Local SEO has changed significantly in just the past few years—these are the most important things to know moving forward.
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your business to show up in local-specific results, which usually appear for users who use geographic indicators in their queries (e.g., city names), or those who give Google their location (e.g., smartphone users). But there are a number of misconceptions about what local SEO is and how it works—so consult this short list of 10 things you need to know about the strategy before moving forward with it:
- It’s separate from national SEO. Google’s local SEO algorithm is actually a creation separate from its national service.
- It changes all the time. Google is always tinkering with the ways it evaluates and presents local businesses. Don’t expect it to stay consistent for long.
- It’s currently a local 3-pack. There are three local businesses that appear above normal organic results—it used to be seven!
- It offers much lower competition. Local SEO is less competitive and has higher opportunity values than national SEO.
- Your NAP is a big deal. Your company’s name, address, and phone number should be present and consistent wherever your company is mentioned online.
- The more reviews you have, the better. Reviews in third-party apps make a huge difference in how authoritative your site is seen.
- Citation building never stops. More citations are always a good thing, and if you want to stay on top, you have to constantly build new citations.
- Content matters. Your ongoing content strategy makes a big difference—just be sure at least some of it is relevant to your area.
- Local link building is mostly just link building. The more links you have pointing to your site, the more authoritative it’s going to be.
- You can’t just stuff local keywords in. You can’t just add “local” keywords and hope that’s enough to gain local visibility. It’s far more complicated than it used to be.
These 10 tenets of local SEO should give you a good overall understanding of the strategy, even if you’re not intimately familiar with the tactics. If you’re interested in learning more, contact us!
