With these tried-and-true on-page local SEO tactics, you can improve your ranks in organic local SERPs and the Map Pack.
Most people think about their Google Business Profile, local citations, and backlinks when they think of local SEO.
These are quite useful when trying to capture “near me” results.
On-page SEO, on the other hand, is a big part of the signals that search engines use to impact your local rankings.
On-page SEO can help you rank higher in both organic and MapPack results.
Here are five on-page SEO ideas to help you improve your local search visibility.
1. Make Sure Your NAP Is Consistent
Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) is an abbreviation for Name, Address, and Phone Number.
These three pieces of information have the potential of making or ruin your local SEO strategy.
Make sure that these details are prominently displayed on your website. Since your NAP will display on every page, the footer is a fantastic spot to put it.
Linking it to your Google Map is even better.
Your NAP can also be included in the body of service area pages and on your contact page.
Consistency matters. It’s critical that this critical business information be similar wherever potential customers look for you online – and anywhere Google might compare it to ensure its accuracy.
Crawlers and bots will be able to connect the dots between your Google Business Profile, website, and other local citations on the web as a result of this.
Don’t get caught up in little details like abbreviations rather than spelling out street names. It doesn’t matter which one you select as long as you stick to it.
2. Spruce Up Your On-page Content
Your website’s content gives you the chance to show both your consumers and search engines that you’re the expert in your field for the service you offer.
In addition to the services, you provide in this area, including specific details such as landmarks and street names. Make it clear why the customer needs your services in that particular area.
The better the user experience for your customer, the more you sound like you belong there.
Consider your customer’s experience.
What terms would you use if you were looking for your service near you?
Would you add your city, metro, or even your neighborhood?
The answers to these questions will help determine the sort of material you require and the keywords that should be included in it.
While in Chicago, these keywords will help you target both combination searches [dentist in Chicago] and GPS-based searches [dentist].
The “near me” searches are useful in this case.
To deliver these search results, Google matches the user’s location (through IP or geolocation) with sites that serve the user’s local area.
These keywords can be optimized on general service pages or on specific pages created for the service and the intended service area.
Let’s say you’re a dentist who provides teeth whitening services in the Chicago and Southern Wisconsin areas.
You may have separate pages for teeth whitening in Chicago, Evanston, Milwaukee, and Racine in addition to your main teeth whitening website.
Each of those pages has to be hyper-targeted and optimized for that particular location.
Don’t be shy; many of those location-based searches could end up on this page.
Explain why your buyer should trust you enough to go to the next page or click on your CTA.
Don’t forget to do your research.
Customers who live in an area will know the common jargon and things that are native to the area.
They won’t trust you if you walk in with half-baked information. They won’t believe you’re genuine and actually care about their area.
3. Optimize Header Tags
When it comes to SEO, we all know how important header tags are.
If you haven’t already done so, this resource on header tag best practices is a great place to begin.
By creating local-based service pages, you have just added increased real estate to start creating highly targeted header tags such as local-based keywords + your services.
Great header tags provide both users and crawlers with a basic knowledge of the page’s overall structure and what to expect as they read through the content.
Be careful not to just stuff key phrases into the header tags as this will be unnatural to both your visitors and the crawlers.
Keep it relevant.
4. Internal Linking
Use internal linking carefully throughout your site to inform both your clients and search engines that you are available to offer customers in that area.
You may use city names as an anchor link to the service area pages when you add city names to your on-page content.
You may also get a little creative and add widgets, lists, and blocks on top-level sites that hold multiple links to your service areas for SEO benefits.
This may be in the form of a “metro regions we service” block with the metro’s name, an image of the location, and a short outline.
After that, the text would link to the location page.
5. Local Business Schema
Search engines can benefit from schema markup because it helps them understand your site better.
Addresses, ratings, hours of operation, social media accounts, service area geo-shapes, and departments are all included in the local business schema type, even if they aren’t necessarily found in your on-page content.
Without cramming it into a single page, this informs bots and crawlers about who you are, what you do, where you do it, and why people trust you.
This also gives you more control over the information you put out there, instead of relying on search engines to find diverse resources all over the internet.
How Will I Know If This Is Working?
Once you’ve got everything set up and ready to go, you’ll want to see if your local SEO strategy is benefiting from it.
There are several tools available; however, we will focus on a few.
Local Search Results Tools
Unless you can look at the SERPs in a virtual environment that mimics the local region you’re targeting, there’s nothing like looking at them directly.
Local search result solutions like Local Falcon, Merkle, and BrightLocal may help you do just that.
You can even see Google Maps with these tools, choose between desktop and mobile options, and drill down to the zip code level.
Geo-Grid Local Ranking Tools
Geo-grid local ranking tools like Local Falcon and Local Viking are a bit more visual and monitor the map results within a selected area.
These tools are useful because you can set up periodic scans to obtain a snapshot of your findings and keep track of how well your site has done locally on maps over time.
Because these scans are keyword-based, they’re also a great method to keep track of the changes to your content and title tags.
Google Business Profile Analytics
There’s nothing quite like getting knowledge straight from the source.
If your optimizations are successful, you should see an increase in your Google Business Profile metrics, such as click-throughs to your site, phone calls, and directions queries.
As your visibility increases, traffic should automatically increase as well.
Keep it basic and relevant to your business when optimising for on-page local SEO.
Once customers see that you’re providing what they want at the location they want, the rest works out in the end.
It is your duty to make sure that you are giving them the correct information.
Even with the quickly changes in local SEO, a great on-page strategy is a win-win for you and your customers.
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