Local SEO is a form of internet marketing focused on optimizing your local search presence. An example of this would be doctor SEO and Lawyer SEO. Local search engine optimization is quite similar to organic SEO in that it too is an ongoing process impacting the relative ranking of a site or a page within the list of paid results, often called “free” or “organic” results. Organic search traffic is the result of search visitors finding your site through one or more of the many methods available to them, not paying for any advertising or sponsored links on your site. Paid search traffic is the result of paid advertisements such as pay per click placement, sponsored listings in search results, and other forms of paid advertising. So, what exactly is Local SEO?
There are many ways that you can improve the ranking and visibility of your website in the “local” or “small town” area of your target market. One way that you can make this happen is by engaging in tactics that build your own brand recognition within your target market’s local community. Local SEO makes it easy to do just this. If you already have established a presence within the small town community, it can be leveraged by using social media, bookmarking your site, and blog posts to get name recognition. This is just the first step, however. You must do everything you can within your online marketing strategy to attract new potential customers.
The next thing you can do to optimize your Local SEO strategy is to build brand awareness through the local media. This can be done through radio and TV ads, internet blogs, and other forms of traditional advertising. In addition to these traditional venues, there are also several newer technologies that are becoming popular in the field of Local SEO that you can use to optimize your business. These include mobile text messaging, video marketing, and online social networking.
There are several ways that Local SEO can help your business. First, it ensures that your website is always visible to those searching for specific items or services that you offer. This is accomplished by ensuring that your site ranks highly for the key search terms that you are targeting. Local SEO is imperative because it allows you to benefit from the natural rankings of the different search engines. Search engine algorithms aren’t based on how popular your website is, but rather on the content and popularity of the specific links that connect users to your site. This means that content and popularity play just as big of a role in determining where you rank as the number of inbound links that you have on your website.
It’s not only through local searches that you can take advantage of your Local SEO strategy. Your SEO should also include search results from all of the major search engines because the search results tend to pull from the most popular search sites. This means that your online business will benefit from the increased traffic and potential customers that result from your high quality content and popular links.
As a result of Local SEO, many small businesses have seen their ratings on search results increase dramatically. Even larger businesses have noticed this benefit, and that is why many larger companies are beginning to use Local SEO techniques in order to gain an edge over the competition. Because the keywords used for Local SEO are focused on your local area and related businesses, your website will enjoy more credibility with customers who are searching for specific products and services in your local area. These businesses are being recognized for the services that they provide and are becoming a part of the community. As a result of this new found credibility, customers will be more likely to visit their business and even recommend it to others.
In addition to Local SEO, it’s important that you understand how to optimize your meta descriptions and title tags. Meta description and title tags are what search engines read when they are trying to determine where to rank for a given search term. Your meta description should be tailored to the type of business that you have at the moment and then use targeted keywords in the description to optimize your site for the search engines. In order to optimize your meta descriptions, you simply need to write a new one for each page that you want to target, using your selected keywords. Once you’ve created a new meta description for each page, make sure that you include the keyword in your URL reference as well, since most search engines will also pick up the extra keywords that are added in the meta description.
The most important thing to remember about Local SEO techniques is that your content needs to be relevant to the visitors to your site. In order to give visitors the impression that your business is not only relevant to their needs, but also highly professional and known in the area, you need to optimize your website to the best degree possible. Local SEO rankings are a great way to do this, since there are many different factors that are taken into account in the rankings.