Improve Local SEO Visibility with These 6 Tactics

Like many other components of a digital marketing strategy, SEO is ever-evolving. Over the last several years, we’ve seen many techniques and tools to help business owners increase visibility in the search world. However, a growing concern for many businesses is search visibility on a local scale. Where should owners be focusing their efforts? We found six important aspects to consider that will increase local visibility in 2015.

1. Mind the NAP

Improving SEO doesn’t mean having consistent branding or user engagement. What will ruin a local SEO visibility campaign is an inconsistent NAP – Name, Address, & Phone Number. That’s because Google uses this to categorize your business. Inconsistency with this information causes a disruption that can stifle rankings.

2. Focus on Visibility, Not Rankings

A lot of us are still focused rankings, but being the top link on search results page doesn’t mean that you’ll get a majority of the traffic. If you’re local listing is at the top but your website is below the fold, you might not do as well as your competitor who is the fourth of fifth link down but has photos, review extensions in their PPC ads, and social integrations. That competitor has far more visibility and trust and probably converts more.

3. Google Places for Business

In order to be successful on Google, you’ll have to obey the Google and not ignore Google’s suggested channels of ranking your business. While reviews and citations are important, reviews hold much more weight. However, reviews are difficult to get. Use Google and its products to your advantage by reaching out to your gmail list and your YouTube followers click through you your page and make a quick review while they’re signed in. Those couple of minutes will make a big difference.

4. Citations

Even though citations may seem outdated, they’re still important to let Google know you’re legitimate. A business with 200 citations lets Google know you’re based in one main location and builds trust letting Google know that you actually exist. And that is, in turn, reflected in search engine results pages.

5. It’s the Small Details

Standard local SEO should include custom meta descriptions. These are snippets of text that summarize and article or web page. Schema markup is another piece that can help Google display your information better in a search results page. Take care of these small details and you’ll see a major difference in your visibility and your local search traffic

6. Rank Other Online Properties

An online presence is made up of several components and properties. It’s not just your website, review sites, and citations but rather your videos and images as well. When a user searches for Google images for example, you want to be at the top of those results. What about your social properties? Social media sites are another way to share your business information and build visibility in search results. Those sites rank on the first page.

Your Google properties and website will be a main focus in your local search. However, don’t forget other parts that come together to increase your visibility, and eventually your traffic and conversions.