In this digital era, the dependability of search engines is undeniably high. As everything is on the tip of our fingers, many have sought to search engine to help them find whatever they need online.

The search engine is the one that provides the perfect result for whatever you are searching for. By utilizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), your business can be on top of the search results, outranking your competitors.

SEO, which is beneficial to businesses of all sizes, includes a combination of on- and off-page strategies for increasing your site’s ranking in relevant search results.

On the other hand, local SEO is a powerful strategy for any local businesses trying to increase potential clients or customers to their brick-and-mortar location.

Simply put, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of organic traffic to your website. Meanwhile, local search engine optimization is a subset of SEO that focuses more on the search’s geographical aspects.

Both of the techniques serve the same purposes: improving your ranking in search results, increasing your online visibility, and heightening the potential of more people to visit, engage, and convert into your customers.

Understanding SEO

Before going deeper into local SEO, let’s first understand SEO fundamentals. SEO consists of three essential parts: the volume of traffic, organic results, and the most important of it all is the traffic quality.

The Volume of the Traffic

Although the total amount of traffic will not affect your rankings, traffic plays a vital role in your website’s search results. Of course, the more popular your site is, the better it is.

The first thing that any SEO specialist can tell you is that you need a lot of web traffic to work on your website. Indeed, most SEO experts pitch on their websites the same, which is how they grow their web traffic and help you do the same.

You will find thousands of pages about how SEO can be effective, how to reach new audiences, how to rank high in Google, and so on. Yes, it’s an essential aspect of any modern company. The aim is to get more traffic which eventually will convert into customers for your business. 

But the truth is, is it as simple as that?

The success of your website does depend on its traffic. However, Google focuses more on how users find and what they do with your website than how much your web traffic is.

Organic Results

Organic traffic is the critical network that inbound marketing aims to raise. This website traffic is defined as site visitors from an online search engine, such as Google or Bing. However, it does not include paid search advertisements.

However, that does not indicate organic web traffic isn’t impacted by paid search or display advertising, either positively or negatively. People depend on search engines, and expressions such as “just Google it” strengthen that human beings are connected to the search engine. Hence, paid search, screen, or perhaps offline projects can drive searches, enhancing natural traffic while those campaigns are running.

Traffic information is a great way to analyze your site’s temperature, advertising, and marketing campaigns. You can use website traffic data to track outcomes and correlate these efforts to actual ROI when advertising and composing blogs and web content regularly. Make sure to look at website traffic numbers over long-term periods to see patterns and record the enhancement with time.

As the same as direct traffic, organic traffic has a specific gray area. Websites that consistently fabricate search material will see a steady increase in organic search traffic and a boost in search results.

Due to the Google adjustments, it is understandable that much organic web traffic was affected. For example, Wayfair lost 25% of desktop clicks, and 55% lose mobile payment for search results.

It happened to many similar websites too. We also know that the adjustments caused damage to the organic search traffic at once.

The Quality of the Traffic

Your website visitors can come from anywhere, but their real intention of visiting your website is the most critical factor. Quality traffic means more visitors are visiting your website because they need your products or services. This kind of visitor is the kind of traffic you need to attract and not some tire kickers.

Why is it important to have quality traffic?

While traffic on the website is vital, traffic quality brings you, customers.

Generating leads is vital for business. Without lead, there will be no business. SEO and PPC do help in bringing traffic to your website. However, it would help if you can distinguish the traffic type. You need to correctly identify how many visitors are quality leads and how many are not.

Before expecting to earn from an advertisement, you must first be willing to pay for its cost. The amount of money you spend on online advertising doesn’t guarantee the potential income you will earn. Please understand that traffic does not necessarily generate the purchase. And this is why it is imperative to focus more on conversion than the traffic volume.

Both quantity and quality of traffic are necessary for a high-performing website. High quantities of website traffic mean brand name recognition and online exposure. However, high-quality web traffic can indicate a more significant proportion of conversions and sales.

Conversion refers to how many your website visitors end up buying from you. The volume of traffic or people visiting your website is essential, but the volume of people who are buying from you is more significant in every way.

Because at the end of the day, return on investment is all we needed for.

Let us dig this together.

Website A has 200 visitors with 20% conversion, and website B has 300 visitors with 10% conversion.

Which one is better, you think?

Basic mathematics states that the first one will generate 40 paying customers while the other will only generate 30. No matter how many visitors you get, the conversion rate is the most critical factor for your business.

However, this doesn’t reject the value of high web traffic whatsoever. It just highlights the importance of persuading these people to do what you need them to do, be it click on the advertisement or acquire your product.

Satisfied customers become returning customers, and site visitors, as well as they, may even become the promoters of your brand if they are genuinely delighted. Whether they are just pleased with your items or material and recommend you to their pals or full-on fans, they deserve their weight in gold.

One more essential point to want is your target market retention. Suppose you develop a commitment to your brand and have many pleased customers. In that case, that can have a much better impact on your profits in the long run than attempting to trick your target market with some misleading ads or economic advertising techniques.

It all suggests that you need to be energetic online and connect with your audience. You need to have solid visibility in social media, develop your email checklists, ask for their opinion in the remarks, and more.

These are the three reasons why you need to focus more quality of the traffic rather than the quantity of the traffic:

Generate higher ROI

Whether digital or traditional, web traffic should always convert to sales. A higher rate of traffic ensures a growing potential for a business.

The real intention of attracting a massive crowd to your website is to capture a significant number of buyers. However, it is only possible if you can reach your target market accurately. If your website traffic does not come as quality traffic, it would be a problem for your business.

It would be best to create a solid online presence to get a higher ROI. You need to empathize with your customers and explain why they should choose you over your competitors.

