Local SEO is About Bringing Customers Through Your Doors

‘Localizing’ your website means including your city, county or region name naturally throughout your site. For businesses with several locations, this could involve creating separate pages for individual locations and other local content strategies, like getting involved with local/community events and featuring articles/information about them on the site.

Ensure your site features on citation sites and online business directories. Not only will this help customers find your business, but featuring your company’s name, address and phone number on citation sites and extra information on business directories will help improve your search rankings.

Claiming your Google My Business (GMB) page is a a key step towards helping your business display on important Google services, such as Local Search, Maps and Google+ pages. GMB (and its Microsoft equivalent, Bing Places for Business) should always be the first online directory you take ownership of.

Genuine, honest reviews are critical both for showcasing the quality of your service and for sending signals to search engines that your site and service are trusted and useful. The amount of reviews you receive, the overall quality of the reviews and the authority of the review sites themselves are all important factors for local search rankings.

Naturally obtained backlinks from well-regarded websites helps search engines recognise your site as a trusted source of information. Links from local newspapers, bloggers and business associations, as well as citations, can all help improve your search visibility.