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Dominating Local SEO Rankings

In Marketing

With more than 97% of all consumers learning about local business through online searches, and 92% of those searchers picking the one of the businesses that pops up on the first page of results, it is easy to see why SEO is so important in today’s day and age.

 

As a small business, you’ll want to find a way to get in the forefront so it can be a part of this powerful statistic. But, where do you start?

 

1. Create and Optimize Your Google My Business Page

If you already have a Google My Business account–good, if you don’t, now is the time to make one. This is the foundation to your local SEO strategy and without a listing, people will struggle to find you through Google.

As a small business, GMB can really help you reach your audience instantly. You don’t want people to be unable to find your business when they’re looking for it. That’s a missed opportunity and potentially lost money.

 

2. Do Some Local Keyword Research

There are always the obvious keywords you want to rank for. For example if you serve pizza, then you would want to rank for “pizza near me” and your brand name. 

You should also look to answer questions related to what people would search. So, if someone is wondering what kind of pizza you serve, you may want to optimize your listings for your brand name and the keyword “menu”.

The key here is to think ahead about what questions your potential customers may have and then optimize for it! 

Once your brand name is optimized for local SEO, then you will want to research keywords with new opportunities. This is how you will continue to penetrate different markets and generate brand new leads/clients.

 

3. On-Page Technical SEO

If you are not familiar with on page SEO, in simplest terms, On-page SEO is the process of helping your website talk with search engines. 

To receive awareness from search engines, your website needs certain elements on it so that Google knows what the site is all about. 

This way, Google is able to categorize how your website should be ranked. When you make it easier for Google to rank your pages and include relevant content, you can guarantee higher rankings.

 

4. Off-Page SEO

So now that Google knows what your website is about, it has to decide how it wants to rank it among the competition because there could be hundreds or even thousands of websites that can fit in the same category. 

Search engines like Google use off-page signals to determine what is called “Domain Authority.” 

Domain Authority is a simple score most marketing experts use to determine how strong your website is. 

For example, in SEMRush, you can check your domain score and comparison with your competitors, just to give you an idea of how much work you may need to do. 

 

Using these tips, you should be able to take your small business to the top of the Google Search Engine. If not, give us a call today.