Targeting the correct customer avatar with their specific behavior and interest can increase the possibility of them turning to actual buyers. Avoid using broad targeting as it may significantly affect the bounce rate. Bounce rate is the number of visitors to a specific website who leave after viewing only one page.

There are many reasons that are contributing to the action. Website loading speed, website designs, or just because the visitors are not the accurate target market for your business are among the factors causing the high bounce rate. These factors will undoubtedly impact your ROI and website ranking.

Assuming your website is in superb shape, it’s time to start believing in the best places to market your site so that your designated visitors are actual possible purchasers. Focusing on web-traffic top quality over quantity will undoubtedly enable even more engagement, much better leads, and outstanding profits.

Collecting a more accurate database

Why is it important to keep the bounce rates low? The lower the bounce rates, the easier it to be organized through website activity that we can monitor, such as web page insights and downloads. These website activities will isolate whats you need to keep, and whats needs to be improved or even remove from your website. Furthermore, this will help you craft a better website to cater to your specific target market, increasing the ROI.

Having a more accurate database allows you to understand better which factors can help you turn visitors into actual buyers.

Besides, proper analysis enables you to identify any problem and amend it immediately. Smaller yet details data are much more beneficial for helping you make better decisions in the future.

The correct SEO strategy will help you achieve better ROI and a more accurate database for your business.

Improve the authority of the website

The web traffic is guaranteed to increase with excellent and reliable content. The website will serve as a benchmark among its users with the broad acceptance of the information conveyed through your website. Authentic websites are a significant plus for business among search engines like Google.

How SEO works

SEO shows your content is valuable enough for search engines and relevant enough to be promoted on the highest SERP ranks.

All search engines’ objective is to demonstrate to their users the best, most relevant results.

How you do this depends precisely on the search engine to optimize it.

You need to understand and customize the Google algorithm if you want more organic traffic on your website. If you would like more video views, the YouTube algorithm is all about.

You may consider a search engine as a site to access (or discuss) questions into a box, and the long list of links to web pages you use, such as Google, Yahoo! Baidu, or any other search engine, can magically answer your question.

Indeed, that’s precisely how any search engine work. However, have you ever wondered how the listing of links works?

Google (or any search engine you’re making use of) has a crawler that goes out and collects details concerning all the web content they can locate online. These crawlers gather a wide range of information about your website and the pages that comprise it as an index. That index is then fed via a formula that attempts to match all that information with your question.

SEO Algorithm

According to SEO experts in June 2013, a few factors determined the SEO ranking in June 2013.  

1. Domain level, Link Authority Features: e.g., the number of links to the domain, trust/quality of the links to the domain-level PageRank, etc.
2. Page-Level Link Features: e.g., PageRank, TrustRank, the number of links, anchor text distribution, quality of link sources, etc. 
3. Page-Level KW and content features: e.g. TF*IDF, topic-modeling scores on content, content quality/relevance, etc. 
4. Page-Level Keyword Agnostic Features: e.g., content length, readability, uniqueness, load speed, etc. 
5. Domain-Level Brand Features: e.g., offline usage of brand/domain name, mentions of brand/domain in news/press/media, entity association, etc. 
6. User, usage & Traffic/Query Data : e.g. traffic/usage signals from browsers/toolbars/clickstream, quantity/quality/diversity/CTR of queries, etc. 
7. Social Metrics: e.g., quantity/quality of tweeted links, Facebook shares, Google +1st, etc.
8. Domain-Level Keyword Usage: erg exact match keyword domains, partial keyword matches, etc
9. Domain-Level, Keyword Agnostic Features: e.g., domain name length, TLD extension, domain HTTP response time, etc.

Optimization can take several kinds. It’s a work of making sure the title tags and meta descriptions are both practical and the ideal size to directing internal links at web pages you take pride in.

The O part of SEO stands for optimization—is where the people who create and upload their content to their site, enabling search engines to index it better. It will also bring users directly to the site based on their searching. 

The benefits of SEO

Done correctly, SEO will bring many benefits to your business and brands.

Here are among the benefits of SEO done right:

Bring in more Lead

One of the main factors for having a site is to stand apart from your competition and raise your client database. Otherwise, why spend 1,000 s of extra pounds (₤) on advertising and marketing, right? Companies with an SEO-optimized website bring MORE customers and expand twice as rapidly as services that do not have one.

SEO is possibly the most efficient and budget-friendly marketing approach that exists today. It will just bring in customers that are actively looking to locate your product or solution!

Suppose you agree to spend a couple of hours of time, energy, and a small amount of money. In that case, SEO will undoubtedly bring “targeted” website traffic to your website and potentially converting them into your buying customers compared to any other advertising techniques you’ll ever utilize.

Strengthen Your Brand Reputation

Among the advantages of getting more significant positions on the SERPs is constructing brand awareness. When potential customers search for something, and your website appears on the SERP front page, they will undoubtedly choose you over your competitors.

That is why small businesses that wish to develop far better brand name understanding (either locally or expanding across the country) must buy SEO and start acquiring top rankings for the KEY terms connected with their service. We’re currently in the era where search engines play an essential function in building or breaking your brand reputation. The faster we adapt to this fact, the better it is for us.

Be One Step Ahead of Your Rivals

Let me ask you a simple question. There are two businesses in the same industry offering similar products at similar rates. One of them has an optimized website, while the other has a non-optimized website. Considering whatever else is equal, which firm do you think will have more customers coming to their website from local searches?

And between the two, which company do you think will have a higher success rate?

Online search engines and also SEO are incredibly effective. If your rivals are doing SEO, you have to ask yourself why you didn’t do the same.

