What is local SEO?
If your company has a physical location and you are interested in attracting potential customers located near your business , you need to optimize your local SEO positioning. Local SEO refers to searches relevant to a user based on their current location . Appearing first in Google according to which keywords is difficult due to high competition, but if we talk about local positioning it is much easier, since for this Google uses a separate classification algorithm , segmenting different pieces of information to produce the best ones. results.
Statistics show that around 73% of Google searches are generated solely for local businesses, so optimizing your website locally is a basic step you must take in your digital strategy.
Some important steps to improve your Local SEO positioning
NAP is the acronym for name, address and phone. If you want Google to take your local business into account, you must have:
A name.
A physical address (a postal address or a shared address is not valid).
A phone number including the local area code.
If the contact details of your business appear on different pages within your website, try to keep them the same. Also, if you sign up for directories, use them.
In addition to the Nap always appearing, to work Local SEO it is necessary to include the name of the city or province, along with the sector of your business on these sites:
In the meta title tag: It is one of the most important places to include information about your city. Your business could appear in local rankings just for this.
In the description meta tag: Including information about your city can greatly increase the click-through rate for local search results.
In the heading H1: In any heading you have on the page, it is important to include the information about city / province.
In the content: It is very important to include information about the city in your content and in the alt of the images.
Google My Business is an essential tool to improve local SEO positioning and attract new customers. It is a new
Google platform that integrates tools that already existed: Google Places and Google Maps.
Thus, with Google My Business we can manage all the information that appears about our company from a single service. Thanks to My Business, we provide the search engine with a personalized file of our company, which includes information such as hours, contact information, products, photos or customer reviews. Some of the advantages that this platform offers us are:
- Easy to use: The My Business interface is fast and intuitive, no expert knowledge is needed to operate it and it has a large amount of help information provided by Google. In addition, you can manage and update your business file from any platform with its app, available on iOs and Android.
- Integration of tools: we have already commented that it allows us to integrate the company’s profile in Google+, the Google social network that allows us to publish photos, videos and status updates, as well as information about our business and its location on Google maps in a single platform.
- Free platform: one of the most attractive points of My Business is that all the services it offers us are free, for any company.
- Analytics service: Google offers us an analytics service that provides us with relevant statistics for our business, such as the number of users who have viewed our phone number or the number of visits our profile has. Google My Business offers us a direct link to Google Analytics.
- Improve the local SEO of our company: as we have previously commented in the article, if you register your business in Google My Businees, you offer greater possibilities of being found by potential clients, as well as a much more visual presence in local search results . This allows us to position ourselves favorably for users close to the geographic location of our business.
Step 1
Create your Google+ account : to sign up for this service we need to have a Google account. If you already have an account, start at the official Google My Business site.
Step 2
Once we have our Google account, we access the official Google My Business site. We log in to Ggoogle and complete all the information that the questionnaire asks for . The more information the better since we will make sure that our potential clients find what they are looking for. Also, upload an image (1000 x1000 pixels) for the cover, and another for the profile (250 x 250). In the title of the file include the keyword for which you intend to optimize your position. Include in the description the keywords related to your business as well as several photographs. Don’t forget to complete the categories section , it includes between 3 and 5.
Step 3
To ensure that the data you have provided in and Business is real, Google will send you a verification code by ordinary mail to the address you have previously provided. This shipment may take one or two weeks. This verification can be done over the phone , depending on the type of your business. Once you have the code, enter it in your company profile, within 30 days. Once entered, we will have registered our company and in a few weeks, it will appear in local Google searches , Google Maps and Google+. Finally, Google My Business will offer us the option of obtaining a free website , which we can accept or not.
Optimize your Google My Business page
- NAP
We have seen before how these are the acronyms of “name, address and telephone.” Keep in mind that the data you have completed in Google My Business has to be exactly the same as what appears in your online store.
- Use of keywords
Google analyzes the keywords you use as it does with your web space. Therefore, when filling in the description of your website, do not do it in an improvised way and carry out a keyword research to use it in a contextualized way in the description of your business that you have completed in Google My Business.
- Content
Remember that all the images and videos that you upload to the platform must be attractive to the user and must be of good quality . Also, don’t forget to save your images with keywords for which you want to rank.
- Categories
Google My Business has a large number of categories and subcategories. You must choose a category that is related to what your company offers and thus, Google will be able to offer your site to users who are looking for exactly what your company offers. It is essential that the categories you choose are accurate and describe well the products or services that your company offers. You can indicate up to 10 different ones, but the first one will be the one considered main.
- Include information with your schedule
One of the points that cause more anger among customers (and later that translates into a negative review) is the breach of the business hours that we have indicated in Google. Google offers us the possibility to customize the schedules in summer, Christmas … and if not, we have to be aware of updating them .
- Get positive reviews and comments
A review is an opinion of the customer’s experience in our business, reflected in Google and visible by the rest of the users of the network. In the case of Google, a review translates into a numerical score (from 1 to 5) represented by stars. Sometimes. These reviews also include a more or less extensive comment on their personal experience or even recommendations for other users or for the business itself.
User reviews are a fundamental part of Local SEO. If we want to appear among the top business positions in Google and thus generate higher traffic than other pages, it is necessary to have a good evaluation. One of the factors that the Google algorithm takes into account the most are reviews that contain between 4 and 5 stars.
Optimize your Google My Business page
- We improve Local SEO : We gain visibility in the event that the rest of the companies do not have reviews or have a lower score than our business. Thus, we will have greater relevance for Google, which its algorithm rewards those businesses that have a greater number of (good) reviews.
- Feedback: The comments generated by our clients can help us to analyze defects and virtues and thus, solve errors and improve those aspects in which we have not obtained a positive evaluation from our clients.
- Attract new customers: If a customer is not clear about where to buy a product or hire a service, having a set of good reviews from our customers will help us to build trust in that potential customer and finally decide to go to our business.
How do I get clients to positively value my business?
First of all, something basic: offer a quality product or a good service. If our customers are happy with the purchase they have made in our company, with the care received or with our facilities, they may decide to express their satisfaction in a Google review. However, while leaving a review usually takes a few minutes, not all customers are willing to spend their time doing one, at least without getting something in return. So how can we generate a good number of reviews on the Google page of our business?
- Encourage your satisfied customers to comment on the company: You can remember it when making the payment, or when you send an order confirmation email, for example. You can tell them that by doing so, they will attract more customers and you can offer new products or services.
- Encourage your employees or suppliers to comment on the company: If a worker or supplier has a favorable opinion about your company, customers will value it very positively and it can be very decisive when deciding on your business.
- In exchange, offer discount codes on the next service or purchase: In this way, in addition to getting a review, your customers may make a purchase again.
We have already seen how Google My Business is a very powerful tool that helps us increase the chances of appearing in the search results of our potential clients.
If you have a local business that does not appear in the search results or you need to update the local data that appears for your company, please contact us, our team of experts will analyze your case to help you improve your search engine positioning.