Who exactly needs optimization for local search?
At first glance, it’s obviously those who want customers to walk through their doors physically. But those, who conduct business without meeting people face to face, are still going to need local SEO as long as there’s a benefit and opportunity to attract customers from a specific area (whether it’s a single town or an entire country). Many businesses fool themselves into thinking that, because their products or services are available to a worldwide market, there’s no benefit in specifically doing well in the region where they are located.
At first glance, it’s obviously those who want customers to walk through their doors physically. But those, who conduct business without meeting people face to face, are still going to need local SEO as long as there’s a benefit and opportunity to attract customers from a specific area (whether it’s a single town or an entire country). Many businesses fool themselves into thinking that, because their products or services are available to a worldwide market, there’s no benefit in specifically doing well in the region where they are located.
This is often a mistake. At its core, local SEO is about two things: Placing your site in the most visible spots in local search. Gaining your target audience’s trust. And both are perfectly within your reach. So, is your mind ready for some work? Have you armed yourself with high-quality SEO tools? Let’s do it, then.
1. Use Local Keywords Normal search can be described as “find me this thing”. Local search adds an extra component: location. Users tell the search engines “find me this thing in this place”, and all other places are recognized as irrelevant and filtered from the results. What remains? Results that are relevant since they are about that thing in that place. And because websites rely on keywords to be found via search queries, you can imagine that not just any keywords will do.
They will need that extra component. Examples of local search-friendly keywords: Buy bicycle in London Bicycle store near me Bicycle store near The Ritz Closest bicycle store You can also try to include local jargon in your keywords. It’s a way to localize them without explicitly naming the place. That’s how local keywords are different from normal keywords. What else do you need? A way to pick the best from the lot. There are two major factors. Search volume: The number of monthly searches by users. The higher this number, the more users you can potentially attract through search engines, so aim as high as you can.
Search intent: A good keyword clearly represents what the users are trying to find. Local keywords are already more specific about that thanks to including a location, but you can increase your chances to attract the users you need by doubling down on details. Compare these two keywords: “buy bicycle in London” and “buy mountain bike in London”. Adding an extra detail signals to potential customers that you have exactly what they want. Now, with all of the above in mind, all that’s left to do is find the best local keywords for your site.
There is a keyword finding tool that can do just that: Keyword Suggestions. Type your keyword ideas into the bar and press Search. The tool will display information on the keyword you entered and suggest many other potential keywords you could use. It will be up to you to decide which are the best for you.
2. Create Optimized, High-Quality Content Search engines rank websites based on their overall authority – their reputation, if you will. It’s the sum of all factors that indicate a website’s value to users. However, users rarely think about most of those factors and only focus on a site’s content. That’s what they see most of the time, after all. So the question is: what kind of content is valuable and the most likely to make money? Useful: It must offer users solutions to their problems.
Informative: It must provide as much information as users might need. Convincing: It must be able to convince users to become your customers. User-friendly: It must be simple to view and use.
SEO-friendly: It must be optimized to rank in search engines. Unique: Every page on your site must be one of a kind and not copied from anywhere – not from another site, and not from your own. You can find all these traits in content that ranks on Google’s first page. The closer it is to the coveted position #1, the more apparent these traits become.
There is no standard to create high-quality content – making a really successful piece often requires inspiration and ingenuity. But there are general tips for SEOing your content that everyone can use. Help search engines and users understand what your content is about. Put your keywords in these places on your site’s pages: URLs. Make your URLs short and readable. Page title. It must be unique for every page. Meta description.
It, too, must be unique for every page. H1-H4 headings. Don’t just use a slogan without keywords as an H1 tag. Image titles, captions, and ALT attributes. Other text. If there are poorly optimized pages on your site, find them with the On-Site Issues Overview tool.
3. Use Eye-Catching Visuals Visual information is really good at getting the point across. In fact, no other type of information comes close. That’s why, if you are trying to sell something, graphics and videos are essential for you. They will make your website look alive and your business more presentable. What is especially good for local SEO? Pull out all the stops and show your customers everything you’ve got: The building where your workplace is located, the surrounding area, what your workplace looks like inside, your products and/or services, your employees, even your customers (with their consent). Make your users want to visit the place they see on the screen. 360° photos: A tripod may cost you a bit, but a beautiful panoramic shot is priceless. It’s also fun to interact with, so that’s a bonus point for the user experience (UX) on your site.
Remember the part about making your site look alive? That’s literally what the word “animation” means. Videos. Sound, imagery, and text make the most powerful combination existing on the web, and nothing has topped it so far. Got a bit of interesting knowledge that’s related to your line of work and would be better digested when spliced with some pictures? That’s the recipe for an infographic. It will have an even greater effect on users if it’s unique and no other infographic talks about the same topic. Charts and diagrams: Confidence is born from success. Don’t be afraid to show that you know what you are doing! If you can tell a story about your success, it might be possible to show it in a visual form – for example, how much your sales have increased or how many customers you have served over the years. Just be careful not to brag too much. And if you enable an option to share your visuals in social media, users will be all too happy.
Lastly, there’s a way to make your images even more useful in terms of local SEO: geotagging. It means adding GPS information to images, making it easier for search engines to associate them with specific locations. Usually, modern cameras (including phone cameras) do it automatically, but if your photos somehow weren’t geotagged, you can do it manually with a free online service.
4. Optimize for Multilingual SEO If you plan to be really successful, I doubt you will sit on the same spot your entire life. You will want to expand, claim new ground, gain even more customers from new places. Eventually, you may even cross borders. And once you build a new HQ in another country, your local SEO will crash right into the language barrier. That’s where international SEO takes the stage! It isn’t as simple as translating all your content into a foreign language. There are many more steps to take, but here’s a full list of them – hopefully before you need them. Choose the Most Optimal URL Structure Where should you put your international content? You have these options: Keep it on the same domain.
Purchase a new domain. Create a subdomain. For the purposes of international SEO, the best option is to create a subfolder on your existing domain. Like so: https://example.com/de. Why this over the other two? It’s because a new domain and a subdomain will end up competing with your current domain for rankings – definitely not a good thing in SEO. If you use a subfolder instead, it will receive all the domain authority you have already built up until now. Another way to keep translated content on your domain is to use language parameters (e.g., https://example.com/?lang=de), but this isn’t a very SEO-friendly approach. Search engines sometimes have trouble indexing pages with parameters in their URLs.
Use the Hreflang Attribute Search engines will recognize the language of your content with no problem, but it’s still a good idea to spell it out for them. To do that, use the hreflang attribute in your pages’ HTML code. Like this: <link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/de” hreflang=”de”/> Keep in mind that this attribute tells search engines both the language of your content and the region you are targeting with that page.
This is where it gets tricky: you must pick the correct value for the hreflang attribute. For example, the value in our example is “de”, which means German content independent of region, but if you want to target a German-speaking audience in Spain, the value must be “de-ES”.
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