Having an attractive website or offering the best services and products may not really matter if your site is not ranking on Google’s first page. As a business owner, potential customers will research online to learn more about your products or services and to acquire other valuable information. If your site isn’t ranking on Google’s first page, it is more likely to receive less traffic, as most individuals prioritize content found on the first page. They might lose interest if your site is missing from Google’s first page.
How can you improve your site’s ranking on Google? What strategies can you use? In today’s episode, I will share 8 powerful local SEO tips to help boost your site’s position on Google.
Number 1
Perform Keyword Research and Use Appropriate Keywords for Content
This should be your very first step to rank on Google. Research on interests of potential customers. You can also check out your competitors’ sites to get more information on their customers’ interests. Collate the keywords and use throughout your content, including the titles, headings, and in the body.
Number 2
Create a GMB Account and Optimize it
You are probably wondering what a GMB means. GMB is an acronym for Google My Business and a free listing that allows businesses to pop up in Google’s Local Pack. It appears as a box containing maps and contact information and always on Google’s first page.
However, ensure that your personal information such as your name, address, and phone number are accurate and consistent across all platforms. Your page gets a boost when your customers leave reviews, particularly positive ones, so ensure to provide exceptional services and encourage your customers to leave their reviews.
Number 3
Build Local Citations and Optimize for Mobile
Just like I mentioned earlier, having your business listed on local directories with accurate and consistent NAP information across all platforms helps. Additionally, ensure that your website is optimized for mobile as not everyone would grab a laptop to search the net. So many people prefer to use their smartphones or mobile devices to surf the internet.
It’s a good thing Google provides a Mobile-Friendly Test to confirm how friendly your website is to visitors.
Number 4
Create and Publish Relevant Content
This is another tip you need to take note of if you want to have a higher ranking on Google. You can’t be selling fashion items or have a blog containing informative articles on fashion items and have content relating to food posted on your website or blog. That’s totally odd and such content would not have a high rank on Google. The more relevant your content is, the higher it will rank on Google. Also, try to include your location, most especially your town or city in your content for improved local SEO.
Number 5
Practice Link Building
Never underestimate the power of link building. With link building, visitors to other websites can get access to yours and information on your services or products. Get many high-quality links that direct visitors to your website and you would be surprised with the results. The more you make these links, the higher your website will rank on Google.
You can practice link building by many ways such as asking customers or clients to link to your website, listing your website in directories and business listings, and writing guest posts for other websites that are in your industry. You could also reach out to local bloggers and new sites for link building or participate in forums and online communities. Trust me, these tricks work like magic.
Number 6
Use Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool you can use to drive traffic to your website. You find so many potential customers and clients on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube , and many more. Through your profile on social media, so many people can access your website and learn about your product or services which means you are not only attracting more clients and customers to your business, but also, driving traffic to your website.
I will share with you a few tips you can use with social media to gain more traffic. First, optimize your social media profiles by adding relevant keywords and links to your website. This helps Google to understand the relationship between your website and social media profiles.
Another way to drive traffic to your social media pages and indirectly drive traffic to your website is to have the habit of using hashtags and relevant ones to be precise. With hashtags, you gain more visitors to your posts and profile and from there, you get more traffic to your website and even gain more likes and followers on your social media pages. Also, cultivate the habit of sharing your website content on your social media pages and have a solid social media presence.
Number 7
Carry Out On-Page SEO
With accurate on-page SEO, your website can welcome tons of visitors. On-page SEO is a process of optimizing your individual pages for relevant keywords. Practice Latent Semantic Indexing Keyword usage. Such keywords are semantically related to your primary keyword.
Here are a few tips relating to on-page SEO to boost your local SEO →►
Number 8
Pay Attention to your Competitors
If you want your website to rank higher on Google, you need to know what your competitors are doing. Then, you can come up with different strategies better than theirs to be at least step higher than them. If you ask me, you can use competitor research tool such as Semrush to spy on your competitors.
Once you lay your hands on a reliable competitor research tool, perform thorough organic research to acquire information on your competitors top performing pages. Such tool will also help you analyse your competitors’ statistics and help you find their organic search positions. Don’t forget to watch their SERP competition strength regularly.