15+ Local SEO Tips 2020 For small Businesses

Do you have an idea of how many consumers use local search to find products and services?

Well, you cannot count on them for sure. But one thing is quite evident that you must be missing out on a vast number of potential customers if you have still not opted for local SEO.

This blog will help you understand some local seo tips to get to the top of the local search rankings and get ahead of your competitors. If you are a small business owner and want to generate money, you have come to the right place.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO (Local Search Engine Optimization), also known as local search engine marketing, is an excellent way to market your local business online. It helps you by promoting your products and services to local customers when they are looking for the same online. Local SEO focuses on improving your online visibility and gets you to the top of the local search results.

Why is Local SEO important?

There are plenty of reasons why local SEO matters to businesses:

• People prefer searching online to avail of any local service
• It provides a high conversion rate
• Local SEO helps in brand awareness
• It helps in building an online reputation and long term connection

What Are The Four Ranking Factors For Local SEO?

Four main local search ranking factors are explained below:

• Google My Business: Google My Business plays a crucial role in local SEO as many people come across your business because of My Business listing and then decide whether to become your customer or not.
• Keywords: Keywords are those words people use to find anything on search engines. Selecting the right keywords is one of the most important factors to be considered when talking about local SEO.
• Links: Links help in boosting your site’s ranking in the search results, making them another major factor for local SEO. When some other website refers to your site, it generates traffic and indicates search engines that your site is trustworthy.
• User Experience: Your rankings can be profoundly affected by the way users interact with your site. It helps search engines to know whether your website is helpful for the visitors or not.

Check out 17 Local SEO Tips And Strategies For 2020:

1. Go for Google My Business

this is one of the most common local tips which you will find in every local seo guide. When you claim your business on Google My Business, it increases your chances of showing up when people look for your business. Your business will get exposure on Google Maps, and people will be able to find it on any device. So, do not waste more time and sign up your business for Google My Business

Steps to sign up:

• Go to the official page of Google My Business and tap on ‘Start Now.’
• Create a Google account you will use
• Use your business name and address to find it in that particular area.
• After finding your correct business type and location, select it.
• Google will send you a code to your business location once you click on ‘Mail me my code.’

2. Creating Local Listings is essential

Local Listings in Google is imperative for people to search for your business. Creating one enables you to add business information to the directory sites. It becomes really important that the listings in each directory are the same. Also, the business description, web address, and the hours should match on all the pages.

3. Maintain Consistent NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number)

The next crucial step after creating the local listing and citations is to maintain the consistent “name, address, and phone number” of the company throughout the business directories. Wherever your business and local site is mentioned, you should make sure that it follows the same NAP. This makes your business to be more credible in the eyes of Google.

4. Google Reviews create a positive impact on the audience

Reviews for any business is one of the most critical factors for improving the local Seo search visibility. Online reviews help people to understand more about the company. You can ask your clients to spare some time and write something valuable for the business, as 80% of the customers trust a company that has legit Google reviews.

5. Optimize website content based on locality wise keywords

Once you have garnered positive reviews from the clients and have worked on all the external factors, the next step that comes into play is to focus on local keywords. They are basically keywords based on the locality and usually have the term ‘near me’ included. Once you have identified the keywords for the business, you can optimize the content accordingly.

6. Amplify Local Signals on the website

Even though this one of the local seo tips is not much talked about, but it does remain a significant option for improving local SEO marketing. You can easily amplify the local search signals by ensuring that your business’ location is enabled on Maps. Also, you can link to the local sites in your internal page.

7. Create Local Pages

If your business is spread all over the world in different locations, then you are required to create location-specific pages applying content marketing strategies that target those locations through. The use of the keyword should be relevant as it plays a major role in getting traffic. And last but not least the content should be unique and should not be copied, as Google doesn’t like it that way.

8. Start a Blog

It is a perfect way to demonstrate your expertise in the market, provide users in-depth knowledge, driving traffic and most importantly, convincing the father of the Internet that your business is trustworthy. Having a blogging page on your website is surely the most effective strategy but internal links of those blogs immensely help your site to rank higher on Google.

9. Optimize Title Tag, Meta Description for CTR

Ranking on top is useless if no one taps on your search result. So including targeted keywords and modifiers on both Title Tag (an HTML tag that gets displayed on the search engine results) and Meta Description (write-up below the title tag, giving users an idea of what your page is about) is essential.

10. Improve Website Loading Speed

Would you like it if someone opens your website and close it without even reading anything because of slow and laggy loading speed?

No right?

So you can’t afford to neglect this tip and disappoint your potential customers. Just take out some time and test your site’s speed and loading time and compare it with the average.

11. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Optimized

Life without cell phones is a myth these days. People adapt as so Google. And even Google announced that websites optimized for mobile devices will be given more preference. So isn’t it clear that you can miss out on this one? Thus, while getting your website on-board do even ask for a responsive website (mobile-optimized) so that you don’t lack behind the competition.

12. Use Schema Structured Markup

Not going into much technicalities, Schema Structured Markup is nothing but the rating which you see below the search results. It is a form of microdata that creates an enhanced description (commonly known as a rich snippet) on search results. These SEO services make your site stand out from the rest.

13. Social Sharing

Everyone and everything is now on social media.

So why aren’t you?

Present your business on the social media network as it will increase your reach and will also enhance the ranking of your brand in SERPs. However, social media links do not help with SEO. Still, it tells Google that people are interested in your brand, which eventually increases the importance of your site in Google’s eyes.

You can focus on Facebook sharing as Google indexes the Facebook pages. There are lots of social media tools available which you can use for social media marketing.

14. Make Local Backlinks

Backlinks are a critical factor that helps in SEO ranking. If you build a backlink for your local business website, then it will boost the ranking of your site. Therefore, you must never ignore making a backlink for your local website. You can acquire links for your website by using either PBN (private blog network) or by purchasing a white-hat link building package. Use white hat SEO, if you want a long-term success of your website.

15. SSL Certificate

One of the common mistakes that local business owners make is neglecting the SSL certificate; it means that their website does not have ‘https’ in the URL. SSL Certificate does not come along with hosting and domain package; you have to purchase it separately. The hosting companies are selling this certificate at free or at affordable prices. If your website has SSL certified, then your website is not only secure, but it also helps in enhancing the ranking of your website.

16. Local Press and Media

You can enhance the awareness about your brand by featuring on the local media and press. If you are promoting your business locally, then Google considered it a good sign of doing business. It not only helps in creating a strong online presence but also helps in making your brand reach the people locally too.

17. Use Local Forums or Q&A Platform

This is another tip, which can help you to gain a good reputation in the web world. Making your presence on the online communities helps in increasing the traffic of your site but also helps you to meet like-minded businesses who may collaborate with your online as well as offline. Get on these forums like Quora and others and start connecting with the clients.

This is the complete list of local SEO tips for 2020 that can be used to improve the local search engine ranking of your website. Local SEO will help your business to grow locally, which will eventually enhance the reach of your business on a large scale too.