It cannot be emphasized enough regarding the value of local SEO. It’s the best way for a company to get that edge regarding pulling in the customers from your locale.
Far too many people neglect the power and strategic advantage of local SEO. They sit there using all kinds of SEO tricks and wonder why they’re not moving up in the Google search engine rankings. It’s because they’re missing out on incredibly valuable data related to their location that they should be exploiting. There is no gray area here. Using local SEO is now more important than ever as Google uses every bit of data on your web pages to index them correctly. Let’s take a look at some scenarios.
Let’s say that your location is Tampa, Florida. You run a bakery that specializes in pies. You want that local traffic to show up via the web so your website just can’t be about how pretty and delicious your pies are. You have to tell people ‘where’ you are in as many words and configurations as possible down to the street address.
First, you’ll need to incorporate your location in the titles and tags of your web pages. Remember, Google doesn’t index websites, it indexes web pages, ergo, one must put as much location information as possible, strategically placed so as not to look like keyword stuffing. This doesn’t mean to put your location into every bit of text, but to make sure it appears where applicable and with relevance and creativity.
In your photos, videos, pics, and text, you must have as much about your location as possible. So in this instance you would have a pic of a blueberry pie with the price and any delicious sounding text that accompanies it with your location such as, “The best blueberry pies in Tampa, Florida from that famous bakery on Jones Street”. This way, not only do you announce your product, but you’ve incorporated as much local detail as possible, which the search engines will pick up when they index your pages.
You can take this further with all your content and then expand with additional content regarding local events and historical locations. For example, Thanksgiving is coming up and you want people to know they can buy pumpkin pies from you. You take pics, video and do just what you did with your pics. This way the search engines will see your location and your products.
It’s not that difficult to do, especially if you have a blog. You can harp on about anything going on in your area that can include mentioning of your products. Sports are a big example. You write a blog post about an upcoming game or one that has just played and say something like, “Our shop sold tons of blueberry pies when the Tampa Buccaneers played yesterday. All of Jones Street was filled with customers wanting our pies.”. See how you can incorporate variations of your locale with local SEO?
The combinations are almost endless and you should exploit anything you can. Look for funny videos that take place in your area. Let’s say there’s a funny dog video that takes place in Tampa. You would link to that video on your blog or site and say something like, “This video happened two blocks away from our pie shop on Jones Street in Tampa, Florida.” and so on. Updated fresh and original content catches Google’s eye. Add to that details like your location and you’re good to go.
So don’t hesitate when it comes to applying the principles of local SEO. It’s to your advantage across the board and you’ll see that organic traffic coming in soon.