If you’re a small business serving your local community, you don’t need to worry too much about showing up in regular search results. You should focus, instead, on achieving page 1 rankings for the service(s) you offer when people are using local search and Local SEO ranking factors. Your local business doesn’t need just anyone to see your website—you want targeted customers near you to see your website and become a new client or customer.
There’s lots you can do to optimize your online presence for local search. But there is the potential that you are killing your chance of showing up page 1 of Google for those local search results without even knowing it?
Here are the 6 SEO Mistakes That Hurt Your Local SEO Rankings in Google (and how to fix it ASAP).
1. Inconsistent Business Listings. When Google crawls the web to determine search results, it looks at all the instances where your company’s NAP (name, address and phone number) details are located or appear on other websites (primarily business citations). If all these business citations listings don’t match exactly or have consistent NAP on Yelp, Yellow Pages, Angieslist, etc., Google sees your business as less relevant and trustworthy, which pushes you down the list of search results. Getting your Google My Business listing in order will do wonders for your company’s local search ranking.
2. Keyword Diversity. Some companies attempt to “stuff” as many keywords into their websites as possible without caring about the readability or usefulness of the content. This is a tactic that Google penalizes. Avoid it! Focus instead on using keywords to enhance the user experience and content that your customers will find useful. Keywords are key to your local search ranking. First, you have to think about the terms your customers use to look for a business like yours. (Online tools like Google Trends help with this.) Second, if you’re struggling to compete with other companies to rank for general terms like “locksmith,” try targeting a niche market with long-tail keywords like “emergency 24-hour locksmith”
3. Link Blasting. Beware of using link networks, private blog networks and link automation / software, and don’t trust SEO agencies that offer to build hundreds of links for a cheap price. Building backlinks organically through authentic coverage and visibility of your business is a good way to boost your local SEO, but Google penalizes sites who try to trick the system by paying for links or using black hat / spammy link building tactics.
4. Lack of Content. If there’s no content on your website, like an about, services, testimonials / reviews, news, and a blog, there’s not much for visitors to interact with let alone for the search engines to know what your website is all about. On the other hand, helpful content (like press releases or blog posts) encourages engagement, shares and traffic, all of which help improve your local search ranking. This is especially true if you tie your content to local events and news.
5. Lack of Reviews. Online reviews send important signals to search engines. Lots of reviews from customers (and responses from you, the business owner) show that you’re engaged with customers and that the customers had a great experience or are happy your services. This activity makes it easier for other people to find your business when they perform a local search. Plus, 84% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as friends. If you don’t have any positive reviews, start asking your happy customers to go online and leave you one.
6. Mobile-Friendly Website. Google also now ranks your website based on Google’s mobile friendly test, as well as the bounce rate, i.e. how many people leave your site immediately after clicking on it. With the massive increase in mobile searches, it’s vital that your website is easy to navigate on a smartphone and in other words is not only mobile-friendly but user-friendly. That way, mobile searchers will stick around and will most likely contact your business (call or online inquiry) instead of leaving because of bad navigation and a non mobile-friendly website.
In need of a local SEO consultant to help you complete these tasks and fix the problems to help you rank for your industry locally (dentists, law firms, chiropractors, contractors, gyms, salons / spas, restaurants, etc.)
Contact us today to help you dominate the competition and appear on page 1 of Google in your local search results!
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