Local SEO Tactics—Your Website

For business owners, one of the most important strategies to implement for online business success relates to search engine optimization (SEO). The goal is to be at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) for relevant keywords targeting relevant customers.

If you own a local business, it can be a challenge to gain an edge over your competitors (local and global) via search. Here's where local SEO efforts can make a positive difference.

Local SEO is unlike the traditional SEO, allowing you to optimize your website with geographical components that traditional SEO does not typically account for. This is the type of SEO to pay attention to in order to appear on first page of SERPs for searches that involve your specific area or location.

Here's how to implement local SEO for your business.

Logo, Titles, and Description

One of the first things a search engine spider will analyze on a website is the logo image.

In a detailed post about logo optimization, Chris Silver Smith shared some practical tips for local SEO:

Your logo's filename should be descriptive—use your business name and location instead of a generic "logo.png" filename.

The logo's ALT text should include a combination of your location and business name (on all images).

Use the same logo across channels for consistency and recognizeability.

Another important factor for local SEO is the meta-title and meta-description of your website. The website title and description will help users and search engines make sense of the most important and relevant information about your website before they click through.

Since you're aiming to target a specific location with local SEO efforts, you should include your location and contact number on your meta-description and add your location to your business's name to the meta-title.

Contact Information and Full Address

A full address isn't just useful for customers trying to find your establishment—it's also necessary for successful local SEO efforts.

Add the full address to your homepage, and include the following elements for proper local SEO:

Street number

City

State

Country

Postal code

Business telephone number

E-mail (or a link to your contact form to protect the business from spam)

Note that everything should be in a text format so that a search engine can properly index your efforts (an image won't work).

Most websites put their full address on a fixed footer so this element of local SEO is always there, no matter what page the user is on. For the best results with regards to local SEO efforts, you should also add a dedicated contact page with a map on your company website.

In tomorrow's Advisor, we'll continue the discussion of local SEO tactics by focusing on how to optimize online business profiles and considerations for local listings on top search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Source: Local SEO Tactics—Your Website