Are you an owner of one of the 30 million small businesses in the USA?
Thanks to positive economic conditions in recent years, many people have taken the opportunity to set up the business of their dreams.
This had led to a lot of crowded online marketplaces. In 2021, you need to work harder than ever to establish your brand and bring organic traffic to your site.
Do you use local SEO (search engine optimization) to do this? How can you use local SEO in 2021 to draw attention to your brand? Why not read on to find out how to utilize local search engine optimization.
Use Google My Business
One of the most effective local SEO tips you can apply in 2021 is the correct use of Google My Business profiles. This is a key way to indicate your relevance to Google. Further, this is one of the main ways that people search for goods and services like the equivalent of the Yellow Pages in 2021.
It is one of the best ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing during coronavirus, and it is also one of the easiest.
Simply navigate to Google’s My Business application pages and fill out your profile. Remember that your profile will be as effective as the information you enter.
Enter good quality information and ensure that you complete 100% of the profile for maximum yield.
Use My Business Reviews
The next step in our guide to effective local SEO is to manage the information that is connected to your My Business profile.
Within a short time after you create your profile, you will likely start to receive reviews from customers regarding their experience with your organization. Managing these reviews is key to enhancing your online reputation and SEO ranking.
Positive reviews speak for themselves, they will carry weight with potential clients and with the Google ranking algorithm.
However, negative reviews should be handled carefully. Google not only analyzes your reviews but your response to them. Google actually recognizes fast responses to complaints and queries. It recognizes that you are communicating with clients and awards value on the basis of this.
Ensure that you respond to all comments positive and negative. Even a negative review can benefit your business if you handle it correctly.
Research Other Directories
Google My Business is not the only online business directory. After you have established your Google profile, why not consider other options.
This is a powerful way to create awareness of your brand and is an important part of local SEO advice for 2021.
Why not consider creating profiles on Yelp, Facebook, FourSquare, Swarm, Angie’s List, Bing Places, and other locations?
If you want to create genuinely localized SEO, why not canvass people in your area to find out what local town or city-based directories are available?
Keep your Contact Information Up-to-Date
You may be wondering what is local SEO when compared to standard SEO? Local SEO targets your community, city, or county. It is specific to your area. It does not aim for a global audience but aims to advertise your brand to an audience within an area perhaps as small as 50 square miles.
Because of localized SEO, you will likely have potential customers contacting you in the traditional ways. They may call, drop into your branches to see you personally, or contact you by email.
The point is that you need to ensure that your contact information is up to date on your site.
If customers cannot easily contact you, they will go somewhere else. Even worse they may post negative reviews about you online.
Avoid this by ensuring that you are always contactable or that you indicate that you are not reachable at the moment.
Research Local Keywords
One of the great advantages of local SEO is that it allows you to target very distinct communities. You can create content and SEO related to subjects that people are concerned about at the local level, rather than trying to appeal to a global general audience.
When researching keywords, you can use state, city, or even town names. These will yield great local results. You can even drill down further and reference densely packed neighborhoods or particular issues in the area that your services address.
Whatever the case or situation, you know what is happening in your community. Why not research how you can use it in your keywords when doing SEO locally.
Deploy the Local Keywords Effectively
When considering 2021 local SEO best practices, you want to ensure that your research does not go to waste. You have carefully considered what keywords you will use. Now ensure that you use them correctly.
The placement of keywords in articles is just as important now as it has been in previous years.
You will want to place these keywords in prominent places such as the homepage. However, in addition to this, ensure that you are placing them in the following locations on each additional page:
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Headings
- Body
- Footer
- The URL
Of course, you will want to make sure that you do not overuse or stuff keywords, it should always be natural and contextual. However, Google will look for keywords to measure the relevancy of your content.
Create Local SEO by Location
Does your business have branches or outlets in multiple locations, perhaps even across several states? In this case, you will need a more complex SEO strategy. After all, creating a single site with local SEO for a branch in Denver will not draw customer attention to your branches in Miami and New York.
To do this you should create distinct pages for each location that you serve for localized SEO. Instead of having one page that lists your services with references to a list of locations, you should have a page for each location for smart regional SEO.
Each page will contain its own local SEO content but distinct content. If the content is exactly the same Google will flag it as plagiarism.
If you want to establish your business in your local area, these local SEO techniques can help you. They will ensure that when people in your local area look for products and services like yours, they will find them first and come running to your site in 2021.
Remember that organic traffic is the lifeblood of your website, so put in the work so your SEO can grow.
Many people are looking for guidance on the topic of local search engine optimization. Would you like to know more about local SEO strategies? Visit the SEO section of the Best Business Builders Blog right now to start learning and earning additional organic website traffic in 2021.
The post Local SEO: What You Need to Know for 2021 appeared first on Best Business Builders Networking & Marketing.
