How to improve your local SEO right now?

Local SEO is an important digital marketing strategy for small businesses that operate on a regional basis. Whilst national SEO is focused on ranking in searches across the country, local SEO lays emphasis on appearing in SERPs in a particular location. This strategy depends on marketing your business, services and products to local leads and consumers.

Do you want to know how can you improve your local SEO? As a local SEO company in London, we, at NHANCE Digital, have briefly explained the different ways that your local SEO can be improved. Take a look.

Open a Google My Business Account

The most effective way to rank in local on Google Maps is to optimise your business profile or Google listing. This will also help you in gaining visibility in local SERPs. For this, you need to create a GMB or Google My Business account. From your account’s dashboard, you can edit your profile and enter all the relevant information that you need to attract your customers.

To have an optimised GMB account, make sure that you:

• Create and verify the ownership of your GMB account
• Provide up-to-date and accurate information
• Include your hours of operation, logo, product or services that you’re offering, acceptable payment methods and plenty of pictures
• Encourage your customers to leave an online review for your business and make sure to sincerely respond to the reviews
• Publish posts announcing events, new products or special offers to your business profile

Get reviews from your customers

Customers writing positive reviews of your business is not only helpful in optimising your GMB profile, but it also encourages more customers to trust your business and buy your products or services.

To encourage your customers to leave reviews, you can use the following tips:

• After you have closed a sale, ask for a review in person
• You can send a post-purchase text or email to your customer to leave a review
• Respond to the existing reviews by thanking the reviewers and also addressing their complaints

Craft content based on local stories, news and events

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown have somewhat changed the content consumption of the audience. People are not merely looking for content that advertises specific products or services. But, they are looking for brands that empathise with what is happening around. They also want to associate themselves with brands that care about their customers. This is why your content has to be a mix and match of local stories and brand promotion.

You can write about the causes that your business supports, create blog stories around the most sensational local events or activities, or you can create a location-specific webpage to serve various parts of a region.

Optimise your website for mobile devices

The shift to mobile is happening faster than expected. Also, it has been noticed that approximately 75% of mobile searches that exhibit local intent actually produce offline or in-store visits within 24-hours, which makes it imperative for online businesses to have a website that is optimised for mobile users. To achieve this, here are some tips:

• Make sure that your website loads quickly. It should not take more than 3 seconds.
• You can use bigger fonts so that it is easier to read while on the go
• Make sure to use intuitive UI

If you can have a responsive website, it will solve all your problems. Responsive websites quickly adapt themselves to any screen size. This means that your website can be opened on a desktop or any mobile device.

Some additional tips to help with your local SEO efforts are given below:

• Ensure that your NAP is always accurate and updated. This stands for the name, address and phone number of your business.
• Invest time and effort in local keyword research
• Leverage online business directories and get your local business listed on them. This will boost your local SEO and help you gain more online visibility
• Pay attention to getting high-quality backlinks, which will make you appear credible in the eyes of Google and your local customers
• Create a dedicated webpage for each of your products or services. You can also create region-specific webpages so that you can rank according to your location.

If you need professional help, NHANCE Digital’s local SEO services in Liverpool are for you. Connect with us and let our professionals tell you what to do next.