Better Conversion Rates

Conversion rate is the percentage of your site traffic that fulfills the desired goal (a conversion). Successful marketing and web design indicate a high conversion rate: It means that people want what you offer, and they can get it without a hustle.

Seo-optimized websites loads quicker, are very easy to access, and will undoubtedly display responsively on all types of devices, including mobile and tablets. Web sites that are easy to read and navigate are more likely to grab and hold attention from your readers or site visitors. I.e., they’re most likely to become your dedicated customers, customers, and returning visitors.

User-friendly Site

SEO will help local business owners produce a quick, smooth, responsive, and user-friendly website. Although many people still hold on to the old definition of SEO, thinking that it is only optimizing for the search engines, today, SEO is also concerning enhancing customer experience.

On-page SEO, if done effectively, makes your visitors happier. That makes search engines happy, as well as they love to offer high-quality info to their users.

A responsive and fast loading website compels a site visitor to stay much longer, reducing bounce rate and boosting page views. Moreover, relevant content is more likely to help your visitor find the correct answer to their question and inquiries. It will undoubtedly make them happier whenever they are visiting your website.

Local SEO

What is known as local SEO?

Local SEO is appropriate for any business that has a physical location where customers can be welcomed or any business that serves a specific local particular area.

Local brick-and-mortar businesses such as diners, pubs, barbershops, legal firms, and supermarkets should all use local SEO.

Local SEO is a process of building your brand’s online presence and increase its visibility toward local searches. This process is significant in helping businesses to promote their products and services to the local market.

In simple words, Local SEO is what you need to do if you want to generate more local customers or clients. In this online shopping era, it is understandable that local small business owners may be demotivated to compete for positions in search results with the retail giants like Walmart and Amazon.

Local SEO, fortunately, is here to aid you. Local SEO endorses small businesses over large corporations like Amazon.

Both Google and the general public recognize the importance of local businesses. Google has a set of local ranking factors that it uses to determine whether your business is relevant to a user performing a ‘near me’ search.

It means you won’t have to compete with large big businesses to get your local business in front of relevant nearby customers. Investing in local SEO allows you to be discovered by local consumers who are available and eager to invest in your company instead.

Less than half of the businesses out there are using local SEO services. Hence this is an ample opportunity for you to get ahead of your competitors and stand out in maps, local searches, as well as social media.

Local SEO and its impact on Small Business

SEO helps small business owners produce quickly, durable, and straightforward sites that rank greater in search engines, which consequently assists bring even more qualified possibility customers to their websites and eventually enhances conversion rates.

SEO also helps develop brand recognition for your business. Online search engine customers are more likely to rely on a website that gets on the front page of internet search engine results (SERPs) than brands that are not.

Less than 50 percent of organizations presently make use of local SEO services.

If you’re a small business proprietor, you ought to utilize SEO to construct a solid internet existence and bypass your competition to obtain new consumers for your business and take it to the following degree.

Local SEO is the technique used to make sure that your business noticeable for geographically associated searches. It is a practical way to market your regional company online. It helps businesses advertise their services and products to local consumers when seeking them online. If you want more local services, you need extra local SEO services.

Enhancing your local SEO suggests even more internet site traffic, leads, and conversions because the method is more pertinent to your local customers’ base. Consider this concentrated approach as a means to aid you to compete better versus more prominent national brand names that have unrestricted resources to spend.

By concentrating on specific local-SEO to-dos, you can neutralize the advantage of more prominent brands that regularly optimize for broader keywords and depend on brand recognition, rather than worth propositions, to traffic.

Even more, according to ReviewTrackers’s research in 2017, 35% of all search web traffic is local. Without local SEO, your organization could be losing a significant quantity of traffic.

Why do small businesses need local SEO?

For brick-and-mortar or service-area businesses, putting money in local SEO can help to bring more customers to your store, allowing you to start generating more revenue. Today, most businesses should manage two types of stores: their physical store and their digital store.

Local SEO will increase your online store’s visibility and bring you more customers. According to Google, 46% of searches currently have “local intent.” As search engines have become more aware that many individuals are looking for specific services and items near them, all companies require local SEO.

Local businesses require visibility on what is known as the ‘local pack,’ ‘3-pack,’ and the ‘snack pack’ to increase traffic to their websites and through their doors.

As “near me” or “close” searches increased over two years by more than 900%, local SEO helps your business distinguish itself in local searches and drives more online traffic.

It means possible customers are searching for your services within your service location and boost your local SEO, and your business will undoubtedly be the one they come to locate to.

According to Forbes’s research, 95% of performing local searches are using smartphones, 61% of which called the company, and 59% are visited the business.

The local searches usually come from non-local people who are unfamiliar with the particular area. With the aid of technology, users tend to search more each day.

A successful local SEO project will aid your company in many factors such as:

• It enhances your website’s positions in the search engine results and local searches.
• It helps your business visibility on Google maps and various other applications.
• It boosts your online exposure, specifically to neighboring customers.
• It is the highest conversion level of any other local advertising network.
• It will assist you to outrank your local rivals.
• It raises organic web traffic to your website and makes much more qualified leads.
• It helps mobile customers locate your business quicker, whether in the search engines, via directories or with social media networks.

How to improve local SEO

Numerous small local businesses neglected local marketing strategies to increase their local search visibility. Whether you have been in the industry in the long run or are just a startup, you still require effective local SEO marketing. Implementing excellent strategies not only help you to generate more lead for your business, but it also helps you to stand out from your competitors. 

People are using Google for finding a local business like yours. 50% of all Google searches are made on mobile devices, and more than half of it is for local businesses. 

