Local SEO Services

I. What does local search engine optimization (local SEO) mean?

Local search engine optimization includes all measures that serve to better position a website in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages – search results or search results pages) . And this with regard to search queries that relate to a specific area, such as the city or region. So if you are looking for something on-site. Although there are now a large number of search engines, Google as the market leader is of decisive importance (especially in India) when it comes to being found online by customers or interested parties. Therefore, all of the measures presented here refer to improving Google rankings.

II. Why is Search Engine Optimization important to your local business?

Improving local search results is not only important, but depending on what industry you are in, it is existential. Easy to find on the Internet leads to more customer inquiries, more customer inquiries to more orders, more orders to more sales and more sales to greater corporate success.

• Do you own a shop, a law firm, do you work as a doctor in a local or regional practice or do you do handicrafts?

• Do you acquire your customers predominantly within a certain catchment area?

Then it is of fundamental importance for you to end up at the top of the local search queries, because local SEO has high customer potential. Frequently, potential customers use search engines to look for businesses or service providers in their area. And this is becoming more and more popular with users of all ages.

The more you rely on acquiring new customers or clients who visit your store or practice, the more important it is that you make your company fit for local search results. A large part of the search queries on the Internet are now local. This is a great opportunity for new companies and businesses that are a bit away from the busy shopping streets. Because the Google search for a restaurant or doctor in the vicinity is usually followed by a visit on site. So if you optimize your website for Google and Co. so that it is easier to find for your customers, it can be worth real money and increase your sales. You can find detailed tips and practical help for your online marketing here. Local search engine optimization is therefore relevant for all companies that also or only operate locally.

III. The most important ranking factors for local search engine optimization at a glance.

Search engines like Google have the ultimate goal of delivering the best results for the terms entered. The aim is find exactly what they are looking of users. Nobody would use Google, Bing, Yahoo & Co. if they weren’t for the intended purpose. And this is to get the most relevant information on the respective search terms within the shortest possible time.

And not only that: The result should not only match the entered terms, but should be the best possible result. In the best case for Google and the user, the first search result is the perfect match and the user does not have to click on “Back” to check the next results. In order to offer this as well as possible, the search engines use placements.

It has long been clear: the further up a website is placed in the SERPs, the greater the chance that the Internet user will click on this website. For the evaluation of the websites in terms of quality, the pages are measured against certain criteria.

The main factors that affect your ranking in local search , we have compiled here for you in an overview:

• On-page factors: Information from the website itself (including URL, title, keyword, content, loading time, internal linking)
• My Business Factors: Information in or from your Google My Business listing.
• External factors: Mention of the website on other websites (backlinks).
• Link factors: Information about links on the website.
• Evaluation factors: Information about evaluations of the company.
• Social factors: information from social media.
• Behavioral factors: information about usage (including from mobile devices).
• Personalization: The personalized Google search. With the help of these ranking factors, the search engines try to evaluate the mass of content on the Internet so that the best results can be shown in search queries.

It is therefore important to improve these criteria so that you can be found by potential customers in your region or city in the future. How to proceed and which points are most important is explained in the following sections.

Now that we have clarified how important it is to improve the results of local search queries, the next section is aimed at those who have not yet carried out local SEO strategically and therefore cannot be found among the first results in the local search. The next 7 points are among the most important to revise if you want to optimize your local company’s website for search engines . It is best to proceed step by step. In this way you achieve the best result and, in turn, greater reach in the local search.

I. Present yourself and your company from your best side on your website.

Your company website is much more than just a business card: it is the platform on which you present your company, your products and services. As in real life, the first impression counts on the Internet . So pay special attention to the way you introduce yourself to the visitor. Make it as easy and convenient as possible for potential prospects to contact you and / or visit you personally.

Please note the following points in particular:

• Provide detailed information about your business and offer.
• Present case studies: Preferably from start to finish. How did it look before and what was the result? Photos and videos spice it up.
• Answer any questions a potential prospect might have.
• Add visual eye-catchers to texts , such as photos of the team and the workflow.
• Videos are a very good and important addition. These can be short videos in which you introduce yourself and your company, or one of your services, a workflow and answer questions. In the end, everything that gives the site visitor a personal insight into your company and its work processes.

II. Enter direct contact information in a clearly visible place: Keyword NAP.

Please note this in any case: NAP stands for the address data of your company. N = Name A = Address P = Phone You should enter these NAP data identically wherever your company appears on the Internet. In addition to your website, this also includes entries in business directories and web catalogs (e.g. yellow pages or Foursquare for restaurants). If your company only has one location, the footer of your company website is suitable for entering all the necessary contact information. This means that they are accessible at all times and can be found immediately by the visitor.

Complete contact information with directions . For more hidden locations, photos of the path / entrance are a welcome aid. So your customer can find you easily. The way to get there and the opening times are searched very often, which is why this additional information should not be missing. Your introduction is also about making it clear to visitors and Google that you are active locally or regionally. The better this succeeds, the easier it is for you to be found in local search queries, but also to end up at the top of the search results.

