5 Local SEO Tips To Put Your Business On The Map

By Guest Author | LOCAL SEO | July 19, 2021

Gone are the days of keeping your Mom and Pop shop alive and thriving on word of mouth and the occasional flier placed in the town center. How people find businesses to work with and shop at has changed drastically. 

By ANDY CRESSWELL

More people are using search engines like Google to find what they are looking for, and knowing about Local SEO is the best way to make sure you’re showing up first. Here are 5 Local SEO tips that are sure to make the difference in putting you on the map.

See Where You’re At

Before you can perfect your Local SEO ranking, you need first to know where you stand. An easy first step is going ahead and searching for your type of business in your area. 

You’ll want to be listed in the first couple of results, but you also want to keep an eye out if you’re in the bundle of 3 top businesses in the Google MapPack at the top. Using tools like Whitespark to get a more in-depth analysis of your ranking can help as well.

Confirm An Accurate NAP Listing

An excellent first step to Local SEO is making sure that your NAP listing is accurate. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. 

If these aren’t correct, customers will have a hard time finding you, but search engines aren’t going to be able to locate and list you either. You can use sites like Moz Local to make the listing process a breeze as they have automated most of the process for you.

Fine Tune On-Page SEO

A good structure is always essential when it comes to SEO, and local is no different. On-Page SEO is the backbone doing a lot of heavy lifting towards making sure your business is seen.

Your Title, Description Tags, URLs, and Metadata can all be optimized and designed with purpose so that they do what they’re each designed to do.

Content! Content! Content!

There is no way to get around it. If you are trying to get listed on a local level with SEO, you’re going to need a good offering of content. Good content can provide a lot of material to convince search engines that you are the real deal when it comes to your industry and desired keywords.

Coming up with great content can be difficult on a good day, and when it comes to Local SEO, it is no different. 

Here are some content ideas specifically designed for the local level:

  • City/Regional Specific Landing page
  • Optimized FAQ Page
  • List Guides
  • Blogs

Utilize Social Media 

Not only is Social Media presence weighted heavier in the eyes of search engine giants, but it is also an excellent tool that can be utilized to take a business to the next level.

Having an active presence on social media can have a huge amount of benefits. These benefits can include having much greater control of the online narrative, free mass publicity, and a much cheaper and more effective advertising option (after all, social media is designed for advertisers as much as it is for the consumer).

Keep these 5 Local SEO tips in mind, and you’ll be #1 in the Google Map Pack in no time!

Andy is a programmer with a love of technology, DIY projects and custom PC builds. When he is not programming he love days out with the family.