Is Local SEO worth the investment for a small business? 

12 Local SEO Tips for Small Businesses
Nine out of Ten consumers  today will use local searches to find local business information, which means if your business is not optimized for local SEO, you are missing out on 85% of your potential customers and right now during the Coronavirus that could be the final nail in the coffin for your business. So how do you make a change and what change do you make?
For over 10 years Mobile OPZ has been working with and consulting for many small businesses on Internet marketing including website design & Local SEO. We have put together 12 very helpful local SEO tips and a guide to improve your local SEO rankings and outrank your local competitors, no matter what type of business you have. So, if you’re a small business looking to generate money from your products or services, this article is for you. To get a better understanding of SEO, check out my guide Beginners Guide to SEO
What Is Local SEO? SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant local searches. The better visibility your pages have in local search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract potential customers to your business and increasing your conversion rate.
Why Local SEO is important The question of why local SEO is extremely important. You will want customers to find you on Google, Yahoo & Bing when they are shopping and are ready to purchase instead of spending a lot of money and time marketing the old way with minimal results. We advise that you create a solid Local SEO and social media marketing strategy so that you always stay front and center in customers’ minds.
Benefits of Local SEO Every business can benefit at some level from local SEO. After all, 97% of consumers use the internet when researching local products and services (BIA/Kelsey). Furthermore, 60% of consumers who search for a local business on their smartphone visit a store on the same day (comScore). Local SEO is something that impacts the bottom line of your business.
Local SEO Benefits Investing in Local SEO helps you generate leads from Google, Bing & Yahoo search engines, the place where people are looking for your unique business or service, they are typically motivated to Buy Now. It helps build & trust your online reputation, brand credibility & awareness.
·   More calls & inquiries from potential customers ·   Authority content that grabs visitors to your website. ·   Targeted website traffic. ·   A superb web presence in your local niche market. ·   More people finding your store and coming buy to make purchases. (Google Maps) ·   A superb web presence in your local niche market.

Is Local SEO worth the investment for a small business?
If you are a small, one-person shop, then Local SEO is still an extremely important investment, but it may make more sense to perform Local SEO on your own (at least give it a shot) than to hire an agency to handle it for you. To answer the question, yes, Local SEO is a valuable investment and is worth the investment.
Top 3 Local SEO Ranking Factors
The 3 local search ranking factors are: 1.  Google My Business (Proximity, categories, keyword in business title, etc.) 2.  Back Links signals (Inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, linking domain quantity, etc.) 3.  Reviews (Review quantity, review velocity, review diversity. Always respond to reviews
1. Set Up Google My Business Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool for local businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Google Maps.
The above image is how GMB would display the search result above other results in the form of snippet listing related to location. For example, “Restaurant in Los Angeles” or “Plumber near me”. This involves the name of your business + location or location detected by Google.
How To Sign Up/Claim Your Business For Google My Business 1.  Visit  https://www.google.com/business/  and click “Start Now”. 2.  Select or create the Google account you want to use and sign in. 3.  Search for your business in the prompted area by name and address. 4.  Once you have found or created your correct business location and type, click on it. 5.  Google will need you to verify your business so click on “Mail me my Code”. Your code will be sent to your business location. This usually takes around 2 weeks.
To optimize Google My Business, ensure that you: ·  Fill in necessary details like business description, working hours, street’s name, business category, website link, etc. ·  Consistently post any updates or news related to your business. GMB has this option in the Google posts section                on the GMB dashboard. ·   Add quick reservation URLs and Q and A feature to enhance your local pack listing. ·   Upload high-quality images of your business as well
Respond to each Review even if it might be negative. This shows that you are concerned about the issue and want to make it right!
2. Create Local Listings Creating local listings is one of the most important local SEO tips. The directories are letting Google know that your business exists has a good reputation and is trustworthy. It is highly recommended to go for other local listing websites for getting more listings & citations for your business. Local Search , Hot Frog , Foursquare Yelp ,  Citysearch ,  Manta ,  Yellow Pages , Bing places are just a few of the hundreds of review Directories out there you should be registered with as many as possible.                       3. Stay Consistent with NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) All information must match. After you have created a Google My Business Listing and local citations, next up in the local SEO strategies is to make sure you have maintained consistent information about your business throughout these listings. So how do you go about this? Maintain the same information on every local listing, your site and each place where your local site is mentioned – make them all the same as your GMB listing (Google My Business). Having a consistent NAP ensures that your business is trustworthy and credible in Google’s algorithm. Be incredibly careful when setting up listing everything MUST MATCH exactly one listing being off can throw all your Local SEO off! Since Google watches everything through a series of algorithms they know everything about your website, so you need the information to be 100% exactly matched. For instance, if your business’s name in GMB listing ends with “INC”, then you should not forget to mention this as well in every listing.
4. Optimize Website Content with Local SEO Keyword Research Now that you have an external factor setup, next is to focus on your local content. This is going to make an impact on your local search rankings when your website is searched locally. A “Near You” or “Near Me” keywords are everything that starts with your type of business “Near Me” or “Near You” For example: “Electrician Near You” Generic location keywords are keywords that have the location name associated with your type of business. For example: “Electrician in Los Angeles” To optimize for the “Near Me” & “Near You” keywords, always start with “Near Me” & “Near You” First then the long-tailed keyword. Below is how to research keywords, long-tailed keywords and get ideas for keywords Basic Steps for Keywords Research Identify sub-elements related to your business. For example, if you run a Home Remodeling business, your sub-elements would be something related to types of Kitchen, Bathroom & Basement Remodeling projects.