III. Provide first-class content on your company website.

As described in the first part, the purpose of search engines is to deliver the best results and content to users. Therefore, value the quality of the information you publish. You create high quality content by:

• Create articles on the most important topics in your workspace.
• Write answers to frequently asked questions in the form of short articles (or write FAQs).
• Detailed articles with multimedia content   – these have particularly great potential to be shared on social media and linked to other sites.

IV. Create and maintain a Google My Business profile.

Creating a Google My Business listing is free and easy. Enter the necessary information as far as possible. The absolute minimum is: – your business address and key words for your company, – the opening times, – a telephone number and – some photos, which you should exchange from time to time. In addition to this basic information, you have the opportunity to publish short articles about your company. Take advantage of this opportunity! Be active and Google will see this as a positive signal. This is hardly time-consuming and most companies don’t do it.
! Important : Have Google confirm your location !

V. Collect customer ratings and reviews.

Good ratings are not only a plus for search engines. Internet users are increasingly relying on the experiences of other customers. Gathering good reviews is a very good way to create a positive image for your company. You should therefore always point out the evaluation options to your customers. Gradually you will generate more and more (and hopefully positive) customer voices. A crucial role is played by the Google Reviews (Google loves course its own review), but for that a Google account is required . But other platforms can also be valuable, because there is usually no separate registration required. Your customers write reviews for you, but don’t forget to respond to all reviews as soon as possible . In this way you send an additional positive signal to your customers and the search engines. Again, this is a little-used but effective method that most companies don’t use.

VI. Enter your local company in yellow pages (local citations).

You are probably familiar with this from earlier times: If you were looking for a company of any kind, you opened the “big yellow book” and in no time at all you had quite a large selection in front of you. It still works in a similar way today. However, online and always up to date. The yellow pages are still one of the most important directories for companies of all kinds. And this across all industries. Therefore do not forgot an entry in the most important directories. In addition to the well-known “Yellow Pages”, these are for example:

• • • Foursquare
    • Business directory India
    • Industry info
    • My city
    • The local
    • Cylex
    • hotfrog
    • Yelp

In addition to general business directories, there are some very important platforms that specialize in certain industries. If your business belongs to one of these industries, an entry on the respective platform should not be missing. If not, find out which directories are most important in your industry and subscribe to them. A tip on this: You will quickly notice that the range of company directories is very large. Not all of these online directories are equally useful for your search engine marketing. That is why it is advisable to make a selection . The easiest way to do this is to look in which directories your largest and most successful competitors are listed. Make a list and follow suit with your competitors. It also makes sense to register in all directories that are on the first 3 results pages of Google for your industry. Because these business directories are obviously doing something right if they manage to get this far on Google. IMPORTANT: Again, remember that you always enter exactly the same data on all portals. So Google doesn’t get confused. You should only vary freely created texts such as the company description!

And another practical tip on this: Create a text document with the most important company data. So you can simply copy the information for each new entry and be sure that exactly the same is everywhere. You should also take the time to check which pages and directories you have been entered with which information so far, and adjust these entries. And one more thing: Make a list of the directories and platforms in which you have registered your company (including the access data). If you keep this list consistently and your company data should change in the future, you will save a lot of time in this way.

VII. Generate referrals to your local business through backlinks.

If other websites refer to your page via a link, this will be taken as a recommendation by search engines. The more recommendations you get from other sites, the better your reputation will be in the eyes of search engines. But be careful:  The quality of the website from which the link comes is very important. So it shouldn’t be about simply getting as many links as possible. Instead, try to generate high quality backlinks as possible. In this case, this is the more sensible option. The relevance of the linked website is also important . A link from a website on the subject of motor oil is of little use to a social law attorney. Some ways to get high quality links:

• Ask partner companies and customers for links.
• Receive local press (e.g. invite press representatives to events, projects or product presentations and do “press-worthy” activities)
• Join expert organizations and get links to your own page in your profile (also strengthens your reputation).
• Guest articles in specialist magazines and high-quality industry portals (position yourself as an expert outside of your website).
• Participate actively and regularly in topic-specific discussions in online forums.

If you have worked through the 7 points mentioned so far, you are already a good bit further in improving your local search engine marketing. You have hereby created a good basis to improve even further. The following section with advanced tips and practical aids for advanced users to do search engine optimization themselves is about how to do this.

I. Build a backlink structure along the lines of your competitors

In the previous section, it was already described how valuable high-quality backlinks (i.e. links from other websites) are for ranking in search results. A very efficient option is to replicate the structure of your competitors’ backlinks . Because your competitors have already done their work. So why reinvent the wheel? A helpful and free tool for this is e.g. B. openlinkprofiler.org. With this you can find out in a nutshell which links your competition has and see whether these could also be of interest to you. This analysis tool in its free version gives sufficient first insights for the beginning.

