Local SEO Quick Tips for 2015

The rules have changed regarding SEO following the most recent update to Google’s algorithms. With the first quarter of the year behind us, it is time to take a hard look at marketing plans. According to surveys conducted last year, shifts toward traditional rankings are occurring. Despite many Local SEOs claims that they were not affected by Google’s update, Pigeon, the reality of the situation is these types of sites likely had more authority in comparison to others from the beginning. Therefore, when you look at your site, you have to take a different approach and set different goals.

Become Awesome By Earning Links That Are Awesome

For most business owners, they don’t believe it can be this simple. However, for local businesses, this can be a challenge primarily because your competition is going to have content that is similar to your site, which the majority of them do not contain inbound links. It is critical for you to create and drive more relevant content that focuses on keywords you want people to search by.

The question remains: how do you become awesome?

Instead of putting all of your energy into fooling Google, it’s a better idea to invest that energy into creating a better website.

First, look at the competitor’s websites. How can you improve your site? It’s no mystery potential customers are visiting numerous sites. Therefore, yours must look the best within the vertical.

Next, avoid the common mistakes that occur most often on sites:

Lack of content on the home page: search engines and customers want to know immediately what you and the page are all about. Quickly add useful content to the sidebar, banner, and main page.

Pages are only containing a few sentences: search engines and customers are searching for relevant and helpful information on all pages. If you’re offering a service or a product without providing immediate information by packing all pages with content that is useful, you’re losing visitors.

Keyword spamming: this is an outdated tactic way too many websites are utilizing. It does not help your site rank well. Eliminate this content immediately and fill your pages with useful information.

Title tags that are terrible: you’re delaying search results if you go beyond a 500-pixel width with your title tags because they will just truncate. You should be summarizing the page with title tags and nothing more. There should not be a keyword chunk present.

Local Optimization Should Not Be Forgotten

Keep your local optimization a priority considering how much weight your on-site signals are carrying. You won’t be doing yourself any good if you’re creating some citations if you’re forgetting to include the local signaling Google is expecting. Yes, this is a fundamental old-school tactic. However, there are few websites correctly optimizing in these local areas:

Title Tags:

Title tags should include City/ST: for local relevancy, it’s important to include your city and state within your title tag.

Header tags:

H1 Headings should include City/St: local relevancy is also further optimized by including your city and state in your page’s heading.

P Tags:

City/St in Content, don’t forget to include your city and state information within the content of your site for further local optimization.

Alt Tags:

Text on Images: the text on images should also include city and state information, as well, within the alt tags.

Permalinks:

Within the URL: to further add a boost of strength to your local relevancy, you can add your city and state information to your URL.

When you utilize these particular tactics, you will be achieving one primary goal: creating an excellent site. When you stop thinking about achieving page rank and start thinking about creating the best site within your niche, you will see a better conversion of visitors.