Local SEO: What Should be done and What not

Local SEO is tough to understand and even tougher to implement. For businesses that sell online, the results can be seen easily and are highly measurable. For local SEO, the evaluation of the results is not as easy. The result is measurable but reflected in the sales at offline brick and mortar shop. Even when the increased sales can be observed, it is tough to point the exact percent increase in sales due to search engine optimization. Top 10 SEO Firms review that local SEO is not about doing what others already are, it all about standing out. Your website may be good, your content may be unique but if people cannot see you, there is no meaning of your efforts.

Today we are not telling you anything new, but a quick checklist about what you should be doing for local SEO; can help you to take the correct path. Without further ado, let’s get started.

1. Do not forget the old methods that have fetched you great success in the past. Keyword stuffing and aggressive link building get you penalized, but there are many more old techniques that benefited you in the past. Delete all the duplicate content from your website, always come up with fresh and unique content to present to your audiences.

2. Have a mobile friendly site, means a website that loads fast and graphics are adjusted according to the size of mobile screen. You can develop your very own app to rank better while having a mobile app itself does not affect ranking, but if even a hundred people download your app, you can beat your competition (who does not have an app) by a fair margin. Google has started giving AMPs  (Accelerated Mobile Pages) a place in the search engine now. It is a next step from being ‘mobile friendly’ to being ‘best friends’ with mobile.
   
   

3. Decrease the load time of your website, not to lose your impatient visitors. This is not the time of ‘Slow and steady wins the race’, now is all about ‘Fast and progressive wins the race’. Fast loading site gets a better place in search results than the slower ones.

4. Repair the broken links or redirect the lost links to newer pages. Open your Analytics account and check old links. It is a fact that a third of 10 years old links are broken. You can check more about fixing broken links here. If the page is not relevant for you now, do not bother re-creating or fixing.

5. Link equity is a major ranking factor, for any temporary changes use 302 redirects and when the change looks good and you are ready to make it permanent, use 301 redirects. Google is very particular about it and so you should be.

6. When you delete any irrelevant thin content page from your website, it may cause a link break. Clean up the links from different pages and if that is complex, use 301 redirects. Make sure that you are not redirecting your visitors from one page to another. 301 redirects to another 301 redirect, which harms the authority of your website.

7. Use title tags, it should contain your targeted keyword to rank in search engine. It is suggested by many SEO specialists to make the URL and title tag absolutely relevant to your content.

8. Like title tags, H1 tags should also contain locally relevant information. Some may think that H1 tags are no more a part of SEO, but they still help bots to index and retrieve results better.

9. Since we are talking about local SEO, the content of the page should also be geography based. It should contain local attractions that may help customers to relate. You can know more about designing the best local landing page here.

10. NoFollow links are sometimes useful too and we are not talking about spams. There are some sites with high authority like directories which carry a lot of data, and then there are some local sites with low authority but a lot to deliver. You should not always run after high authority pages, sometimes local pages with local offerings are better for your business.

11. Provide your customers a place to review about you or you can link review sites on your page. Either way, scan through these reviews time to time and appreciate customers for their precious time and words. Being famous does not mean that review does not matter anymore. Local businesses are all about quality and reviews.
    
    

12. Maintain your Google+ page and register yourself at Google My Business. It is an excellent way to advertise your business without spending a penny.

13. Create the extraordinary content which is ten times better than those already there. Do not settle for a good content, promote user participation and build a good relationship with your audiences. Use modern writing tools like images, gifs, animation, videos, infographic, presentations etc., text alone is not enough now.

14. Make the best use of social media to promote your content; you will get the advantage of developing a unique content only if it reaches to many people. Write a viral content.
    
    

15. Two things should never stop- keyword research and link building. With changing times, search pattern changes and so does the keywords. Your keyword research should never end; keep updating the keyword and creating new contents. Likewise, try to gain inbound links which are like USP for any content. The better the content, more the inbound links it gets.

16. For local businesses, offline marketing is equally important as online marketing. Do not put all your resources in optimizing the search engine; put some efforts in for offline promotion like sponsoring community events, organizing a fair or a contest.
    
    

17. Be realistic about your efforts and measure the results. Becoming successful overnight is not possible; you should know the truth about the market. Do not expect more than what you can achieve. Set short-term goals and achieve them to reach the ultimate destination.

It is in the best of your interest to read SEO services  Company review and hire a professional to help you with local SEO. With limited resources of time, knowledge and energy, these experts can deliver more than you can imagine. You just need to be patient and supportive.