If you own a local business, local SEO can be a great way to gain new customers. Is it going to be the #1 source of your foot traffic? Most likely not. But local SEO can provide a steady stream of new customers and should be a big part of your customer acquisition strategy.
This article is not meant to be an introduction to basic SEO techniques to build a foundation. If you are just starting to learn SEO, check out this article I wrote to give you a better foundation. Instead, this article is meant to give the seasoned local business owner some good ideas or the local agency/SEO industry folk some good ideas when it comes to local SEO.
Enjoy!
Local Links
This first technique, which is the largest, is to focus on local links. These links can help greatly because they can provide local referral traffic and domain authority boosting, and seem more natural/helpful instead of going after national links just for the sake of achieving links.
Links are an integral part of any SEO campaign, local or national. Links from quality websites are the lifeline of any campaigns. You have to have them in order to rank high in the SERPs. Since local companies are generally not very good at SEO, they are also not very good at link acquisition, which can give you a huge advantage. However, not all links are created equal. Getting local links will help out your local business more than others.
You can acquire local links from various different sources. The low-hanging fruit? Publications. Here in Atlanta, our largest publication is the AJC.com. If we are an HVAC company based here in Atlanta, wouldn’t it make sense to try to get links from them? They have an opinion column, so we could find their editor, pitch them a piece of compelling content, and try to get it featured. We could pitch them “Tips for a Cool Summer” and base it around informing homeowners how to keep their house cool during the summer.
Obviously, this is just one example, but the main premise is to find local publications and pitch them content, get it featured, and get links back to your site from that content. To find local publications, you can search [city name] + [publication|news|magazine].
Another way is to build links from editorial articles from other businesses. Using the same strategy as above, you can find local businesses like yours, write amazing content, then get it featured on their blog. This way, you get local businesses linking to you using great content.
Leverage Offline Marketing
Many businesses use a lot of offline marketing from sponsorships to the associations that they are in. When you use these offline marketing channels, you want to make sure that you leverage them as much as you can for your benefit.
For sponsorships and associations that you are a part of, make sure they link to you from their website indefinitely—meaning, they will link to you and not take it down. This gives you SEO value and, one would hope, referral traffic as well. It also helps build your brand and build your domain authority to acquire local search engine rankings.
Local Keyword Research
Everyone does keyword research but not many do it well. Using your Google AdWords keyword planner tool, you can select local cities to see what people are searching for, which could be very different from what people are searching for on the national level. There have many times we have done keyword research on the national level to find that it was very different from the keyword phrases used on the local level.
You can also see if there are specific search questions specific to your geographical location by using the keyword [Your City] with the keyword phrases for which you are trying to rank.
Landing Pages for Suburbs
Sometimes, searchers can search for the suburbs or the surrounding cities that you could service. Creating landing pages outside of your main city is a great way to rank for them. The key is to create landing pages of at least 500 unique words for each page and focus on the [suburb] + [keyword phrase] variants. Then you want to link to them from your navigation bar (call it “locations” or something on the navigation bar) so Google passes authority to it from your link profile and it can rank for those phrases.
I would not suggest doing this for suburbs or for other common names for cities, as Google is really good at knowing what searchers mean when they search.
FAQs for Your Blog Content
Another great technique is using your FAQs to create blog content. You know your customers best and, sometimes, keyword research is not as accurate as knowing what your customer is asking. Create a list of the different frequently asked questions and create blog content for each question. Then, if all goes well, each blog will rank for these questions when someone searches locally, they will find your content and connect with your brand, and, ultimately, become a customer.
Industry Specific Local Citations
One trick that we use in the local SEO industry is using industry specific citations. There are tons of websites that use many lists of different citations. Using these lists, you can find industry-specific citations and enter your company. This helps get out of the YEXT & Yellow pages automated directories that everyone does. An example would be getting a link from a restaurant directory if you are a local restaurant.
Conclusion
Local SEO isn’t necessarily hard but, too many times, we try to do the same thing as our competitors. These strategies are meant to be unique and separate you from your competitors. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments, and I will reply within a week.