Local SEO strategy is capable of bringing more high-quality leads to businesses. The strategy should be the primary intention of any business that wants to target people from nearby cities or regions. Any business should use SEO to strengthen its online presence and attract more customers. 

Here are the top 11 local SEO tips which business can apply to help them get more customers.

#1 Build your social media presence

Social networks are undeniably essential for any business, especially for small local businesses. It is not only capable of bringing in leads but also can help in improving your brand awareness. This strategy will also bring more traffics and backlinks to your website to improve your local SEO visibility. 

Ensure you prioritize whatever social media your target market is usually using and active. You don’t have to be everywhere, but just where your target market is. 

For example, if your target market loves a luxury lifestyle, Instagram would be the perfect platform for your business. However, it doesn’t mean that you have to focus solely on Instagram and ignore other social media platforms. It just means that you have to be more aggressive on Instagram and a bit slow on other social media platforms. 

Once you have chosen the perfect social media platform for you, you need to develop an ideal strategy. It would be best to construct which brand recognition you want to represent your business.  

And once everything is set up correctly, you can start to engage and communicate with the local community. 

Furthermore, social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, allow you to pay for advertising. The Ads will enable you to target a specific market at a particular location and their interest and behaviors. It will also be beneficial for your brand awareness. 

#2 Focus on Your Site Build As Well As Design.

A website is crucial for any business in this digital world. Whether you have a shop or run a service, a clear website is required to describe what you can use and where you are.

You may lose out on your business opportunities if you have a business but don’t have a website. A website can help your business grow through many different marketing strategies. The web is much broader than any other form of publicity. The center for your online presence will be your website. The website, forums, and pay-per-click advertising programs enable you to publicize your business.

Choose a domain containing your business type and location so that whenever someone visits your website, they will know what your business is about and where your location is.

For example, if you own a barbershop in New York, you should use the domain “alexthebarbernyc.com”.

You can create a simple website showing all of your business information, such as your business address, phone number, and business operating hours.  

You must include as much information about your business on the site. Don’t forget to state clearly your business address, business name, phone number (NAP) on every page of the site.

Also, always use related local keywords relevant to your business, its products or services, and location in your page titles. It is better to create another page for any products or services your business offers so everything will be more neat and easy to browse.

Ensure that you create as much local content on your site to associate your business with the nearby area. It will not only improve your customer journey but also helps Google to understand your business better. 

#3 Create Expert/ Professional Listings.

When running a service-based company with skilled practitioners (for example, accountants, solicitors, or engineers), your employees should each have a web page containing information about their skills and expertise. 

The technique is a great lead generation technique, and you will be surprised how much this simple technique can help your business rank better on Google. 

It enables your team to appear in a higher position every time the customer searches for professionals near them. These customers will indirectly be linked back to your main business website. 

#4 Gather Your Citations.

Citation is any form of reference to your business on the web. It represents a business’s unique online footprint and helps potential customers find information about the business. Search engines often rely on NAP (name address phone number) consistency to identify your position and provide users with accurate results.

A higher number of citations ensures the higher rank your website will be on Google’s local search result position. You can choose to include your business details manually or run them automatically using various kinds of software. 

Every citation you create should have consistent information such as the same address and phone number. Please don’t change the information in every citation as it might confuse Google. Hence, the confusion may affect your site’s trustworthiness and reliability.

List your company details on relevant local blogs and industry-related directories or blogs, as well as sign up for regional directories. Some of the best places on the list are Foursquare, Yelp, and SocialCast. Each citation helps to demonstrate to Google that you are a viable company. 

#5 Share Local Stories Online and Offline.

The customers are the most critical part of any business. Without them, there will be no business at all. Serving and providing them with an incredible customer journey should be your main priority. Instead of foregrounding your business, focus on your potential customers and the best offer you can provide to them. 

The initial step is to start by listing your business correctly on the leading review platforms, such as GMB, Yelp, and Facebook. 

If there are any local events, make sure you can join them no matter what. You can also collaborate with a local advertising agency to sponsor any local charity event and look for industry-specific pages where your customers can also leave testimonials.

#6 Develop Relevant Web Content

As a small local business, you certainly understand your local knowledge better than other big brands. A relevant and quality local web content is exceptionally important. 

Sharing your knowledge with your local customers can undoubtedly boost your local authority. You must understand why customers choose you over your competitors and what solutions you can offer to solve their problems. You need to create local content to attract more local customers.

Your website content must emphasize the offers you can provide and prepare answers regarding any of the questions asked. Undoubtedly, most customers tend to trust more prominent and reputable businesses. To increase your business trustworthiness, you must start focusing on building your brand recognition. 

Building your business reputations will also enhance your business personality and make you stand out from others businesses. Don’t forget to create various kinds of content for your website, increasing people’s interest, including informative posts, videos, interactive content, infographics, and many others.

Please bear in mind that you never spam your social media accounts with a hard sell post. Always reach out to other related sites to collaborate with content sharing. 

#7 Study Highly Searched and Popular Keywords

You can use many tools to find the best keywords for your website. Keyword Everywhere & The Keyword Planner Tool are among the best ones you can check out. 

You should covers as many highly searched keywords in your web content so that customers can reach your website faster whenever they search for it online. This will helps you to rank better in the SERPs too. 

Search Console is another great way to find relevant and popular keywords in your website’s local searches. Always choose highly searched keywords to bring more traffic back to your website. 

Once you’ve discovered the set of keywords you want to use, you can start planning and creating relevant content for it to increase your website traffic. Don’t forget to regularly monitor your analytics to see whether the strategy is working or not. 

