TIP: 3 Ways to Improve Your Local Search Ranking
3 Ways to Improve Your Local Search Ranking
By Ivy Lamb, Manta Webinar Editor – April 14, 2016
Local SEO can be a huge boon to your small business—if you know how to take advantage of it. With the rise in smartphone usage, search engines like Google have adapted to provide results relevant to the searcher’s geographic location. For example, when someone types a search term like “landscaping,” they’ll see a list of landscaping businesses close to their current location.
According to SEO agency Moz, 4 billion desktop queries and more than 50% of mobile searches have local intent.
To gain insight on how small businesses can improve their local SEO, we turned to Cain Richards, a digital analyst with seoWorks.
“With Google’s recent changes—the reduction of local results to a three-pack and the removal of side ads so the desktop results page mirrors that of its mobile pages—it is more important than ever to make sure your business is doing everything it can to optimize itself for local search,” RIchards said. Here are his top three tips for getting started:
- Claim your Google Business page. Set up a Google Business page. This page lets Google know your business is proactively engaging with customers.
- Build consistent NAP. NAP stands for “Name, Address, Phone Number,” and consistency is vitally important to any company looking to move up in local rankings. Make sure this information is updated in online listings including Yelp, Yellowpages and Manta.
- Diversify with long-tail keywords. Use keywords on your website to target niche markets where you have greater opportunity of ranking higher. For example, “Emergency 24-hour Plumber Sydney,” instead of just “Plumber Sydney.”
To learn more about SEO, attend the Manta Expert webinar “SEO for Small Business: 5 Simple Tactics to Generate Leads.”