What Are The Best Ranking Strategies To Do Local SEO: A Complete Guide

Local SEO is crucial for any business looking to establish its online presence and reach local customers. Whether you're a small business owner, a local service provider, or a chain with multiple locations, ranking high in local search results can have a significant impact on your visibility, credibility, and ultimately, your bottom line.

As an SEO expert with years of experience in helping businesses rank locally, I can tell you that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to local SEO. It's a complex and ever-changing landscape, and what works for one business might not work for another. But there are some tried-and-true strategies that can help you get started and see results.

In this blog, I will share with you the best ranking strategies for local SEO. These are the tactics that have consistently produced results for my clients and will help you optimize your website and online presence for maximum local visibility. Whether you're a seasoned SEO pro or just starting, you're sure to find something useful on the following pages.

Understanding Your Target Audience and Location

Understanding your target audience and location is the foundation of any successful local SEO strategy. Before you can effectively optimize your website and online presence, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target customers are and where they are located. This information is crucial for every aspect of your local SEO efforts, from the keywords you target to the content you create.

To start, you'll want to do some demographic research to get a better understanding of your target audience. This can include things like age, gender, income, education level, and more. You can find this information through a variety of sources, including census data and surveys.

Once you have a better understanding of your target audience, you'll want to do some location-based keyword research.

This involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target customers are searching for when they're looking for the products or services you offer.

You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find the right keywords for your business and location.

Finally, you'll want to analyze your competitors to see what they're doing right (and what they're doing wrong) in terms of local SEO. This information can give you a competitive edge and help you identify opportunities to stand out from the crowd.

Optimizing Google My Business

Google My Business also often referred to as GMB is a very interesting and useful tool for location-based businesses. It allows your website to show up on search results in the Local Business Pack also known as Google Local Listing (GLL), above businesses and websites that have more authority in the eyes of Google.

Optimizing your Google My business is the most important part of your local SEO campaigns. Using GMB can boost your business as a part of local SEO.

It allows you to have higher visibility and increases your chances of generating inbound leads as important details like your address, phone number, and email address is available and visible on your google my business page.

Also, Google has introduced features that allow you to post links to blogs and events which will be visible to the public.

Images and reviews are also part of the GMB Page and since searchers can have a look at the photos and reviews it increases the confidence of searchers in your business.

Listing your business on GMB is free and is often overlooked by businesses but it should be treated as a priority.

What’s the reason to treat GMB seriously?

As I said earlier information about your business is available to the public on GMB it also has a feature that allows regular searchers to add or edit information about your business.

Now, since users can add or edit info about your business that opens up the opportunity for having information that is not consistent with your website and some might be outright false.

This wrong and false information can be harmful to your business which will affect inbound leads and even ranking on Local Listing Pack and SERP.

Setting up your Google My Business listing

Setting Up your Google My Business Listing or often referred to as GMB Listing is pretty simple.

Follow These steps and You’ll be good to go.

Go to https://www.google.com/business and sign in with your Google account.
Fill in your business information including business name, address, phone number, and category. Make sure your information is accurate and up-to-date.
Verify your listing by either receiving a postcard with a verification code or verifying your business by phone.
Add photos of your business and include relevant information like business hours and products/services offered.
Google will send you a postcard at the address you’ll provide on the GMB page and will also verify your mobile number in order to confirm the details are correct.
Once the information has been confirmed then your GMB will be live

Optimizing your listing for maximum visibility

Now, you know what is Google my Business, and the importance of google my business, and I hope you’re following every step.

Once your GMB page has been created it's time to optimize it.

Optimizing your GMB page is important because it is the section that comes up in the local map pack and you’re not the only business in your niche.

There are other businesses that provide the same product and services as you, and they have optimized their GMB page as well so they come up in the SERP above your listing.

Showing up higher in the listing means getting more calls and inquiries, if your competitor ranks higher than you that means your competitor is taking away most of the business from you.

To come up higher in the Local map pack you need to optimize it and I’ll lay out the steps if you follow it to the T you won’t have to worry about optimizing your GMB again.