But before you use your list of keywords, you need to examine the competitiveness. You can use tools like Ahrefs to determine if your competitors use these keywords. If your local SEO competitors are strengthened with the exact keywords, it could also work well for you.

Piece of advice, never uses too many keywords at once, as keyword stuffing may make your website look fishy. Make sure your keywords are evenly shared across the content and added to them in a manner that seems natural.

For example, you have a New York-based bakery, so you should use “New York bakery” whenever possible. 

#8 Examine Your Mobile Capability.

Since 50% of Google searches are done on mobile, you need to make sure your web design is compatible with smaller devices that your site loads in the 90th percentile. If your visitors need to wait for longer than 3 seconds, the chance they might leave your website is higher. 

You can use many tools to check on your site speed, and Google’s Page Speed Insights is one of them. 

Google loves and favors the faster loading websites compared to the slower ones. It tends to reduce the slower website visibility. So please don’t take it for granted, and make sure you prioritize your website loading time as your business is depending on it. 

#9 Collect Great Reviews.

Local Consumer Review Survey conducted by BrightLocal in 2017 reveals that 85% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal suggestions. Undoubtedly, reviews are regarded as one of the top lead generation techniques in SEO strategy. Reviews act as social proof that helps customers be more confident with your business. 

Don’t forget to list your company on Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and another leading review platform. Make sure you sign up for as many local business review sites as you can. Doing it ensures your customers can leave their reviews quickly without a hassle. 

Google My Business is one of the review sites you shouldn’t ignore. Try to get your first review on the platform if you can, as Google always prioritizes reviews on its platform rather than other websites. 

You can send Google Review Link Generator to your customers to help them leave their reviews. However, never attempts to create fake reviews as Google will detect and penalizes any reviews from the same IP address, location, or account. 

The same setup also applies to many other platforms, so it is better to collect reviews slowly in time. And always remember, genuine, honest reviews are better than fake ones. Don’t forget to reply and show your gratitude to any customers who leave their reviews on your platforms.

Displaying all of your business information on all of your platforms, such as contact numbers, business hours, or even your business address, will help your customers to reach you faster. A separate page that shows all of your services or products will help your customers understand your business deals better. Hence all of these will provide them with a better customer journey. 

Choose to be visible on any platform which your customers are. You don’t have to be everywhere but where your customers and target market are. Start by improving your online presence on the sites and maintaining it routinely so that customers can view and be updated about your business from time to time. Don’t forget to connect with any local business site or KOL (Key Opinion Leader) to give your business better exposure. 

Always engage with your customer who takes their time to interact with you online. Please show your appreciation for their kind gestures. 

On the other hand, you shouldn’t ignore any bad reviews. Respond to the bad reviews professionally. By doing so, customers can see your effort in mending things and ensuring that you have excellent customer service. 

#10 List Your Business on Google My Business (GMB).

One of the most popular and effective methods to upgrade your local SEO is to list your business on Google My Business. Listing your business with Google My Business makes discovering your business easier. Once you are listed, when users look for companies like yours, your business will appear on Google Maps.

It also helps your company to improve on the search results. If Google verifies that your business is legitimate, your business can also appear on the sidebar of Google Search results pages.

There are few steps you can implement to optimize your GMB listing, such as: 

• As Google will index your GMB, please ensure you provide accurate information about your business. 
• Add relevant images, exact location, correct payment method, great catalog of your services or product, and your operating hours onto your GMB page. 
• Always ask your customer to leave their reviews and rate your business. 
• Be aware of any reviews and respond to them quickly. 

By doing all of these tips, it may help to improve your local SEO ranking as well as can attract more quality leads for your business. 

#11 Fix any Online Presence Troubles.

In some cases, despite your best shots, you can still have problems with your site’s exposure on local Google searches. The primary reason is maybe you unintentionally violate Google’s standards.

Even in minor violations, Google will suspend your account until you have identified any discrepancies. In the worst case, Google deletes your site permanently from their search lists.

There several reasons that Google may punish your website. However, these are the most typical ones:

• There are other business listings or outdated specialist listings for the same address.
• The information you have given on Google My Business and other citation sites doesn’t match.
• You run courses that are not from a business you own.
• You create a business listing for an online workplace or mailbox.
• You’ve added different keywords to your business URL or business name.
• Your industry may be cluttered with spam. Thus the spam filter for your business industry may have higher settings. 

Please get professional help if you encounter more complicated errors on any of the problems. 

Website Optimization

Website optimization is a must so that your website can be more effective. An effective website brings more traffic and helps boost your revenue through new leads and reduce expenses. The precise and crystal clear information on your website will decrease customer support which will benefit your business.

A high conversion rate means that most of your web traffic is converted into actions, which can benefit your business growth. The activities can be varied, such as filling out a lead form, signing up for your business newsletter, asking for a quote, or making an actual purchase.

On the other hand, having a low conversion rate should be fixed or avoided at any cost.

These are a couple of reasons which contribute to the low conversion rate.

• It is difficult for your customers to browse through your website, be it the website design, the layout, or the website loading speed itself.
• Your offer is not interesting enough for your customer, or your website content does not cater to the right target market.

What aspect do you need to optimize for your website?

Different websites need a different kind of optimization. Before starting with anything, it is crucial first to identify and understand these two things:

What do your visitors need for your website?

You have to understand your visitors’ pure intention distinctively when they decide to visit your website. By understanding this, you can know how to help them achieve whatever the purpose is. If they want to know how your product can help them, you need to create clear and precise details about your website’s product. Your website’s primary purpose should be on how you can help your visitor achieve their initial intention of visiting your website.

What does your business want to achieve?

