If you are a business having a good number of competitors in your locality, you might have a hard time appearing in local searches. If this continues to happen, you will lose a large number of potential local customers.
Of course, all businesses want to be in Google’s good books, i.e., top search results. It might sound hard, but it is not that impossible as you may think. If you d not see yourself in relevant searches in your area, you should work on the following things that are basically factors that help businesses to improve their local SEO ranking. Whether you go for an average or a top SEO company in Florida, they will always emphasize on improving your local SEO to enhance your business reach.
Here is how to improve your local SEO ranking on Google
Set Up A Google My Business Profile
When you attempt to take advantage of search engine optimization for your business’s benefit, the major goal is likely to have your website rank in Google’s search results. It is done by using certain keyword and content strategies.
If you search for ‘bakers near me,’ a big map will appear on top of your screen along with information about some other bakers’ shops in Google’s main search results. The information will include name, contact number, address, website, reviews, etc.
Little do the people know that this information is not coming from a business’s website but from their Google My Business profile. So that tells how important it is t have a Google My Business profile set up. If you have not done it already, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers and web traffic.
Avoid Duplicate Page Listings
It is possible that you forget whether or not you have created Google My Business profile. It happens with a lot of people. They either don’t remember setting up their business profile or someone from their company has already done it, and that leads to duplicate page listing. It is what Google hates the most.
Being one of the best search engines, Google wants to provide users with the correct searches. It does not want to waste its resources by giving the same information twice.
The most important thing to remember is if you create duplicate listings, you are going against Google’s terms of services, and it can have a bad impact on your business when it comes to ranking.
So is there a way to find whether or not our business has duplicate page listings? Of course, there is!
You can use Moz Local Tool. There, you can input your business identity, address and it will inform you if there are ant duplicate page listings of your business. If in case, you find a duplicate page listing, you can always contact Google, asking it to remove them so it won’t affect your rankings.
Adding Relevant Categories
Creating your Google My Business profile with categories relevant to your business is a difficult task. Categories are just like sections of the Yello pages. The more you cover, the more likely you will end up in top search results.
Choosing more relevant categories help you to increase your chance of having a better ranking in Google search results. But what is more important is that you only choose the categories that your business is actually relevant to. You do not want to misguide Google and your customers just for having better ranks.
Contact Information In Text Format
Open up the contact page on your website and see whether or not your contact details are correct. Your business’s name, number, address, and email must be in text format and not in image form. Google wants information that is easy to read and verify, so if you add an image instead of text, you might be risking your chance to get noticed by Google.
Google checks the information on your website and compares it to the information on your Google My Business Profile, too see if it is correct. If the information does not match, Google will label it as incorrect and it can hurt your rankings.
Consistent NAP Information
As we discussed above that your business’s contact information must be correct and same on both your website and Google My Business profile. But that is not going to be enough.
Google also verify this information from other websites where your business information is listed. These websites are mainly search directories that publicly display businesses.
Your NAP, name, address, and phone number, must be the same across all websites that list your business so that Google will know nothing is wrong.
Missing Citations
Citation is basically your NAP (business name, address, and phone number) listed on any other website. While it is necessary to keep your business information the same across all online platforms, it is also essential to list your websites in business directories that can help you to make your mark online. You can use the help of business directories to get more citations that can lead to better ranking.
Reviews
This can be the most difficult part, As you know how important it is for a business to have as many customer reviews as possible. But the truth is, it is hard to get them more often. The only thing you can do it to continue asking your customers in different ways to review your business. Reviews help you to build the credibility of your business, and Google likes it too.
Getting more positive reviews might be hard and time-taking, but it is worth the effort. You will have a strong competitive place among your competitors.
High-Quality Content
Your Google My Business profile’s ranking in search results is actually dependent upon how good is your website. Users are looking for specific information using certain sets of keywords, and if your website provides relevant information, you are winning!
Google’s main goal is to direct searchers to the webpage that offers relevant information, so a website that has great content is more likely to have better value than others of its kind.
Closing Word
Local SEO is your ultimate tool for getting your business ranked higher in Google search results, provided that you use it the right way!
