the popular search terms for a given region. This lets you create a list of locally relevant keywords to target. Once you have them, they should make appearances in your site’s meta content, copy, and URLs.
Also, include mentions of region-specific landmarks and hotspots in your content. For instance, if your local restaurant serves dinner in downtown Seattle, include references to “dining by the Space Needle” or “just steps from the Space Needle” on your site.
Moz
MozPro (including Link Explorer)
Moz is one of the most popular SEO software suites and we use their tools regularly. Moz is probably best known for their ‘Domain Authority’ (DA) metric. DA predicts how likely a website is to rank in Google, with a range from 0 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking. The main factor with DA is the quality and quantity of links.
Moz Pro is a suite that includes many tools, including Link Explorer, a backlink analysis tool. Unfortunately, no tool is 100% accurate when it comes to finding all of your backlinks or the backlinks of your competitors. That’s why we recommend using multiple tools (Ahrefs, Moz, among others) to get the full picture.
MozBar
MozBar is a simple tool but saves a tremendous amount of time when reviewing websites. It’s a Google Chrome extension that allows you to quickly and easily view a site’s Domain Authority, Page Authority, backlink information, and spam score. At the click of a button, you can also view a Moz page analysis, as well as followed and no-followed links on a page.
MozLocal
One of the biggest factors in your local “map” rankings is citations. A citation is simply a mention of your name, address, and phone number (NAP) on another website online. The most common citations are business directories like Yelp, Bing Local, and even Facebook business pages.
Moz Local is one of the best tools available to quickly audit your citations. You’ll see if your information is consistent across all directories, if you’re missing any important directories, and if you have duplicate listings that could be dragging down your rankings.
SpyFu
SpyFu is an amazing tool that allows you to see how your competitors are performing with SEO (as well as Google Ads). By using this tool, you’ll be able to find out:
- The keywords your competitors are ranking for in Google organically
- Which pages are generating SEO traffic
- What types of inbound links they have
- SEO traffic estimates and trends in SEO traffic
Plus, SpyFu is our go-to tool for Google Ads competitor intelligence. With SpyFu, you can see competitor Google Ads data such as:
- Which of their keywords are performing the best.
- How long their ads ran or have run for certain keywords.
- The clicks and impressions they received from their ads.
- The best performing ads.
- Your competitors’ ad copy.
- Your competitors’ monthly ad spend on campaigns.
So if you’re managing SEO as well as Google Ads campaigns, we definitely recommend using SpyFu to analyze your competitors.
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most complete all-in-one SEO software packages.
This platform pretty much does it all, including:
- Competitor research
- Keyword research
- Backlink analysis
- Automated On-page SEO audits
- And much more
Our favorite feature with SEMrush is the toxic backlink audit feature. In our view, their backlink audit tool is the best option for quickly analyzing potentially toxic backlinks to disavow via Search Console.
Conclusion
There are some things every good website owner should know about SEO, or search engine optimization. This is the process of making sure your website ranks high in the search results for the best keywords related to your business. Since there are so many aspects to SEO, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with all of this new information. However, if you take some time to learn these simple basics, then everything else will fall into place more easily.