Local Seo – 7 Seo Tactics That You Need To Apply
Do you have a local business and need more visibility? Do you have your Local My Business account (s) optimized (s)?
Promoting local businesses is a two-way street: applying different tactics and a different approach of measuring the KPI’s at the Performance Marketing level.
Considering that the implementation of the Omnichannel business strategy is a successful one for our partners, we thought to centralize 7 local SEO optimization tactics.
1. Create a free listing for your location / locations in Google My Business
In order to be listed in local results, you have to go through two steps:
- you can list your account for free by applying the form from the following link https://www.google.com/business/
- check the location (claiming your business) by activating the code you received via the envelope at the mailing address you provided
2. Create different accounts for each location
It’s best to create different accounts for each location and their names MUST be different:
Example:
- Name first location: Victoria Square Brand
- Second location name: Brookly Square Market brand
3. Implement the NAP (Name, Address, and Phone)
NAP (Name, Address, Phone) are the most important attributes and require increased attention to their integration. These must be identical with the identification data on the site so that the search engine finds its truthfulness.
You have to make sure that NAP is displayed on all pages of the site, generally these are usually inserted in the footer section of the website.
4. Implements schema.org/LocalBusiness
The NAP inserted in the footer section of the website is ideal to be implemented using schema.org structured data.
Below you will find an example of implementation in Schema.org format
<div itemscope itemtype = “http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”>
<p itemprop = “name”> Company Name </ p>
<p itemprop = “address” itemscope itemtype = “http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>
<p itemprop = “streetAddress”> Address </ p>
<p itemprop = “addressLocality”> City </ p>
<p itemprop = “phone”> Phone number </ p>
<meta itemprop = “latitude” content = “LATITUDE” />
<meta itemprop = “longitude” content = “LONGITUDE” />
</ div>
After the technical implementation you can test if everything is alright with the Google tool:
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
5. Apply a UNIQUE tracker (UTM) for the displayed URLs in different locations
Displaying links to your site in SERP Local Pack results automatically creates visibility for potential customers and implicit impressions that are then centralized into Google Search Console.
To segment / export the impressions and clicks the site has been exposed to in Local Pack, the following steps should be taken:
Edit the link in your Local My Business account by adding a specific UTM
Example: https://www.website1.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Local-Visibility
By adding the UTM above (on an example site), we can create a segment using the information in your Google Search Console account.
Important: If you have a https-indexed variation, be sure to change the link to the specific version of your Google Search Console account. If you have the https-indexed site and the Google My Business link is http, you will have discrepancies in both GSC accounts (formerly Webmaster Tools).
Apply a page filter by URL in the Search Stats section of Google Search Console
Go to the GSC search statistics section and create a page filter (all pages that contain the Local-Visibility in URL)
After making sure that you have the filter applied, select the Query tab and so you will have all the impressions / clicks and the average position for all the keywords displayed in your local results.
Note 1: Some statistics on image views / clicks for your Google My Business account can also be found in your account settings.
Note 2: If multiple locations exist, it is preferable to have a different UTM tracker to segment the visibility for each location.
6. Add native images to generate trust and / or sell
If we are talking about promoting services, we need to identify the elements of trust and translate them into images.
If we are talking about selling the product then it should be mentioned that we can “take advantage” of brand searches to expose brand images.
Proposed scenario:
We take the following case, where there is a residential complex to promote and has about 100 users looking for it’s name using Google. Searching for the site / brand name, with your Local My Business account enabled, displays images within the complex.
The existence of native images that favor the product itself (the residential complex in the present case) can help raise leads and achieve your goals.
7. Create distinct landing pages for each location
If there are multiple locations, the ideal option is that each location has a unique page presented with different contact information.
The proposed structure would be:
www.websitename.com/our-shops/
-> www.websitename.com/shop-location-1/
-> www.websitename.com/shop-location-2/
etc.
Creating unique landing pages allows the segmentation of campaigns and the possibility of new SEO optimization opportunities.