II. Google My Business: Integrate Google Maps into the website.

You want to tell your visitors to easily identify the directions to your business, then they make the best by Google Maps use and in your web page to embed. Not only is the visitor happy, Google also sees the integration of Google Maps as a positive signal. It underlines your local focus. Additional tip: More and more users are using their mobile phones to access the Internet. This has many advantages, especially on the go. Since the proportion of iPhone owners is not small, it also makes sense if you register your company with Apple Maps . Bing Places for Business is also coming for registration in question.

III. Optimize snippets (meta tags) for more clicks.

When Internet users decide which page to click on, it is not only the ranking of the search results that is important. The text that is displayed in your search result, the so-called snippet, also plays an important role: You should therefore use the opportunity to make the meta tags personal and appealing. Here you can define the meta title and the meta description yourself and get the Internet users to click on your link.

IV. Internal links with informative (both for users and crawlers) anchor texts.

Not only links from other websites are important for your findability in local searches. How you link pages within your company website also has an impact on them. So take a look on your website to see where you can meaningfully link to other sections and pages of your domain. This is how you distribute the “SEO juice” or the SEO value of individual subpages optimally across your entire website. At the same time you help Google to better understand the structure of your website and the relationships between the topics.

V. Enrich your website texts in the right way with the keywords that are important to you.

The texts that you publish on your company website should also contain keywords with which your website should be found. But don’t overdo it at this point. The keyword density should be a maximum of 2%. First and foremost, you should always write your texts for visitors, not search engines.

This article is aimed at those readers who have already implemented a number of measures and now want to improve their local search engine results even further. So who already know something about the topic. We have put together the following 3 tips for you to help you achieve this.

I. Structure and mark up your data: Schema.org

Get the search engine attention you deserve. In Schema.org  it comes to label data on your website so that they can be more easily processed by the search engines. Structured data is understood to be the identification of elements such as images, texts or links in the source code of your website. This identification is possible with many content management systems (CMS, e.g. WordPress). The additional effort of structuring data on your website can be worthwhile for your search engine ranking. This is because you make it particularly easy for search engine crawlers to classify the content of your website. And this in turn means that the Internet user can only be offered relevant search results particularly well. The website visitor is also not aware of the labeling of the data in the source code, as these are not visible.

II. Improve usability on mobile devices

Almost everyone nowadays has a smartphone with mobile internet, which enables access to information at any time and from almost any location. Whether in your own city or on vacation. The search engines make it possible for us to find the best restaurant or the nearest flower shop in no time, even in strange places. Since many potential customers take advantage of this option, you as a company should not miss the opportunity to be found easily using mobile search . So that visiting your website on your mobile phone does not end in frustration, make sure that the content of your company website is also displayed correctly and pleasantly for the customer on mobile phones. In this way you also avoid that visitors immediately “jump” from your website and prefer to look at a different search result. In order to find out where possible weak points of your site are , Google offers a tool with which you can test this and gives tips on what you should improve: Test for optimization for mobile devices.

III. Fast loading times & responsive website

The loading time of your website has an impact on your placement in the Google ranking. Because the faster the content is presented to the customer on your website, the more pleasant it is and the lower the probability that a visitor will leave the website immediately in frustration . For the search engines, a short loading time is another indicator of good quality. And this is rewarded with better rankings. The same applies to the user-friendliness on different end devices: here, emphasis is placed on the fact that the website content is consistently well presented on different devices. This is not a fad. The number of smartphone and tablet sales is increasing, so that internet usage on these devices continues to increase. So remember to optimize your website also with regard to the use by mobile devices.

We have presented a lot of tips and tricks for improving the ranking for local search queries in the sections above. We have put together the following free checklist so that you always have them ready as simple instructions.

All the important to-dos in our guide are clearly summarized here for you. You can work through the most important points step-by-step and do the search engine optimization or SEO yourself.

Start with the SEO basics and then work your way through the individual steps. The checklist is an aid that ensures efficiency. So you don’t get bogged down and always keep track of things.

Even if the list of measures for local SEO seems long and complex at first sight. It’s not that bad. You don’t have to go through all of the above steps at once. Simply plan regular work steps into your daily work and work your way through the individual search engine optimization measures piece by piece.

It is important , that you continuously work on your ranking in local search queries. This is the only way your local company can be perceived as such by the searchers. And the points in the first part of the article are the basis for this.

As you can see, we from Vadodara(search engine optimization and online marketing from Gujarat) have made every effort so that you can advance your local SEO independently.

Since it is not always possible to do this without help, we are happy to provide you with advice and assistance and support you in improving your findability on the Internet. We are happy to carry out the complete local search engine optimization for you or advise you on how to do it
.
Take advantage of our offer for a free initial consultation now!

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Then don’t hesitate and contact us directly
so that we can help you to become better known on the internet.