Claim Your Google Business Page: We have talked about how you can create your GMB page but if you find that there is already a listing there then you’ll have to claim it.
Build-Up Citations: Citations are the listing of your business on other business directories.
Have Proper NAP: NAP stands for name, address, and Phone number. Now you can have As many citations as you want but it wouldn’t matter if the NAP is different across the web. Your NAP needs to be consistent across the web.
Add Photos: Adding your GMB page will not only increase the confidence of searchers in your business but also google confidence. Also, when You add images you can have your keywords in the ALT tags and the file name which will also help increase rankings
Get Reviews: GMB page allows customers and even regular searchers to leave reviews. Reviews act as an important ranking factor in local searches. Getting more reviews can make your business look legit and can rank higher in local listing and map packs

Local Listings and Directories

Ever since the start of the internet people use to surf the web using web directories. There were no search engines until later on.

If you see search engines like google, yahoo, Yandex, Bing, and Baidu are more advanced versions of the directories which used to be.

As time passed on many of the old directories shut down, but some are still there and newer directories like Yelp And Craigslist have emerged and gained popularity. People still use these directories to find businesses and services they need.

Now search engines like google and bing have bots whom they call spiders.

These spiders crawl the web, including the directories looking for information and for businesses so they can index this information on search engines.

Now, if your prospects are there on the web on directories then why shouldn’t you be there? These directories can bring you customers and a higher ranking on Google SERP.

Listing On Local Directories

Listing on local directories is fairly simple. Having said that there are a few things that you need to keep in mind.

There are n number of directories available on the internet and not all of them are good for you.

Use only the directories that are relevant to your niche and have some authority.

There are also a lot of spam directories that you will need to avoid.

To find these directories just do a google search using search operators like

“Niche” + web directories
“Service” + web directories
“Product” + web directories

Once you find these directories then simply sign-up with your details put in your business information, add products get some reviews and you’ll be good to go.

Keeping Your Listings Accurate And Consistent

Now that you know the history and importance of Local listings and how to create them there is this one thing that you need to keep in mind

Local listing can give you a boost in local SEO results but can also push you down to the very end of SERP Down enough to not be found.

What is the reason for this?

You don’t have the same contact details (also known as NAP) when you have different NAP for each listing every listing would be considered as a different business and since none or most of the details of the listing won’t match your contact details from your website and GMB listing then none of them would rank.

So, it is very important to have consistent contact information for your business across the web.

On-Page Optimization

On-Page, optimization refers to the things you do on your own website.

You have complete control over this part and this allows you to make the most of it.

Having said that in order to make the most of this people tend to over-optimize their websites which does more harm than good.

You’ll get a lot of guides over the web on how to do On-Page optimization so I won’t get into details like what is a keyword, what are H1, and other heading tags, the Importance of user experience, and Page Speed.

What I’m going to tell you is what you can do on the page for local searches.

Optimize Your Website For Local Keywords

When we say local keywords we mean keywords that is specific to a location. This would include keywords like “salon in South Hampton” or “Best Frame Carpentry In Goose Creek, SC” or even keywords like “Gym’s near me”.

These keywords should be used on your website home, Service/Product Page page, and wherever necessary.

But where will you actually use these keywords?

You will use these keywords in the Meta title, Meta Description, URL, H1 tags LSI Keyword for your service in Other Heading Tags and in Content.

Now, You don’t need to put in your keywords too many times, based on the length of content use it for 1%-3%. This 1-3 % includes all the tags and content.

You can also create Local Content and use your keywords there.

Examples of local content would be “best gyms in South Dakota” or “The best sushi place in Brooklyn”

Use Local Schema

Local schema markup is a type of code that is added to a website's HTML to provide search engines with more information about a business, its location, and the services or products it offers.

The goal of local schema markup is to help search engines understand the context of a business and its offerings, which can then improve the visibility of that business in local search results.

Local schema markup works by using structured data to provide search engines with information about a business, such as its name, address, phone number, and other key details. The implementation of local schema markup is simple and straightforward and can be done by adding a specific type of code to the head section of a website's HTML.

Building Local Backlinks

All backlinks are inherently the same in nature but they are not equal. When you right-click on any hypertext keyword and choose to inspect it there are only a few variations of backlinks you’ll get.

There will look something like this

keyword
keyword
keyword

You see there is no such thing as a local link! Then what is a local link?

