2 million blog posts are written every day.
No, it’s not a typo and yes you read that right.
So obviously you have to stand out among the blogger crowd if you want people to actually “read” your posts.
So how to stand out?
SEO.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry seems to know the term today.
The search engine has search results, where web pages and other contents are ranked based on what the respective algorithm considers most relevant to its users.
But what about local small businesses?
Surely a business set in Kolkata doesn’t need to rank his site up for people based in Manhattan?
Enter the concept of Local SEO
So what exactly is local SEO?
Local SEO is optimizing your website to rank better for a local audience. If the target audience for your business is located near the city you have your office or shop, you’ll need to practice at least some local SEO as well. You need to optimize for your locality name, optimize your address details. In short, you have to optimize so that people near you recognize you and they get to know where you are set.
If you have a local business, like a shop, optimizing your website is also about making sure people are able to find you in real life. But even if you’re not actively getting visitors in your building, but are targeting an audience that is located in the same geographical area as you are, you need to optimize for that area. This is what we call “local SEO.”
The problem is when you are not a tech expert, the concept of local SEO could be a bit daunting.
- Chris Rodgers of Colorado SEO pros recommends outsourcing the labor-intensive task of managing bulk local listings. He says” Local SEO could be tricky to manage; it’s time-consuming.”
- Chris Everett of Atlanta SEO Consultant says to create a bunch of local landing pages, which he admits could seem like a daunting task at first and can cause panic among the clients.
- Chris Lara of Lara Masters Creations tells us to take advantage of a directory like submission service for relevant link building. Directory link-building should be a valuable consideration if you want to amp up rankings. Though she warns that it needs to be strategic and intentional and requires a lot of manual time and effort as a result.
- Will Guthrie of Blue Laser Design says that the domain name you choose plays an important role in SEO that can impact your rankings. He also recommends when you’re first launching your business, think through the domain name you choose. Your choice could have a direct impact on SEO. You’d think that having targeted keywords will do the trick. But that approach is losing traction in recent years.
Today, Google likes authenticity and uniqueness. So he recommends focusing on promoting your brand through your domain. “Just make sure it’s easy to spell, short, relevant and memorable,” he adds.
- Eric Carlson of Webtechs.net recommends focusing on the content mainly. His tip is if you want your site to rank locally, you’ll definitely need good content. Don’t know where to start? Take a look at the top five or 10 ranking local sites in your industry and use them as inspiration, he suggests.
- Kyle Sanders of Complete Web resources says to claim multiple listings on page one of Google by leveraging untapped authoritative directories in your industry.
- Andrew Hagni of Buyers Creative recommends having the best possible content for your consumers. He believes that there are no secret formulas or magic trick for getting organic SEO results.
He also says, when he’s working on a project for a client, he actually creates a simple checklist that starts with great content. In the end, if you have strong content, not only will you be more recognizable by Google’s algorithm, but customers and prospects will actually come to and stay on your site longer.