5 Effective Local SEO Strategies: For a business that relies on local customers to make profits,  local SEO must be fundamentally sound. If there’s weak or no competition in your area then even the most basic of steps can increase your visibility in the local community and get people in through the doors of your establishment.

Whether you’re a law firm, dental practice or auto repair garage you can benefit from local SEO in the form of more clients and a higher number of sales. In this article, you’ll learn some of the basics when it comes to executing local SEO.

Effective Local SEO Strategies

Google My Business: GMB is technically a directory, but it’s important for local SEO. Having a page in this directory helps your business gain exposure via Google’s local three-pack. Visit google.com/business/ to add your business to this directory and complete the verification process. Ensure that your listing is complete as potential customers will be inspecting it.

Title and meta descriptions: this is a fundamental SEO step that’s simple. The length for title tags is 50-60 characters and for descriptions, it is 160-200. Getting this right is an art, but there are a few rules you can follow. Text must be unique and compelling to ensure high clickthrough rates. Since you’re trying to reach local customers including the name of your city or town is a must. Finally, focus on only one keyword and locate it as close to the beginning as possible.

Local structured data markup: Structured data markup allows you to add to the website code details about your business that the search engine spiders will take a look at. This includes services you offer, collected reviews, products you sell, the location of your business, contact details and so on. Google actually prefers that you utilize structured data markup as it makes their job easier and only 31.3% of websites are making use of it. Therefore, you can get an advantage over competitors that are lagging behind in this area.

Online reviews: as many as 84% of people will trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation from a friend or family member. Furthermore, 70% of people will leave a review when asked. For businesses, reviews are a big part of online marketing and it affects local SEO. Use software such as Reputation Loop and Trust Pilot to actively seek out reviews from your customers.

Online directories and citations: it’s estimated that 80% of all consumers carry out local related searches. Moreover, many businesses to this day haven’t entered their details on a single business-related directory. Taking the time to enter your business details into well-known directories like Yelp, Merchant Circle and Citysearch can prove to be fruitful. Make sure that you avoid abbreviations, misspelling or giving an incorrect number. This will confuse Google and do harm towards your local SEO.

Case study: Sparks Law Firm

A criminal defense firm in downtown Fort Worth hired the services of Wired SEO to execute a local SEO campaign. The challenge was to rank for highly competitive phrases like “criminal defense law firm”, and in particular in areas around the central hub of Fort Worth.

The strategy involved coming up with questions that potential clients commonly asked and creating content that could provide the answers. Additionally, a number of well-optimized profiles and directory listing were filled out.

The result was that Sparks Law Firm ranked at the top in the Fort Worth area if you’re searching for a criminal defense attorney. The website created as part of the local SEO campaign features in local knowledge panels and the Google Maps three pack. In addition to traffic from local SEO, the overall SEO of the website is strong resulting in great levels of traffic bringing in a constant flow of new clients. This case study illustrates the point that local SEO for lawyers is highly worth the effort.

Conclusion

As you can see the results of local SEO can literally turn a startup business into one of the top contenders in a given area. The steps required to achieve rankings have been proven to work for countless businesses, it’s just a matter of implementing them correctly.

A marketing agency has the experience to get the job done correctly, and you’ll be able to concentrate on other parts of the business. With the possibility of seeing huge results, it’s a proactive to place your trust in local SEO.