3 Unknown Local SEO Tips To Boost Rankings And Business
If you own a business, you know that you have to focus on SEO to help boost your rankings in the search engines. If you own a business that services the local area or region where it is located, then you focus more on local SEO to boost rankings and business.
The challenge is if you follow all the local seo tips small businesses use (what your competition is doing) then it can be challenging to climb in the search engines and beat out your competition.
If you focus on unknown or little-known local search SEO tips, however, you can boost your rankings and increase your business.
We are sharing three little-known and unknown local SEO tips that you can start using today on how to improve local seo on your site.
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Contents
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is focusing your efforts on keywords that include local modifiers or search terms so it relates to the local area or region where your business operates or serves.
For example, if you are an acne specialist (or acne services is one service you provide in your local area), and customers are searching for an acne specialist, this is a broad search term.
Since it is a broad search term, acne specialists that are in different states or regions may show up in the search engine rankings.
Since most customers are not (likely) to go to see an acne specialist that is clear across the country from where they live, they have to modify their search to narrow down the options to those that operate in their area.
Instead, they’re going to use search terms that narrow the search for an acne specialist to those that are local or near them.
They would use modifiers such as “best portland acne specialist,” “acne specialist near me,” or “best portland acne specialist near me.”
Since customers have to modify their search, you have to modify the way you do local SEO.
How To Do Local SEO
If you are wondering how local SEO works or how to do local SEO…
Local SEO is about targeting keywords that are focused on the local area or region where your business is or where it serves customers. Your first step in how to do local SEO is to do some local keyword research.
We are not going to go into detail about how to do local keyword research in this article but you check out the details on how to do local keyword research and the tools you can use to do this in our local keyword research article.
Once you are armed with the list of local keywords that you want to target, there are a ton of ways that you can:
- Accomplish local SEO
- Figure out how to optimize your website for local search
- How to improve local search results
In fact, we have a local SEO checklist that offers 25 ways to use local SEO after you have conducted an SEO audit of your copy and content. This can help you figure out exactly what to do with that list of local keywords.
What we are going to cover in this article is some more advanced ways you can use local SEO.
Let’s uncover three of the more advanced and little known ways to use local SEO on your website and blog.
Local SEO Tip #1: Geotagging Images
Let’s tackle the first little-known and unknown way to use local SEO — geotagging.
Geotagging images involves adding the exact location of your business to any images that you include on your site.
Before you upload the images to your site, you can add the location of your business by geotagging the photos, images, or other graphics.
Why Geotagging Images Is Important For Local SEO
You may be wondering why in the world you would do this?
We are glad you asked (or at least wondering this)?
Essentially, the Google algorithm is trying to figure out businesses that:
- Do what they say they do
- Are located where they say they are
- Serve who they say they serve
If your business:
- Does what you say it does
- Is located where you say it is
- Serves the customers you say you serve
Then this is why geotagging images is such an important Google local SEO tip to use.
If all the images on a website are geotagged, say for 123 Main Street (where your business is located), Google can see that, AND it adds a bit of clout to your local SEO efforts.
How To: Local SEO By Geotagging Images
You can geotag your images using an online site or tool . Some of the sites and tools are free. Some are paid or have paid options.
If you use geoimgr.com, here are the 5 steps you can use to geotag before you upload all of the images on your site:
- Upload a jpg-image.
- If you have any existing geotags associated with the image that you upload, these geotags will populate on the map of the site/tool if the photo is already tagged. If not, you have to set the geotags manually (see next step on how to do this).
- On the map, set the marker (the red pointed marker) so that it is pointing to your business location. You can also type in the address of your business to set the latitude and longitude. If you know the latitude and longitude, you can enter the coordinates manually into the latitude and longitude boxes.
- Download the geotagged image.
Upload the geotagged image to your site.
Local SEO Tip #2: Building Out Services Pages
The second local SEO tip involves building out the services pages on your website.
Building out each of the service pages on your site for local content is another little known or unknown way to take advantage of local SEO.
URL Structure
When you are building out your services page, start by focusing on building the URL structure (what is included as the page name after the .com, .biz, etc., part of your domain name) for each service page by including the local keyword in the URL for the page.
For example, if your site is xyzspecialists.com, you might name your microdermabrasion services page xyzspecialists.com/portland-microdermabrasions for local SEO purposes.
Page Keyword Placement
You also want to make sure that you are targeting a different keyword for each service page. If you target the same keyword for multiple pages, then you just end up competing against your own site for search engine rankings.
In addition, ensure that the local keyword is in the headline and at least one of the H2 headers on the page.
Finally, be sure to sprinkle the keyword in a couple of places throughout the page.
Our local SEO checklist goes into a deep dive on more of the ways you can add local SEO to the pages of your site. For these efforts, we are focusing on building out your service pages of the site so each is optimized for local SEO.
Why Building Out Services Pages Is Important For Local SEO
Wondering why building out your services pages is so important for local SEO?
Building out your services pages can give you a big bang for your buck when it comes to harnessing the power that local SEO holds.
When Google crawls each of the service pages of your site, one of the items the Google algorithm considers is the information on the page — the content that the page contains.
Google wants the content to be uber-focused on the topic/local keyword that you are focusing on for that page.
Google searches to see if the local keyword you are targeting is in a couple of different places:
- The URL
- Page name
- Throughout the content that is on the page (including photos, images, and graphics)
You also want the local SEO keyword to be in the meta description for each service page.
The reason?
If a customer is searching for a local keyword and they see the same local keyword in the meta description, they are much more likely to click on the link that leads to your page than if the meta description does not contain the keyword.
One of the main reasons that building out your services pages is so important for local SEO is it gives you the opportunity to target a local SEO keyword for EACH service you provide.
If you offer five different services, build out five different services pages.
This gives you five different local keywords to rank for.
How To: Local SEO By Building Out Services Pages
The best way to build out each of your service pages is to start with the local keyword you are targeting for that page.
If you are a Portland spa working on the facials page on your site, you might want to target Portland facials as your keyword.
Name the page Portland Facials and make sure that the URL is www.serenityspa.com/portland-facials.
When you move on to work on your massages page, make sure the URL is serentityspa.com/portland-massages.
Continue like this for each of the services pages on your site to help with local SEO.
Local SEO Tip #2: Video Content
Another one of the little or unknown local business SEO tips you can follow is to add video to your site.
You can add video to each site page, especially services pages, to help boost those page rankings in the search engines.
Why Adding Video Content Is Important For Local SEO
Google doesn’t watch your videos for ranking it in the search engine. Visitors to your site, however, love video content.
What Google does love is rich content that searchers are seeking. Adding videos to your pages is rich content.
When you title your videos in line with your local SEO keyword and strategy for the page where the video appears, it can really help the page rank higher in the search engines.
How To Local SEO Adding Video Content
When you add video content to your site pages, title each video with the appropriate local keyword.
For example, “Portland Best Massage” may be the title of a video for the serenityspa.com/portland-massage page. Serenity Spa might show how they give massages or talk about the special massage treatments they provide.
The video might also include a tour of a massage room or rooms so visitors can see how clean, relaxing, and beautiful the spa is.