Your business goals should be related to your visitor goals. It will be undoubtedly helpful if you are sure why you are optimizing your website. It would be best to identify which aspect you have to test, improve and fix. Prioritize your business goals and transfer them into your website to determine where your investment should be while optimizing for your website.

As soon as you’ve determined your business’s top priorities and your internet site visitors, you can then identify what you ought to enhance. Below are the areas you can choose to concentrate on when doing website optimization.

Home Page

The homepage is considered the front door of your website. Even though the home page may not be the first page your visitor comes across, but most of them will use the homepage as the starting point for their journey on your website. Gather insights on the actions your visitors try to achieve on your homepage and start with an optimization plan to help these visitors to achieve it.

Landing Page

Optimization of your website means optimizing the first pages where visitors end up within your website. Whether they come from Google, social media, or elsewhere, the landing page should be the page which your visitor are confident. The landing page should help them decide whether it is helpful for them to achieve their initial intention or not.

Optimizing your website’s landing pages can result in lower bound rates and better conversion, as people are confident they are in the right place in getting answers to their questions. Don’t forget to refer to your top landing pages report in your analytic package to identify the full important landing pages you need to optimize. 

Checkout Process

For e-commerce owners, Your checkout process could be your biggest headache or your most significant source of opportunity. Please note the user behavior through the checkout process, as it helps you optimize your chances.

Points of Conversion

You will want to examine the user behavior on the pages if you request your visitor to complete a form or take another action that counts as a conversion. Don’t forget to compare the number of guests visiting these pages with the form filled? Can you test the conversion rate for different elements of this experiment? These conversion points are always an excellent place to look for the opportunity to optimize the website.

These are just areas that can boost your website authority through the optimization process. Still, the best optimization should correlate between your visitor’s intention and your business objective.

SEO Strategy Plan

There are two phases of website optimization that you should note, the phase before building your website and the phase for maintaining your website. Below are SEO tips to be used during the construction of your website.

Initial phase – Before building your website

1. Competitor Analysis

Consistency of keywords: Identify what keywords they are using and how often they used them. Ensure whether they use the main keywords in the heading tags. 

Structure of the website: Give attention to how they construct their website, website layout, and pages. 

Title Tag & Meta Description: Compile a list of title tags for their pages and meta descriptions. You can get all this information through some browser extensions such as Ayima Page Insights and Scraper Plugin for Chrome. Use these data to help you to distinguish yourself from your other competitors. 

Backlink Analysis: Check which sites your competitors put their backlinks in. Backlinks are crucial in bringing more free visitors to your website from search engines. 

Top Ranking Keywords: Get a sense of your competitors’ keywords and rankings to determine your action plan.

Content: Analyze their content, whether it is impactful or SEO friendly. Develop a sense of how they attempt to attract customers and their main sales points.

1. Keyword Analysis

Although numerous keyword research tools are available, Google’s keyword planner tool is the most widely used and easiest. Use the tool to search the volume you want to search for specific keywords.

You can determine what keywords are the most advantageous when comparing search traffic with them. Keyword Planner can also be used to help you generate a new theme keyword. You will get 800 immobilizing keywords when you search for “real estate agents.”

According to Moz, 70% to 80% of the keywords used are long-tailed keywords. Hence, you should be focused more on finding this type of keyword instead of the highly searched keywords.

Keyword Planner can help you to generate keywords on various topics. For example, if you search for “digital marketing”, it will provide you with many related keywords.

1. Plan your SEO strategy even before start building the website

It is undeniable that your website significantly impacts your ranking on search engines. 

Let’s check out why it is crucial to have the strategy in hand before starting up with a website : 

Website Structure: You can strategically plan how you can attain visitors to your site by considering your website structure before writing a single line of code or designing a single part of the website.

First, these site structure elements have to be considered. The simplest method of coding the website, creating an inadequate depth website, and the menu navigation that best works for your site should be considered.

Structure of URL: The URL structure links to your website’s design. All your URLs will be based on each page’s focus. It is paramount to use permalinks to create search-friendly URLs.

Internal linking: Do you wonder how crucial internal linking is? Creating an effective internal link strategy enables you to share links equity by optimizing links with anchor text, which helps you classify certain words.

Outbound Links: When developing outbound links, it is crucial to add a relevant link and bring value to your whole site. Avoid any links that do not serve their purposes. Besides, you need to link out to sources with high page authority or domain authority. 

Heading Tags: You have to format heading tags from the start, and plan on how you want your website to look will certainly help when it’s time to start the application. <h1> must be the first tag on the page’s content, followed by <h2> and so on. 

4)Don’t forget to add a Privacy Statement, Terms and Conditions, and a Disclaimer.

This SEO tip assists your pages in gaining more trust from search engines. They perform a variety of functions. Standing Dog Interactive investigated these pages’ roles and how they can benefit your SEO strategy.

1. Install Google Analytics on your website

Google Analytics is an excellent free software that can provide various critical data.

It provides details on where your visitor comes from, which page they spend most on your website, and what they are searching for before landing on your website. Monitoring and comparing these data frequently will help you determine what aspect you should improve.

1. Ensure that search engines index your website.

First and foremost, sign up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Once everything is in place, submit your sitemap. If you don’t already have one, here’s how to make one. Once created, add a reference to it in your robots.txt file.

It ensures that your site is appropriately indexed by submitting your sitemap to Google and Bing. However, that is not the only reason you should sign up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

They also provide information on website errors, linking to your site, and which keywords are most frequently used on your site.

Maintenance Phase – Making sure your website performance over time.

1. Keyword Research

Another SEO trick is to use your keywords in the right places. You should include your main keyword in:

• URL
• Meta Description
• Heading tags
• Alternate tags
• The first few words of your page’s title
• Your content’s first 100 words

While including your main keyword in these places is ideal, it does not always make sense, and it depends on what you want to achieve.

