Here are some statistics that prove our point beyond doubt:
According to Google’s local research findings, 50% of customers who do a local search on the smartphone visit a store within a day. And, 34% of customers who do a local search on their computer or tablet visit a store within a day.
Hence, if you are not getting the desired results on the Google search results, you need to worry a bit because you are missing out on opportunities. And, if you are not ranking high in the local Google search results, then there might be something faulty in your strategy. You need to fix the problem urgently so that you start getting visitors in hordes.
There are many reasons why you are not ranking high in the Google search. But before getting into the reasons, let us first understand a thing or two about local SEO.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO increases your business’s visibility on location-based searches. Local SEO has a geographical element which organic SEO might not necessarily have. You need to build signals of relevance around a particular location – a brick and mortar store. Organic SEO is a practice that more or less revolves around a website.
A Forbes study says that 95% of smartphone users use their device to perform local searches of which 59% visited them and 61% called them.
According to SearchEngineWatch, 70% of mobile users directly call a business from Google search results using their phone.
These figures prove the point without a doubt that local SEO is vital for businesses who want to generate quality leads.
Why you need to strive to put your business on Google’s local 3-pack?
If you work on a smart local SEO strategy, you can also appear on the Google’s local 3-pack. When it comes to search engine results, Google’s 3-pack is considered a coveted position.
Google’s local search results earlier used to show the seven most popular businesses related to your search in the form of a snippet. Referred to as the local 7-pack, it used to have the addresses, phone numbers, and direction links of businesses who found the place in the coveted position. But, for better user experience after the advent of smartphones searches, Google reduced its 7-pack to three results. And, this is now referred to as 3-pack.
A Moz study has found that 44% of the people who perform a local search clicked on a local 3-pack, while only 8% went ahead to load more local results. It is a clear pointer that most people get what they want from the 3-pack listing of Google.
Hence, if you want to improve your traffic and revenue, you need to make sure that you work on your local SEO strategy so that you find a place in the Google 3-pack listing.
But, if you are not finding a place in the top three spots in the local search results, then you need to slightly change your local SEO strategy so that you can beat the competition.
What you need to do to improve local SEO ranking
The local SEO follows most of the same cues as that of your main SEO strategies. However, you have to make some changes to the geolocation part of your SEO strategy to make things work in case of local SEO.
This is what you should do to improve your local SEO ranking:
Listing accuracy is important – Across all local listings, listing accuracy is important as it helps Google understand your location better, and this, in turn, provides quality signals towards Google map geolocation search queries. You should be bang on when it comes to listing accuracy with your name, address, and phone number (also referred to as NAP). While these are central to the listing accuracy and consistency, a few other items like website address, categories, reviews, and photos also provide quality cues to your listings.
If you want to create consistency, you should make sure that you sign up for primary networks and create listings for all of them. Though time-consuming, this can give you the control and flexibility to manage the listings. You can use a listing service to manage these listings. Taking the help of a listing service can help you if you have multiple locations because it submits to all the primary sources, both direct as well as indirect networks.
Get relevant local inbound links – Links from sources like media outlets, local sponsorships, local blogs, etc. can qualify as relevant local inbound links. Make sure that the local SEO links are geographically relevant to the place from where you do your business, topically relevant to the service you offer and are from websites that have a high-value natural link graph. But, ensure that you get links from trusted local media outlets, and try to earn links from authoritative websites and blogs that are relevant to your business/ product/ service.
Make sure that your website is authoritative on all the fronts – You should ensure that your website is authoritative qualitatively as well as quantitatively. On the qualitative front, you should make sure that your website design is appealing, it provides an excellent user experience, your content is valuable, and it is informative. And, on the quantitative front, you should make sure that the inbound links are relevant and authoritative and domain and page are also authoritative.
Make sure that your website design is great and it offers excellent user experience – If you want your visitors to mature, you should make sure that your website design is good and that it offers an excellent user experience. If your website design is not good, it lacks trust which will not impress your visitors, and they will leave even if they visit it. Your website should have an appealing design, which should be based on a sound strategy, it should include on-site SEO, good and informative content, and needs to have social integration.
Make sure that you get local citations and get it linked to your website – You should also ensure that you get local citations which need to link to your website. With local citations, Google can better understand your involvement within your local community which helps it define your business goals.
Ensure that your Google My Business Page is accurate and complete – Local ranking factors take a cue from your Google Business page which improves your SEO rankings and your overall rank on Google Maps. Ensure that your page is complete and that it is associated with an owner verified profile. You can request your clients to give you a review on your Google Business Page and copy it on your website for maximum mileage. You should also add photos of your business, employees, and products and ask your customers to add these photos if possible to your Google Page.
Make sure your website contains locally targeted content – Creating high-quality local content for your website can improve your local SEO rankings and earn local links and citations. You can create local guides for events or neighbourhoods, report on local events, take local photos, and interview local business owners. Your website content should be impactful and exhaustive and remember generic content is not of much use. After creating the local content, you can get in touch with local media outlets and blogs by tagging them on the social media and Twitter as and when you share your content.
If you are a business based out of Dubai, UAE and you want to boost your local SEO ranking, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions.
vStacks Software Solutions is a digital marketing company, and we help businesses in local SEO and organic SEO.
