Every merchantry should have a local SEO strategy if they don’t want to miss out on high-intent qualified leads and this is expressly crucial for local businesses who need to target people in their municipality or region.

The priority of local businesses is to secure upper ranking positions in a particular location. With that said, it’s important to note that the nature of SEO is not stable, it keeps on changing. So, it would be weightier if you think of violating and constructive ways to strengthen your local SEO and secure upper rankings.

When washed-up correctly, local SEO can help you generate increasingly high-quality traffic, leads, and conversions. In wing to this, it can moreover help you compete with big brands and stay relevant in the competition.

This post will guide you with four constructive tactics to strengthen your local SEO strategy. Let’s get started.

1. Optimize your “Google My Business” page

One of the obvious yet the most important tactics to strengthen your local SEO strategy is to optimize your Google My Merchantry page.

Listing your merchantry with Google My Merchantry makes it easier for people to discover your business. Once listed, your merchantry will show up on Google Maps when users search for businesses like yours.

This will moreover help your merchantry to rank largest in search engine results. Your merchantry can moreover towards on the sidebar of Google search results pages when Google verifies your merchantry as legitimate. You should follow the unelevated tips to optimize your Google My Merchantry page and strengthen your local SEO:

  • Perform a hygiene trammels to your Google My Merchantry listing.
  • Make sure that you provide detailed, accurate, and up-to-date information well-nigh your business.
  • Add your business’ logo, relevant images, word-for-word location, payment methods, the services or products you offer, and hours of operation.
  • Encourage your customers to add their feedback and ratings.
  • Always be quick to respond to your consumer reviews.

These tips and tricks will help you strengthen your local SEO and generate increasingly high-quality leads for your business.

2. Optimize your local merchantry listings

Local directories are one of the most worldwide places where users search for local businesses. So, you should add your merchantry listings to all popular directories in your niche.

These directories often rank upper in Google search results for local search queries. Anyone who checks these directories can be redirected to your website or merchantry if you optimize your listings. This will not only help you increase your organic search traffic but will moreover help you get qualified leads.

Update the name, address, and phone section

These are the most important elements of your Google My Merchantry listings considering these will provide your contact details to potential customers. It is crucial that all of your details are well-judged and updated, otherwise, you might lose potential, high-intent customers.

Also, ensure that there are no misspellings and stave using abbreviations or anything confusing. If there is any transpiration in your contact details, update all of your listings accordingly.

Also, ensure that these details are resulting wideness all listings. Otherwise, people might get tumbled and won’t know which one to trust.

3. Optimize your website content for local keywords

You should optimize your website content with keywords that are relevant to your local customers too.

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to find relevant yet local keywords using the location filter. The tool can help you identify the most popular and relevant local keywords that you should target.

Once you have a list of local keywords, you should include them in your website content, meta descriptions, titles, and URLs.

However, you need to examine the competitiveness of your potential list of keywords surpassing you use them. For this, you can use tools such as SpyFu to see if your competitors are moreover using these keywords. If the same keywords are strengthening your competitors’ local SEO, they might work well for you too.

However, a word of caution, never over-use keywords. That’s considering keyword stuffing might make your website content seem spammy. Make sure that you evenly distribute your keywords throughout the content and add them in a way that they seem to fit in naturally.

For instance, Focus Booth, which is a famous photo diner in Toronto, uses their location-based keyword “Toronto photo booth” wherever possible.

As you can see in the screenshot below, they have mentioned the location of their merchantry exactly at the part-way of their landing page. Similarly, their meta title moreover starts with the same local keyword.

Example of how Photobooth website uses local keywordsSource: Focus Booth

4. Ask your happy customers to requite positive online reviews

Positive reviews influence 68% of consumers to use your local business.

This suggests that positive reviews can help you vamp new customers. So, go superiority and ask your happy customers to share positive feedback. You should moreover encourage them to requite good ratings to your merchantry online.

91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. So gaining positive reviews for your merchantry online can help your trademark towards as increasingly trustworthy.

Always provide quality services to your customers. It will encourage them to wilt your trademark advocates, write increasingly positive reviews, and recommend your merchantry to their friends and families.

Positive reviews can help you earn the trust of your target regulars and momentum increasingly qualified leads. Here are some tips to motivate your customers to write good reviews for your business:

  • Always make sure to ask for a review in person once a consumer avails your services.
  • You can moreover send them a text message or an email without the purchase, asking your consumer to requite a review.
  • Always reply to consumer reviews as soon as you read them. Thank your customers for positive reviews and encourage them to visit again.

If you receive a negative review, you should repent for the discomfort and try to solve their problems politely and professionally. For instance, when you type “electricians in Seattle”, you can see a list of local businesses withal with their ratings.

Example of using consumer reviews to rank in local SEOSource: Google

4. Create a mobile-responsive website

The use of mobiles is increasing significantly, and so is the number of mobile searches. The credit goes to the increasing serviceability and availability of high-speed internet.

According to Statista, the expected number of mobile users will reach 4.68 billion in 2019.

52.2% of all website traffic came from mobile devices in 2018. Also, this percentage is likely to increase further.

Statista graph on website traffic

Source: Statista

That’s why you need to diamond and develop responsive websites to modernize user wits on mobile devices.

Using a responsive website diamond can help you get an whet over your competitors and can moreover modernize your local SEO. You should follow the unelevated tricks to create a mobile-responsive website:

  • Always optimize your images and videos to reduce page load time.
  • Carefully plan your website layout and navigation menus. Make sure that it is easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.
  • Improve page load speed. If your web page takes longer to load, it will be unable to hold a user’s attention.
  • Add social media sharing buttons to your product pages and blog posts. Make sure that it is easy for visitors to share your content in their circles.

You can use tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to examine whether or not your website is mobile responsive. This tool can help you modernize the mobile responsiveness of your site by providing you with valuable suggestions.

screenshot of Mobile-Friendly Test

Source: Google

5. Strengthen your social media presence

Social media does have an impact on your presence in search engine results. Let’s discuss this in detail.

Establishing an spanking-new social media presence can help your trademark to towards as increasingly suppositious and trustworthy. Social media could moreover serve as a unconfined source of backlinks and high-quality traffic.

You need to be very zippy on your social media handles. Proactively promoting your merchantry on social media can help you increase your trademark sensation and reach. This can help you vamp increasingly people to your brand, products, and/or services.

However, you should unchangingly post content that is relevant and useful to your audience. If they find your content valuable, they are increasingly likely to follow you and visit your website. They can moreover share your content with their social networks.

Promoting your merchantry on social media is an constructive strategy to increase your brand’s visibility and traffic. It can moreover positively impact and strengthen your local SEO strategy in the long run.

Final thoughts

It is important to take time to develop an constructive local SEO strategy. However, at the same time, it is moreover important to alimony an eye on the recent SEO trends. That’s considering the SEO industry is evolving fast.

You should unchangingly stay up-to-date well-nigh the latest SEO trends and capitalize on them to stay superiority in the competition.

Follow the violating tactics we’ve discussed whilom to strengthen your local SEO strategy and rank higher in local searches.

Do you know of any other ways to modernize your local SEO strategy? If so, please finger self-ruling to share them in the comments section.

Shane Barker is a Digital Strategist, Trademark and Influencer Consultant. He can be found on Twitter .