Categories
Digital Marketing SEO

How to Use Local SEO to Grow Your Business

One of the biggest online stories of 2012 was the revelation that Google’s search engine algorithm is an online marketing powerhouse. With that, using online directories for SEO makes your business work and succeed whatever market you are in.

SEO has a vital role to play in any business. SEO is a process used to drive traffic to your website by ensuring it ranks as high as possible on the search engines’ result pages.

The SEO process

The SEO process focuses on gaining targeted traffic from specific keywords, which may be words or phrases that people type into the search engine to find information about products or services like yours. SEO can even help you gain out-of-market customers and establish yourself as a local SEO professional.

SEO rankings are determined by the amount of authority a site has online through backlinks and other factors. But, more importantly, SEO provides a stream of new customers every day with little maintenance.

Therefore, it’s always best practice for businesses who want more return on their marketing budget dollars to focus on SEO as part of their marketing strategy.

The months-long process is pretty easy to learn and consists of the following six steps:

Step 1: Identify a keyword or a set of keywords

Your keywords should represent the products, services, brands, or businesses you want to appear for in search engine results pages. For instance, if your company provides dance lessons for children through at-home tutors, one good keyword might be “dance instructor jobs.”

Loosely defined keywords that may not have strong buyer intent but still drive traffic are called long-tail keywords. In this example, one long-tail keyword would be “dance classes near me.”

Step 2: Use those keywords in your content

Most people who search websites are looking for relevant information to help them make a buying decision.

For instance, if someone searched for dance instructor jobs on Google, the SEO process will ensure that your business is among those showing up on search engine results pages. In addition, you can find out which keywords people are using by either running an AdWord campaign or doing research with tools likeGoogle Analytics.

Step 3: Make sure your site is in line with search engine requirements

You can do this by ensuring that it includes a clear About Us section, contact information, and a working hours display. Google wants to be able to find out more about your business by looking at its website.

So please make sure you tell the company what it needs to know by including your contact information on your site.

Step 4: Link to other relevant sites

Links are powerful because they not only share another website’s authority but also show Google that the particular site is what you’re all about. You can find out more about do-follow and no-follow links here.

Step 5: Get ranked on local listings.

Google+ Local is a service provided by Google to help people find your business. The service provides up-to-date information about the location of your business.

In addition, it offers advanced search features that allow customers to perform services within a specified distance, views user reviews, and read web content from neighbouring businesses.

Step 6: Track progress and repeat

The process is not difficult to understand and implement. You can use local search engine optimization to increase business or hire a professional SEO agency like Purple Cow Digital Marketing to help you out.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it! Using local search engine optimization (SEO) can help you increase business by attracting the right customers. It takes time and effort, but SEO can be very rewarding for your business if done correctly.