Well, that would be any backlinks you get from websites that are from the same city or country.

Before we talk about how will you build these links let's talk a bit about why should you even bother to build links

Importance of Link Building

All search engines work on algorithms. These algorithms help these search engines to determine which result is most relevant to the search query made by the searcher.

While you put in the keywords on your webpage to tell the search engine that this specific web page talks about this topic but that is not enough.

Why, you ask? Why is just doing on-page optimization not enough?

There are millions if not billions of results for each search term then how would google or any search engine decide which result should come on top?

While Google and Yandex use Page.Rank algorithm along with other factors as well. Other search engines use something similar for their product.

This page rank algorithm takes each backlink as a vote, for a better word “connection”.

The 3 Types Of Links I showed earlier indicate different things to google.

This link keyword is called a do-follow Link. This link tells google that the webmaster trusts this website and it allows some of its authority to pass onto the linked page
This link keyword has a rel=”nofollow” tag which shows that the webmaster knows this website but it does not trust it fully and asks google bots not to pass on any authority from their website to the linked page
This link keyword has a rel=”sponsored” tag which shows google bots that the webmaster does not know this website and the linked webmaster has paid the linker for the link but it does not trust it fully and asks google bots not to pass on any authority from their website to the linked page

All 3 types of links help google’s RankBrain Algorithm to know which website to show on the 1st page

While this is not the only ranking factor but it is one of the most important ranking factors on google.

Building Backlink From Local Sources

To build backlinks from local resources you can find bloggers from your city and ask them for a link to your website.

You can register on your local business directories and get a link from there, also, you can register your business on govt. Portals and get backlinks from there as well.

If there are events happening in your city you can sponsor them and ask for a link return pointing to your website

Additionally, if your customers have a website you can ask them for a link as well.

You can also use content marketing for earning backlinks organically.

Review Management

As mentioned earlier that reviews are an important ranking factor in google's local search ranking but managing them is even more important.

Now, it is possible that you don't receive a lot of reviews and it is also possible that you get a lot of bad reviews or fake reviews, or manipulated reviews.

All of them are bad for you.

You need to make sure that you get a lot of reviews and original reviews. If the reviews are good but not original they can be found as these fake reviews tend to follow patterns.

These reviews can either build or break the trust of searchers in your business.

Encouraging Customers To Leave Reviews

If you’re not getting a lot of reviews then you can/must encourage your customers to leave reviews for your business on your GMB page.

Most of the time just asking people to leave reviews is enough but if that is not working you can incentivize businesses to leave reviews.

There are many software companies and gyms and multibillion-dollar companies that offer free services or discounts on total billing to get reviews because they know the importance of getting reviews.

Responding To Positive and Negative Reviews

So getting reviews is important but responding to these reviews is even more important.

When you respond you come as a legit business and not a shell company or an egomaniac who does not care about their customers

Responding to positive reviews encourages customers to shop again and leaves a positive impression about your business on their minds.

Responding to negative reviews also leaves a positive impression on their mind and you come as a business that cares for its customers. You also get a chance to directly interact with your customers and understand what is the problem they are facing which gives you an opportunity to solve their problems and improve your product.

Measuring and Tracking Your Local SEO Campaign

Now that you’ve known what is Local SEO what are the best ranking strategies to do local SEO and how to implement those strategies?

I assume you will follow it, if you’ll follow it then it is important to measure your SEO efforts as well. There is a saying “if you are not measuring you’re not growing”

You can use software like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Yext, and Bright Local to track and measure your local SEO efforts and their effect on your business.

Using Google Search Console you’ll find what keywords drive traffic to your website and with help of Google Analytics you can find other sources of traffic including referral traffic (i.e. traffic from directories, GMB, and, other places you’ve backlinks from). Analytics also shows you how many minutes people stayed on your website, where they exit from, and other important details as well.

You need to continuously track the results and optimize your website and off-page SEO efforts accordingly

Conclusion

Local SEO is important for your business so much so that when done correctly it can give you an unfair advantage over big businesses. To do it correctly you need to make/claim your GMB Page, use local keywords on your website, create local content, do on-page optimization, off-page optimization (building local links), get reviews for your business, weed out fake reviews, measure, track and optimize your local SEO efforts.