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Local SEO has now become more important than ever as the number of online buyers has surged drastically. Performing robust local SEO not only helps businesses generate more sales but also helps customers to get their work done in the fastest way possible.
If you are new to the local SEO practices then don’t worry as we have done the research for you. In this article, we will have a look at the top seven local SEO checklists and some best practices to make sure you thrive online and attract more customers.
1. Keyword research
Many business owners believe that doing keyword research for Local SEO is similar to the standard SEO practices, but it’s not true. For ranking on the local searches, you need to have a different keyword strategy. To accomplish this point of the Local SEO checklist, you first need to do some local competitor and audience research.
Dive into Google search and scan your competitor’s website on which keywords they are ranking. Along with this, also check what are the most common phrases that the audience is searching for. Once you are done with the accurate keyword research, then start optimizing your pages for them.
2. Meta Tags
Meta tags matter the most when it comes to thriving online with Local SEO. Meta tags help search engines to understand your pages better and hence they improve your local search rankings. For titles, make sure you are leveraging your top priority local SEO keyword to drive more relevant traffic. Try to add your city name or local area name in the title to generate targeted leads for your business.
For optimizing your meta description, along with using your main keywords, also include LSIs to get the maximum traction from the users.
3.Accurate N-A-P information
When it comes to local SEO, your NAP details (Name, Address, Phone) need to be accurate and consistent across all the touchpoints. Apart from your website, make sure you have the same NAP details on Google My Business, social media handles, and other business listings.
One pro tip here is that if you have changed anything in NAP, change it as soon as possible so that your customers can find you easily. This is also a major local ranking factor and to get maximum traction, make sure you are maintaining the details consistently.
4. Encourage customers for reviews
The smartest way to outperform your competitors without running any paid campaigns is to get higher customer reviews than them. More positive customer reviews help you gain more customers because more than 80% of the customers trust reviews and ratings before buying.
If you ask your customers to drop a review for you, most of them will happily do it for you. So, if you were focusing on review, it’s the right time to get started. You can also feature the best reviews on your website to gain potential customers’ trust faster.
5. Anchor text optimization
For those who don’t know, anchor text is the clickable hyperlinked keywords that add more context to users while they are on your site. While you perform internal linking of your site, make sure you also hyperlink the important keywords that you are targeting. This small yet powerful tip will help both the users and search engine bots to understand your site’s content in a more comprehensive way.
6. Mobile-friendly site
Search engines are focusing more on mobile-first indexing and to get success in local SEO, you need to have a mobile-friendly site. This helps customers to browse your services in a convenient way. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check whether your site is mobile-friendly or not. Google will also provide you suggestions for improving the performance of your site.
Make sure the content is properly visible and clickable on mobile devices so that you customers can find things easily that they are searching for. If you have recently added new landing pages or product pages on-site, ensure that they are also optimized for mobile devices.
7. Be active on social media profiles
Most people don’t use their social media efficiently and it affects their overall SEO performance. When you actively push content on social media platforms, you gain more trust of users, and it generates more sales in both direct and indirect manner.
It’s not important that you create profiles on every social media platform. First check which platforms are working best for you and then increase the frequency on high RoI platforms. Social media plays a vital role, even more, when you are optimizing for local searches, so creating a dedicated content calendar is worth it.
These were the top 7 important checklists and best practices that you can follow to gain better results. If you don’t have an in-house SEO team, then it’s highly recommended that you hire a professional SEO company to get started.