1. Create and Optimize Local Listings

Creating and fully optimizing local search listings is a huge part of SEO and a crucial SEO tip.

Don’t forget to use a high resolutions images, creative content, include your hours of operation, and list your products or services when optimizing your listings.

Inconsistent business citations are a common mistake made by businesses in local search. Many small businesses will use a different name, address, or phone number on various local search listings, confusing search engines for the correct NAP. In local SEO, consistent business citations are vital.

1. Start a blog and write regularly.

While blogging should not be done just for SEO purposes, it provides several SEO benefits and offers exciting and relevant content to your audience.

Blogging will develop your brand and increase your visibility in search engines. Besides, blogging can undoubtedly bring so many benefits for your business, such as:

Build and strengthen relationships with both existing and new customers

Customer engagement is a critical component of online marketing and branding.

Blogging is an excellent way to establish trust with your target audience by providing them with high-quality, relevant content. Blogging allows you to connect with your current and potential customers in a different, more conversational manner.

By having an active comment section, you will also be able to track visitors’ reactions to your posts and engage directly to their comments, which is highly beneficial in building trust and relationships.

Define Your Business as a Market Leader

No matter how small your company is, blogging is an excellent way to establish trust and clout in your industry. Your potential customers will see your knowledge and experience in your field if you provide content that is considered valid, specific information.

Writing interesting and insightful blogs regularly will make you the “go-to” tool in your industry in your specific niche, resulting in more inquiries and higher conversion rates.

Provide the possibility of viral traffic 

One of the most potent advantages of blogging is the opportunity it provides for others to share your blog’s link.

It opens up the possibility of viral traffic and infinite market growth. Visitors can share the direct link to the blog, tweet it, or email it to a friend as there are so many different sharing platforms available. It is the pinnacle of free advertising.

Don’t forget to utilize blogging’s advantages as your marketing strategy to increase your brand online exposure while becoming the “go-to” leader in your industry.

1. Create longer content rather than the short ones

According to serpIQ data, longer content ranks much higher. However, while it may have a better chance of ranking, creating long content should not be the core concern of each of your blogs.

Conversely, try to provide detail on intriguing topics to your audience. You should create content with your potential customers in mind and customize it to them.

What exactly does more extensive content imply? Well, if the content is well-written and genuinely beneficial, it means you’ll spend more time on the site. More time equals more trust. Furthermore, having multiple pages in a guide means you’re likely to get more page views hence reduce the bounce rates.

5)Make use of LSI Keywords.

LSI is an abbreviation for Latent Semantic Index (ing). It is a computer system that utilizes context to learn a wide range of synonyms. It is a technique that employs evolutionary algorithms to identify relationships between words and meanings within a piece of content.

In simpler words, keywords related to the ones you’re looking for are known as LSI Keywords. Google can identify congruent words based on what people search for and their search behavior.

It means that you should use different keyword variations throughout each piece of content rather than repeatedly using the same keyword.

6)Instead of images, use text. 

Although search engine technology has advanced rapidly, even Google still highly depends on analyzing text–or keywords–to determine what a site is all about. Search engine spiders, known as bots, “crawl” websites in an attempt to understand the premise of the site. As a result, they can provide the most appropriate information to search engine users.

Even though Google has evolved an optical character recognition or OCR, new tech that can recognize characters and words within images is still in its infancy. As a result, search engines are still mostly limited to using text to understand websites.

They cannot translate an image into something substantive enough to produce accurate results. It all boils down that text is still king in SEO and will probably stay so for a long time.

Images can be an added value for a website, but they can also distract people from it. If you can express the same ideas with content rather than images, it is better to use content most of the time. The alternate theory is to create a well-designed, clean and simple website. It can also work, but it must be done correctly.

1. Make use of Schema Markup.

Schema markup is a rarely utilized technique that allows businesses to personalize how certain pages appear in search engines. It is a great way to skyrocket your website and make it stand out from the rest of your SEO competitors.

Have you ever seen a rating or a review appear alongside search engine results? That’s what schema markup is. When schema markup is placed on a webpage, it generates an augmented description ( known as a rich snippet) that shows in search results.

It would be best to consider using schema markup as its functions aren’t limited to that only. You can obtain the vocabulary required to markup your page by visiting schema.org.

8)Avoid Duplicate Content by Using Canonical Tags

The rel=canonical tag is used to eliminate duplicate content on your website. If you have the same content at two different URLs, you can use rel=canonical tags to define which one is the primary piece of content.

It also makes it simpler for search engines to evaluate which pages to refer to.

9)Establish a Link-Building Strategy

Link building is the essential SEO tactic because links indicate to Google that your site is a valuable resource worthy of citation. Technically, sites with more backlinks will rank higher in search results.

When building links, there are a few things to keep in mind. You should know that links are not all the same. A link from leading sites, such as the rottentomatoes.com, will bring a more significant impact on your search results position than a link from a small or new site. With a goodly amount of backlinks, you should only try to earn links from websites with a higher domain authority than yours.

10)Try to get different anchor text for your best inbound links

You can view your inbound links from the highest-ranking sites using Open Site Explorer.

Using this data, you can create a list of the anchor text used to link to your site and where each inbound link is relating to. It would help if you had as many varied anchor text as possible, so ensure the anchor text linking to your site is different each time.

11)Increase your site speed

Site speed is critical to our brand because it is inextricably linked to a positive customer experience. The gap between a fast and a slow site may be as little as a few seconds for one visitor. However, over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of visitors, those seconds may seem like a lot longer when spent by staring at a blank screen.

