What’s the simplest approach to improve organic SEO & ranking websites locally?
Nowadays, there are many actionable ways that can help us with improving organic SEO and ranking websites/blogs in Google’s precisely-targeted local search results. Luckily, the lion’s share of related practices can be handled with your own hands, at least at their basic level. And here are several simple but fully performing ways of boosting local SEO and ranking websites above the lion’s share of their closest niche competitors at the level of locales. So, if you want to set your website or blog much closer to the top of Google’s local search listing, make sure to run through the following simple ideas and useful suggestions. I hope you’ll find something worth adding to your own to-do list of local SEO.
3 Actionable Steps to Improve SEO/Ranking Websites Locally
Maintain NAP Consistency
It may seem like a no-brainer, but having a fully accurate and consistent NAP data (i.e., the name of your business/website, the actual physical address, phone number, etc.) is really important to rank well in Google’s local SERPs. Given that your site is targeted at a certain city/town or serves multiple regions, take a moment to make sure your NAP data is all the same across the web. Should you have any difficulties with manual spot-check, feel free to apply for any open-source online helper specifically designed for verifying/identifying online business cards of core importance for local SEO.
Create Custom Local Pages
Next, you should invest some time & effort in creating unique landings and hyper-localized product/service pages. Doing so, make sure to avoid using any templated versions of your main category pages (i.e., in case local pages appear to be nearly all the same – for example, when you change only the name of city/town or location mentioned in the multiple versions of your single web copy). It’s far better to have a couple of genuinely unique localized pages with original on-page content – rather than wasting your time trying to trick with Google’s search ranking algorithm. That way, don't forget to place your NAP data in the bottom right corner of every locally-oriented landing page, in line with embedding your homepage, as well as the key product/service pages, with Google Map to make the search engines establish and verify your main business location more correctly.
Revise Your Metadata
Make sure to run a spot-check procedure to revise your metadata completeness and correct view in Google’s “rich snippets.” Doing so, pay specific attention to the following:
- Check your Page Titles for the maximum keyword relevance, and check whether they meet the upper length limit within 55-60 characters. Doing so, consider putting your most valuable keyword assets closer to each title’s beginning – to maximize their weight in the eyes of Google itself.
- Revise your Meta Descriptions and fill in any missing ones with as many natural sounding writings as possible. Focus mainly on your hyper-local keywords and their long-tail variations that would give a clear & concise summary for each web page you have. Ultimately – to maximize your Click-Through rate, and therefore Conversion-generating potential.
- Don’t forget to embed every on-page image with a correctly optimized ALT Tag – otherwise, the search engines won’t be able to “read” them. That way, put some relevant keywords over there, in line with separating every single word with hyphens (instead of dashes or underscores) – and you’re done.
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