Create your Google My Business profile

A Google My Business profile is one of the most important elements of a well-rounded local SEO strategy. The reason behind it is that Google is most confident about sharing information that it can verify, and the company individually verifies all businesses that create this profile. 

Start by creating and verifying your Google My Business profile. 

You can then use Google Posts within your account and also encourage customers to share reviews online. This also ensures that you can provide Google with accurate information about your business, including opening hours, contact details, description of services, and more. 

Leverage the Google Map Pack

Often referred to as the Google 3-Pack, the Map Pack is shown at the very top of the search results page for queries that have a local intent. This pack highlights three businesses that Google feels are the most appropriate match for the query. 

Given that these businesses are positioned even above the very first search results, they get a lot of visibility and a lot of clicks. 

The goal for every business should be to win a place in the 3-Pack. This will require some optimization efforts on your part. 

Help Google understand what your business is about so that it can display it prominently in response to local search queries. Use keywords that include words and phrases relevant to your business. 

Build local citations

This is kind of like backlinking but for local businesses. Even though much has changed in the SEO realm, backlinking has remained a solid strategy. As long as you can find relevant high-quality backlinks to your website, chances are that Google will begin to view it favorably and rank the content higher. 

It operates a similar method for local businesses. 

Google looks at local citations as a ranking factor. A local citation is anywhere the name, address, and phone number information of your business appears online. This is usually via local listings on online business directories such as Bing Places, Yelp, and Facebook. 

The more citations, the higher the chance that Google will rank you in the 3-Pack.

Create content for a local audience

If content marketing is part of your digital marketing efforts, ensure that you're also creating content with a local focus. The idea with content marketing has always been to write in a broader sense to attract as many people as possible. 

While you should still be doing that, content with a local focus will further improve your website's rankings when someone in Google puts in a query with a local intent.

This will enable you to effectively become the local authority on the subject matter. You can bring in more visitors to the website through educational content that solves a problem that people in your area have. 

Once they see helpful content, and considering that they're actively looking for a service, the chances of them converting become significantly higher.

Make Local SEO a pillar of your online marketing strategy

Online marketing isn’t easy these days. There are plenty of different online platforms and each has its own benefits. If you’re chasing after audiences across these different platforms, it can soon become overwhelming.

Local SEO is unique in the sense that it requires little active upkeep but can deliver tangible, long-lasting results when done right. 

There are already people who are searching for a solution - so make it easy for them to find it! 

All it takes is just putting in some focused effort with local SEO to ensure that it's your business that Google recommends.

Content created for Digital Harvest Marketing