A longer page loading time may result in a lower ranking because most users will not wait to get to your site. 47% of customers expect websites to load in less than two seconds. And 40% will abandon a page that takes three seconds or more to load.

So, if you want to retain (or strengthen) your rankings and visibility, you must comprehend how to reduce website loading time. You must have a website that provides a convenient and simple user experience — regardless of browser or screen size.

There are many reasons why your site’s load time is slow. It could be anything from the server’s load time to your pictures’ size to the number of redirects you have.

While SEO should be implemented into any business strategy, small businesses should not expect significant results. SEO is a long-run endeavor that takes time to implement and imperative to work in a competitive industry or are a startup.

Top 5 local SEO myths debunked.

There are numerous myths and multiple opinions about local SEO on the internet. The following are the top 5 most common myths about local SEO. We will assist you in debunking everything so that everything else for your local SEO journey is much clearer.

And please remember, when it comes to local SEO, there are three things you should always keep in mind: NAP citations, local reviews, and claiming your business on Google My Business, as well as a slew of other practices to avoid.

#1 Google showcases every one of the data from the GMB Dashboard

Business owners can add as much information and whatever they want to their Google My Business profile, beginning with contact information, pictures, posts, and so on. However, whatever data the owner enters is just one of many sources from which Google will obtain information.

Google constantly updates verified listings by collecting data from the business website, inputs from Google Maps/MapMaker edits, and other third-party data sources. You should make sure that you are consistent with your business information, especially your NAP (name, address, phone number). In one case study, Google repeatedly updated an owner-verified listing with incorrect business hours because they couldn’t properly read the business hours listed on their website.

Furthermore, there is the possibility for somebody else to edit your listing. Anyone can now edit a listing, and it does not even need to be registered. Even competitors can edit your listing, but this does not assure that it will be approved if Google defines it as not relevant.

#2 Claiming your Google My Business can boost your local ranking

It is another one of the most famous myths of local SEO. Many believe that claiming your GMB profile in Google will unexpectedly increase your local ranking on local SERP. Unfortunately, the action is not one of the main ranking factors. Even though claiming your Google My Business profile can be beneficial for your business, the action is not among the high-ranking factors. In many cases, unverified GMB listing can have a better ranking than the verified ones.

The action, though, can help you attract more traffic to your site, social media accounts, bring more customers to your premise, and enhance your online presence in Google search and Google maps.

Listing your business in GMB does help in increasing your local ranking. However, it is crucial to support the action with other strategies and steps.

According to Moz Local Search Ranking Factors, verifying your listing fell under number 13 of the factors which can impact your business’s local ranking. Some business owners change or even add more information to their GMB listing once the verification is done. It is better to edit everything before verifying your GMB profile, as editing your listing after the verification may impact your ranking. The ranking will even drop or increase just by this small action, which local businesses often underestimate.

#3 Posting more content on Google Plus will help your ranking in local search

We’ve all heard and foolishly followed this myth: if you publish many Google posts and have a large number of followers, it will undoubtedly improve your local rankings.

Previously, if you searched for a brand name, the Google + account appeared in organic and even local results. That has since changed, and Google no longer includes a link to your G+ profile in the local pack. Google even no longer refers to it as a “Plus” page.

“It’s nearly impossible for people to see your Google+ posts unless they search for your business by name,” says Phil Rozek.

You can merge Google My Business with your account to avoid duplicate G+ accounts for the time being.

What’s the point of having many posts if it doesn’t help your brand name show the search result?

But that doesn’t mean having a Google + page is pointless. On the other hand, having a popular and active Google+ account can increase your social visibility. You can improve your online presence. So, hopefully, this guide helps you to debunk the myth.

#4 Reviews are no longer relevant

Reputation is an essential factor in assisting customers in picking a local business. When it comes to local pack rankings, review signals account for 16% of the search engine decision-making process, according to the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey.

Out of 100%, only 7% of consumers do not read local reviews before deciding whether a company is good or not. Search engines, too, have taken a similar standpoint. When calculating your search position, search engines will consider your review profile (including quality and quantity).

LocalSEO Guide conducted a study with the University of California, Irvine, and PlacesScout in 2017 and analyzed various local search ranking factors. Reviews, it turns out, are an explicit ranking factor, and Google confirmed it.

It is undeniable that reviews and SEO are inextricably linked because they serve the same purpose. A search engine’s goal is to help its users find the right products and services or information as quickly as possible. Reviews help consumers separate the good from the bad and find the best local business for their needs.

The higher the stars given in the reviews, the more confident the search engines like Google is in promoting your business in a premium, high visibility location. Hence, it is pretty impossible to agree with the myth that reviews are no longer relevant.

#5 Your Google My Business profile will disappear from Google once you deleted it

Many business owners wonder how they can delete duplicate listings on Google. The most common way is to claim the duplicate and then delete it from the Google My Business Dashboard. Once you proceed with your idea of deleting a Google My Business listing, a message will pop out.  

The message states that it will delete all photos, videos, and other content associated with that listing on Google Maps. The truth is by removing a listing from Google My Business (GMB), Google will negate the listing unverified.

Google confirms this in their help article stated: “when you delete a local page, the listing becomes unverified, and you no longer have access to it.” Google may continue to show information about the business on Maps, Search, and other Google properties, including listing the business as officially closed, moved, or open, based on any additional information about the business.

Conclusion

As a small business, it is understandable that building your rank in SERP can be pretty tough. On the other, local SEO is essential for your business success and even survival. No doubt that you need to attract as many customers as you can. As local SEO is not a stand-alone effort, you need to combine it with traditional SEO to enhance your online presence, ensuring your business prosperity.