local seo

Local SEO for beginners

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You own a local business and want to get listed on Google with your catchment area. Let’s discover, together, local SEO solutions on Google. Or, if you prefer, how to stand out among the first results for his city.

Contextualized natural referencing

Local results on queries without a geographical indication

When we talk about local referencing, you may be thinking of the positioning of your site on expressions built on the activity + geographic sector model, such as ”  restaurant in New York“, ”  cleaning lady Florida “, “builder of individual villas in the Virginia ”.

But these expressions are not the only ones that can make you appear locally. Google engineers, who have been working to improve the ranking algorithm since its launch, have indeed found that some queries are more relevant when they are associated with local results, even if they are not associated with a name. city.

For example, a user who types “cleaning lady”  normally searches for a service provider near his home: if he lives in Florida, he will not want to have resulted from housekeepers in New York. Likewise, a user who types “Italian restaurant”  wants restaurants near where he is.  This geographic contextualization of the results in Google’s “Search” engine was notably encouraged by the deployment in 2012 of an update that went rather unnoticed, Google Venice. Other updates, such as Google Hummingbird in 2013 or Google Pigeon in 2014, have further enhanced the personalization of results according to the real expectations of Internet users.

Local SEO for beginners
Local SEO for beginners

Stand out naturally on local expressions

You can therefore stand out naturally thanks to your website on local expressions, as long as you provide as much information as possible to Google to associate your page (or your entire site) with a well-defined geographical area.

By the use of an adapted semantics

The semantic content of your pages provides valuable clues to Google. If you have a physical point of sale, let Google know with keywords such as shop or store,  the presence of your postal address, your opening hours, practical information to access your address (parking, metro stations, etc…), adding your phone number, etc… Add the name of the city in your TITLE, your META DESCRIPTION, and within the content. Google must know that your store, your restaurant is located in such and such a city, that your craft activity or your service provision is available in such and such a city.

Do not stuff your pages with keywords either: do not repeat the name of the city too many times, do not quote a multitude of cities around to hope to position themselves on each of them …  Each page must refer to you on a very distinct geographical area. Look at sites like amazon.com or ebay.com: they offer a separate page for each business + city association and stand out well on a local search, whether the city is specified or not in the expression.

By building locally anchored netlinking

You can also establish your local visibility by anchoring your net linking in a legitimate ecosystem on the local level. Being registered, with a link to your site, on directories, and city guides such as Yelp, TripAdvisor can help to establish your local legitimacy. You can also get closer to local players such as other traders, establishments, or bloggers in your city, register on the websites of chambers of commerce and industry, town halls, tourist offices, etc.

Also consider creating a Google My Business listing and associating it with your site: you will demonstrate your local character a little more.

Local SEO through universal search

Universal search allows the display on the first page of other types of results than natural results: images, videos, news, Shopping links… but also – and above all – local files carried by Google My Business!

If you have a local establishment or operate in a well-defined geographical area, you can create a Google My Business page and stand out on the first page by universal search. But the competition is tough and some good practices are needed to get ahead of the competition.

Create a semantic field favorable to Local SEO

First, you need to identify the expression you want to work on. It must summarize your activity, be typed in by the Internet user, and trigger the display of Google My Business listings on the first page of Google, in your city or in another city (for example Paris): you may not see local listings for a request because the offer does not yet exist in your city. For example, “beauty salon”  if you want to reference activity in aesthetics.

Local SEO for beginners
Local SEO for beginners

You don’t have to use the expression in your title – your brand makes a great title. You can possibly use all or part of your expression in your title if you wish: for example, “Beauty Salon”  You will be particularly attentive to the description of your file. Sufficiently long, it incorporates keywords associated with your activity.  Words such as hair removal, body care, facials, UV sessions, beauty products, or creams enrich your description and legitimize you on the expression “beauty salon”.

You must choose the category via an input field in auto-completion. Take the time to type several words to find the activity that most closely matches your sector of activity: it would be a shame not to choose the most suitable category!

Information and opinions!

The relevance of your file also depends on the exhaustiveness of the data transmitted. Fill in all the possible fields, such as opening hours, the presence of private parking, means of payment, etc. A 100% completed form is indeed more interesting for the user, and therefore more relevant for Google.

Reviews also play a role, Ask your customers to recommend you by leaving a rating and review on your Google My Business listing.

A listing that lives and gets new reviews is a relevant listing, just like a site that lives and gets new links.

Focus on local SEO

We have just seen some practical elements to better stand out locally. We now invite you to put them into practice, by optimizing the pages of your site, your net linking, and by creating or resuming your Google My Business listing. To create your listing, it’s very simple: go to  https://business.google.com

You can ask your local SEO questions in the comments and I will answer them.

How do you perform local SEO?

In order to answer this, we need to understand some key things related to local SEO like: What is local SEO?
What are the skills required to become a local SEO expert? and finally what are the steps involved in becoming a local SEO expert.
Simply put: Local SEO is an online marketing technique that helps companies reach their customers by promoting their business locally.
Skills required for becoming a local SEO expert are a good command of the language in which you want to write, strong grammatical skills, and understanding the basics of Search engine optimization.
Finally coming onto the final part i.e Steps involved in becoming a local SEO expert.
There are many steps involved in becoming a local search engine optimizer including but not limited to: learning how search engines work, creating content that will appeal to your target audience, figuring out keywords that will help with getting more traffic on your website, and then finally building up an email list of customers who would be interested in receiving updates about new products or services offered by your company.

Why You Should Do local SEO?

Local SEO is an effective way to improve your website’s ranking on search engines. The most important thing you need to do in order to achieve a good ranking is build quality content that the customers are looking for.
A local SEO strategy includes:
• Putting links on relevant websites that have high authority and relevance.
• Building links with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
• Creating blog posts that contain local information.
• Writing email campaigns with personalized messages targeted at specific locations.

What is the difference between SEO and local SEO?

The difference between SEO and local SEO is that:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of improving a website’s organic ranking in search engines.
Local SEO stands for Local Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of optimizing websites to rank well in search engines on topics related to a business’ location.

How do I rank locally on Google?

There are a few ways to rank locally on Google, one of which is to place your business in the local directory. Another way is to set up your business’s website with keywords that are relevant to the location.
To get the most out of these options, you need to first determine what keywords will be searched for when someone types in “search engine optimization” or “local SEO.” You can do this by conducting keyword research and using tools like SEMrush or Google Trends.

What is the difference between organic and local SEO?

Organic and local SEO are two different types of SEO. Organic is a type of SEO that relies on the traffic coming from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Local SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that focuses on the geographic location of the company’s website.
The difference between organic and local SEO is mainly in their methods. For example, organic SEO uses natural search engine algorithms while local SEO uses paid strategies such as PPC advertising or social media marketing to increase web visibility for their websites.

How many types of SEO are there?

There are many types of SEO that companies use. They can be categorized into organic and paid.
Organic SEO is a type of search engine optimization in which the websites rank higher without any paid advertising on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines. Organic SEO is considered the best form of SEO because it is not restricted by any particular methods like keyword stuffing or black hat techniques and doesn’t require you to spend money to get your website ranked higher.
Paid Search Engine Optimization (PPC) – This type of search engine optimization uses digital marketing techniques such as pay-per-click ads, banner ads, and sponsored listings on search engines to promote a business’s products or services online advertising channels such as Google AdWords.

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