Make a list of keywords related to your business. Choose 25-75 of the most obvious to get started you can add more keywords later through landing pages and Blogs. Use keyword research tools like  Ubersuggest  and SEM Rush Google Keyword Planner to search and generate keywords, long tailed keywords and related keyword ideas that most keyword research tools have available.
After that, you should filter out the useless keywords that don’t rank and focus only on keywords which have high search volume, low search difficulty and high cost per click (CPC) this is very possible to do it takes time to learn the keyword research tools once you do Boom you take off. Be patient it works!
Once you have a list of keywords that you know will rank the next thing is to create content around each keyword or long tailed keyword. Try to focus on two to three keywords per page or blog then you can optimize it later.
5. Create Landing Pages If you want to target cities and different areas locally, you would want to create different location-specific Landing pages, targeting those other cities & locations in your content marketing strategies. Use your main researched keywords and use keywords detailing that you serve that city or zip code. I like adding reviews & videos to landing pages Mobile OPZ builds. (Click on link to see an example of a landing page) Caution: Don’t copy-paste the exact description on each and every location on your site as this may lead to duplicate content, which Google will probably penalize you for. Make sure each local page is different. keep them similar, but not the same.
6. Start Blogging A blog is a great way to demonstrate your expertise in the field, provide users with knowledge and information, drive traffic, and most importantly, convince Google that your business is trustworthy. Having a blog on your site is one of the most effective SEO strategies to add to your local search content marketing. When writing a blog post, make sure you focus on providing values. For example, provide how-to knowledge, Videos work well let your users know about your business achievements, local news, etc. Take a look at our blog Mobile OPZ Blog a Blog should be about what your business does including Tips & Tricks and DIY articles it should be valuable information to the reader. Internal links are one of the best ways to help flow the domain authority of your site, thus making the overall site rank higher on Google.
7. Always Optimize Title Tag, Meta Description Important tips for local SEO are to optimize your page titles and meta descriptions. Do not overstuff them with keywords. A title tag is an HTML tag that gets displayed on the search engine results. A meta tag or meta description is what gets displayed below the title tag. It essentially gives users an idea of what your page is about. Make sure you include your target keywords in both the places and modifiers which makes it interesting. Ranking high on Google is useless if no one clicks through to your search result. For example, use strong adjectives like “inexpensive” “best”, “cheap”, “Greatest”, etc. to enhance the CTR. (click thru rate)
8. Improve Website Loading Speed This is one of those local SEO tips that are often neglected Do not forget that search engines’ intent is to deliver the best results possible to users especially with Google new algorithms change . Suppose a person encounters a slow to load website, they are going to close the browser before they even read the first sentence, right? Run your website through Google page speed test   Page Speed Insights (google.com)
9. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly The problem is most business websites were developed for desktop computers, while these sites may display fantastic on a desktop however, they look terrible on smart phones and tablets. Smart phone and tablet users are often presented with websites that are slow to load, missing features and websites that act buggy. Which means lost customers, credibility, and competition issues. Big and Small companies alike are dealing with this issue. Googles algorithms are penalizing websites for not being mobile friendly. Who does not use a Smart phone especially during the COVID-19 pandemic? Google clearly  mentioned  in their article that they will give preferences to websites that are optimized for mobile & tablet devices. So this local SEO tip is for every business out there. In website design, we call it a “responsive website”. A website that loads on all mobile devices, screen sizes and looks great and easy to see complete website. Find out whether your site is responsive or not? – Use  this  free tool by Google.
10. What are Backlinks? Backlinks are one of the main ranking factors for SEO. Building backlinks to your local website will help you skyrocket your ranking and one of the most important local SEO tips.
How To get Backlinks? There are several ways you can get Backlinks for your website. This may include buying backlinks a big Google No-No, using PBN (private blog network), these methods are called black hat SEO . Google doesn’t at all like Black hat and will penalize your website for it.
To succeed in with SEO in the long term you need to optimize for white hat SEO, and some of the ways are highlighted below: ·        Have your website listed on local directories ·        Create valuable contents that people would like to link to ·        Do some reach out and ask for links ·        Get on the podcast and they will link out to you ·        Do some collaborates with related business owners ·        Collaborate with guest bloggers
Besides the steps listed, you can also consider purchasing a white hat link building package from local SEO agencies such as guest posts, blogger outreach, etc.
11. Implement Social Media   During the Covid-19 everyone is on social media or heading that way. By implementing social likes with shares and connecting your website to social media platforms, this can make you rank higher in SERP’s.  Social Media links from social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, what’s app & You Tube are now counted somewhat for SEO, it will send algorithms to Google that people are interested in your business. The more likes, shares, comments, and people talk about your business on social media the higher Google will rank your Website. The best platform to focus on is Facebook. This is because Google loves indexing Facebook business pages.
12. Get Your Site SSL Certificate SSL certificate which make your site appear “https” in the URL is what we see many local business owners neglect or blow off. In the past, the cost of getting https used to be high. But nowadays, it has become part of the standard website and many hosting companies started including it for free in their plan. Google has now implemented SSL on every website as a must or you risk the chance of being penalized, People are now warned by Google with a big red X that that website is dangerous. Conclusion
This is all for the complete local SEO tips and tricks to improve your website’s local search rankings. So do not quit too soon. Be patient and results will surely show up if you put in the effort!
Thanks to Google seo tips, you tube seo tips, WordPress seo tips, seo optimization tips, Esty seo tips, square space seo tips, seo tips that worked in 2020,
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