Local SEO tips for beginners
Did you know that 97% of people search online to find a local business? Did you know that 88% of those consumers either call or visit a store after making a local business search online?
92% of prospects only select businesses that are on the
first page of search results. 67.70% select the first 5 searches on Google. This
means that if your website is not in the top 5 positions, you are losing out on
a majority of your business!
As the world turns more and more digital by the day, the
importance of local SEO for businesses becomes a key factor in their online
marketing strategy.
Today, I’m going to walk you through some of the most basic
and often ignored elements of local SEO optimisation that will help your website
jump up the ranks on search engines.
What is Local Search Engine Optimisation?
Let’s start with local SEO 101. Say you are an electrician in Hamilton, and you provide your services in Hamilton and the greater Waikato. When someone is searching for, let’s say “Electrician in Hamilton” or “best electricians in Hamilton”, you along with the 50 other electrical companies in Hamilton are competing to show up. So how does Google decide which businesses to show on their search results, and in which order?
Every time a person searches for something online, Google runs thousands of algorithms in the background, and matches the search with the best matched results, based on relevancy, quality, trustworthiness and proximity. Optimising these elements is precisely what local SEO stands for.
Every time a person searches for something online, Google runs thousands of algorithms in the background, and matches the search with the best matched results, based on relevancy, quality, trustworthiness and proximity. Optimising these elements is precisely what local SEO stands for.
H1 Tag
36% of SEO experts think the headline is the most important SEO element. Needless to say, you need to have a locally optimised H1 tag on your website.
The heading or the “H1 tag” is the main heading on your website’s home page and this tag should include important search terms or “keywords” that people type into Google when they are looking for products or services that you provide.
So, for example, if you offer security and automation services in Hamilton, then “automation” and “Hamilton” will be the most common terms people type in when looking for you. So, you want to include this in your title tag.
Here is an example of a strong, well optimised H1 tag.
The heading or the “H1 tag” is the main heading on your website’s home page and this tag should include important search terms or “keywords” that people type into Google when they are looking for products or services that you provide.
So, for example, if you offer security and automation services in Hamilton, then “automation” and “Hamilton” will be the most common terms people type in when looking for you. So, you want to include this in your title tag.
Here is an example of a strong, well optimised H1 tag.
Page Title
The second most important element of local SEO is your page
title or “title tag”, i.e., the title displayed by Google on the search results
page, when showing your website to potential customers. Here is a screenshot of
what a page title looks like on Google.
As you can see, I searched for
“SEO Hamilton” on Google, and the result that came up had the phrase I searched
for in the page title. While it is important to have search phrases or keywords
in your page title, you also need to make sure that it is relevant and not
spammy.
Page titles should ideally be
within the character limit recommended by Google, which is 60 characters.
Having an optimised page title can
be very powerful for local SEO.
Meta Description
The meta description is what you see below the page title on
Google search results.
Here is an example:
Your meta description should be descriptive and relevant to the page and should highlight your USPs. A good meta description helps with the click-through-rate, so the better your description is, the more likely it is to catch the consumer’s eye and land you a click to your website.
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