How to Improve your Local SEO in 2021

By now you know what’s SEO and why it is important. You also know about Google 3-Pack and NAP. That all creates a solid theoretical foundation but in SEO it’s good to practice as much as possible, so let’s take a look at what exactly you should focus on.

There are a few issues: Listing, Do on-site optimization, Take care of GMB, Content Marketing, Link Building, and Reputation Management. While talking about reputation management it’s also important to know how to take care of your reviews, as this field is relatively new and has an enormous tendency to grow. Thus, in this article, we will take a look at how to improve your SEO in a few simple steps and how to work with reviews. Let’s dig in.

Improve your SEO step by step

Listing

That one should go easy. If you want your customers to find you, you should list your company. By listing we normally mean companies’ physical address (ideally including a zip code) and phone number. This information is known as your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number), which we also have already covered in the previous article.

There are a few directories that you have to be in, such as GMB (Google My Business), Facebook, Linkedin, Yelp etc. GMB is the most important one, as Google is the biggest search engine for now and will stay here for a while. Moreover, from GMB you could manage your presence not only in Google Search but also in Google Maps. The full list of directories varies between 60 and 70 and you can check it here.

You might ask, and to be honest, reasonably - why do I need to be in all of these directories? The answer is simple - for the customers. The more sites you will be listed on the higher will be the possibility that eventually your business will be found. Moreover, you have to be consistent in NAP because it might affect your search position.

If among all of the directories you would have consistent NAP that would boost your trustworthiness to the search engines. It would help you to increase positions in Google 3-Pack, while even a slight inconsistency, such as an abbreviated business or street name might signal a search engine that your business is not legit.

The accurate listing will also help customers to avoid confusion while searching for you. So, you better take care of it!

Do on-site optimization

It goes more in the direction of traditional SEO in which you’d need to consider on-page and off-page requirements where some will be given more weight than others. Here’s, like with typical SEO, you can’t do it only once and you’d need to continually work on it to follow suit. With that being said, you would need to:

Provide full SEO metadata for each page. More specifically you should take care of 6 Meta-tags: Meta Title, Meta Description, Meta Robots, Meta Refresh Redirect, Meta Charset, Meta Viewport.
Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly and has a mobile-responsive design. Nowadays that’s a must, as mobile is becoming a key driver of local search.
As most of the local searches are made on mobile phones you need to take care of page load speed. Slow page load speed might badly affect your site as mobile slow-loading pages will be penalized with lower rankings. It also might lead to a higher bounce rate.
Do detailed keyword research. What do your customers type when they try to find your business, what sort of words, phrases, questions? Understand the so-called customer intent. Or as stated by MOZ: “For each of your pages, ask yourself how relevant the content is to the user intent behind search queries (based on your keyword usage both on the page and in its HTML).” Then, after finishing that research and knowing all of the keywords include them on your website.
Update your keywords and conduct keyword research at regular intervals to ensure your content reflects consumer search habits, as it might be changing, and is targeting relevant search terms.
Use some free tools. For instance, you can check your on-site optimization with Google Development Tools. Do a right-click on a web page and then choose Inspect, Lighthouse, Generate a Report and improve some things that you lag behind. You can also use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool to make sure that your website is a good fit for mobile.

Content Marketing And Link Building

Each business must have relevant content for customers. If you have that, customers would go back to your site to check some specific information and that might affect your ranking as Google Crawlers would notice it.

Moreover, while creating content you can also include links to the relevant articles, which might be good for your readers, as that might give them even more information. It's also good for Google Crawlers, as they notice that your site is citing other credible (and that’s important, try to do link building only with high-quality content) sources, and eventually it’s good for you as you see your ranking improved.

Reputation Management and how to build trust in your business

That’s most probably the final stage of any business online. You have a stable business model, solid mobile-optimized design, good quality content. You did a proper brand positioning, hitting the right nerve and getting lots of customers. You’re doing your best to serve their needs and most of them are happy with your services.

However, there is still a high possibility that some of them wouldn’t be happy with your services and you should embrace it. It’s necessary to work with feedback, especially with negative one! Bad reviews might destroy trust of even the most loyal customers, and responding to bad feedback could positively affect your overall performance/service. Moreover, if you would be able to successfully resolve a client's complaint, you could create a successful case and brag about it in your blog:).

According to BrightLocal: “positive online reviews make almost 7 in 10 consumers more likely to use a local business. If you’re not making online reviews a priority and a rival is, you’re automatically less likely to win that business”, and this tendency is more than likely to grow. Moreover, it’s important to work with your reviews for a few more reasons:

Reviews affect your rating. With that being said, if you work with your reviews well by resolving negative feedback and replying to happy customers you can get a better rating and then be ranked higher in search results. A high star rating basically equals high search rankings. Respond to reviews promptly, include keywords in your response, and try to encourage customers to leave keywords-rich reviews as well. Moreover, it’s good for your GMB. Reviews influence rating and if your rating is more than 3,5-stars your business is more likely to show up to the customers along with your contact details.
It also has a positive impact on your Google Ads. According to Birdeye, if you run a Google Adwords Campaign you could leverage Google Seller Ratings, which is visible in search results for sellers with an average rating of at least 3.5 stars, as well as over 150 unique reviews added in the past 12 months.
Positive customer feedback is one of the most powerful ads. You can share these reviews on your social media profiles, thus improving your credibility and potentially generating even more leads. That’s also an important signal for search engines that your brand is legit and thus all mentions that your brand could get from shared reviews might give your business a lot of traction.

Conclusion

As you can see, not too many things changed in Local SEO over the years and the basic recipe for success is still the same. List your business in as many relevant directories as possible and be consistent in information about it. Your NAP shouldn’t differ. Then build an informative and relevant site that adds value, answers clients’ needs, and meets the search intent. Do on-site optimization and make it responsive.

Then make it trustworthy, which comes from link building, or in other words referrals and citations. It will be significantly more important what other people say about you than what you say about yourself. Therefore, you need to work with reviews to continuously improve your services and resolve customers’ problems. Just try to follow these steps and the results will soon come up.