Local SEO (local Search Engine Optimization) is all about optimizing your online presence so you appear when local customers do a search related to your industry. Local SEO is extremely important for small to mid-size businesses because:
People in Tampa looking for a local dry cleaner does not want to locate a company in San Francisco. Rather, they would like to find a local company close to where they live. This is where local search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. Tampa businesses should optimize their websites so they show up frequently when someone searches for what they need. They can do this by using key phrases relevant to the industry and focusing on the keywords that get the highest conversions.
There are numerous reasons why a small or mid-sized business should consider optimizing their website. First off, local SEO can bring in new customers. Tampa residents and visitors are searching the internet more often than ever before. With this in mind, a new business may find it beneficial to take advantage of new customer traffic by optimizing their website. Once the website has been optimized, the business has the power to attract new customers through search engine results.
Another reason to consider local SEO is because of low organic results rankings. When someone does a search for something, many times they don’t look at the first page of search results. The website with the top spot gets the most traffic. However, this doesn’t mean the other websites on the page didn’t work hard to gain that spot. In order to make a website stand out from the rest of the pages, local search rankings are important.
Having the most accurate contact information on your website is also imperative to getting noticed. By utilizing on-site optimization and local services, you will gain a higher ranking. By getting noticed, the potential customers will turn to the internet to learn more about your services. When customers find your website, chances are they will also want to learn more about your company, so providing accurate contact information on your website will help.
Local SEO can also help with your ability to get found when people search for your specific product or service. More people search for products and services within a certain area than they do for them across the country. Therefore, if you are located in Tampa, chances are your potential customers searched for Tampa businesses first. By utilizing traditional advertising methods, it is easy to see why many businesses are turning to local search to increase the exposure of their business.
On the flip side, once your website has been optimized for a certain area, it’s important to make sure all of the backlinks to your website are properly labeled. Search engines will label links on the SERPs based on the domain name of the website. If the domain name is not directly related to the content on your website, the search engine will not label it. This can have a significant impact on the rankings of your site. It’s important to make sure that the anchor text that you use on your business listings page is labeled so that the search engines will recognize that the hyperlink refers to the correct location on your website.
Although local SEO services are beneficial to the growth of a local business, they must be coordinated with other optimization methods as well. For example, the use of keywords must be used appropriately throughout your website content strategy. Your content strategy should include the use of meta tags, keywords in the title, description, H-tags, image titles, descriptions, headings, and keywords throughout the rest of the content on your website. The use of anchor text within your website content strategy is also extremely important. You want to be sure that your keywords and other optimization techniques are properly sprinkled throughout the text to get the most benefit from search engine optimization.