Top Tips for Local SEO

If you’re a company that caters to a local clientele - whether it be a doctors’ office, a clothing store, or a restaurant - you want to make sure that people can quickly and easily find you online.  To do this, your website will need a local SEO strategy to properly position you on search engines and direct the right traffic to your website.

Some of the most important things you need to consider when optimizing your website for local search include:

• Keyword Research - first and foremost, you need to figure out what people are searching for.  Keyword research allows you to figure out which keyword phrases are receiving the most hits.

• Onsite Optimization - after completing keyword research, you’ll be left with a list of words and phrases that you will want to include in your website.  Including these keywords in not only the website’s content but also its title and meta description can have an effect on where your website ranks on search engines.  Including your phone number, address, and even a map are also other important points in onsite optimization.

• Google Places - adding your business and its address to Google Places is important, and can even help rank your business above regular organic results.  Besides Google Places, you can also make sure that your business is listed in local directories, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Yellow Pages and other similar directory sites.

• Mobile Site - More and more, people are turning to their phones when they want to locate a business near them.  By creating a mobile site, or making sure that your current site is compatible with mobile browsers, you have a better chance of people visiting your site.