Whether you’re in Dublin, Galway, Cork, or Kerry having a local SEO strategy is key to driving more potential customers to your website. Even if you are an accountant offering financial services locally, a construction company working across Ireland or an online store selling products or services, you want to show up for your customers online.
Search engines rely on localized businesses on search and will crawl the web for local content, social pages, and links to local websites. You will notice this when searching for a particular service and the first thing you may see is businesses in your local area or a map showing locations. Take us as an example, if you search for ‘website designers near me’ or ‘website designer for SME’s’, you should see Full Circle Design pop up in the organic search results.
Optimizing your website for local SEO will help you boost your organic local search and drive traffic to your website. Below is a guide to improving your local SEO to get your website working for you.
Responsive Website Design To Improve SEO
It’s simple really, in 2021 your website must be responsive. If your website doesn’t display correctly across all devices, you are losing out on over 50% of your potential customers. A responsive website allows more users to find you when searching on mobile devices and from social media. Find out more by checking out our post on the importance of a responsive website design.
Call To Action Contact Details
How are your contact details displayed on your website? Always think about the user and how easy it is for them to get in touch with you. You may have your contact details (phone, email, and address) displayed on your homepage or contact page but is it clickable? As we know, most website visitors are using a mobile device, so making your contact details clickable allows customers to get in touch with you with just a few clicks.
Just started your online business or created your first website? Get it listed on Google My Business. Since Google likes to know what it is searching for, having a verified website and business with Google allows your business website to rank higher and show up when potential customers search. Once verified, ask your customers to take a minute and give you a great review. Reviews really help to rank your business higher and create trust online.
Add as much information about your business as possible. Add your working hours or, if you are run physical store, add your opening and closing times. Make sure to include your contact details and any images that will help Google recognize your business and link it to your website. If you are offering services, make sure to add them to your Google My Business profile. The more information you can provide, the more Google can recognize what you do and index you on search.
Create A Blog
Creating a blog that shows your expertise in the market and associating your blog posts with your market keywords allows you to stand out in front of your local competition. There is a reason Jason Woodard, owner of AD32, calls his podcast ‘Content is King’, because it is! Providing valuable content in the form of blog posts is a way of showing your audience that you are an expert in your field and a local authority that they can come to for advice. Your blog post should provide value to your users, but it doesn’t have to be a detailed and intricate analysis on your market. Think about how you can help a business grow, offer free advice, and update your audience on any exciting events that are coming up in your local area.
For example, Full Circle Design help businesses grow online through website design and SEO services. How can we offer advice? By writing this article with advice to grow through organic local SEO.
Get Listed On Local Directories
Remember the Golden Pages? That big yellow book that was used as a coffee table or resided in your hallway beside the landline. Well, that is now an online directory for local businesses. Creating a profile on Golden Pages is a great way to increase your local SEO. It’s also a really handy tool to see what other businesses operate in your locality.
Linking your business to directories like Golden Pages and others like Trip Advisor, Trust Pilot and Bing Webmaster are a great way to expand your search potential and attract new customers to increase your website traffic.
Improve Your Websites Internal Link Structure
Improving your websites internal links help search engines like Google to understand your website hierarchy. Creating a user-friendly information architecture system for your website helps to support website navigation. To improve your internal links, you want to make sure all links on your website are working correctly and direct the user to the correct website page. Include a menu in the footer of your website. This helps users to navigate through your website without having to scroll all the way back to the top.
A tip here is to include a sitemap for your website that you can link to your indexing sites. This website sitemap allows search engines to understand your website hierarchy and indexes the site correctly.
Optimize Your Images And Descriptions
When developing your website make sure to add names and descriptions to website pages and images. If your website URL is 'www.mysite.ie/blank_1' you are not letting search engines know what is on the page. Each website page should have the correct name and description of what is on the page.
For example, if you search full circle design services on Google, our services page will pop up showing the page title along with a brief description on our services.
The same goes for the images on your website. Once you upload an image on your website, give it a name and description so search engines can index your image correctly. Include image descriptions that are associated with the image and include image tags to improve your local SEO.
For example. If you have an image of your team for your company page, let google know. Title your image with your business name and location. So, it could be ‘Full Circle Design Team – Cork Office’. Allowing search engines to understand what is in an image drastically improves your search potential.
Backlinks From Local Community Sources
This one takes some time. When building your business, you must build trust
within your community. A great way to get the word out there is looking at local community organizations, news resources or even schools.
Adding value to their online articles in the form of guest posts or creating articles talking about how your business helps the community is a great way to interact with your local audience and create great backlinks (a backlink is a link coming from another website linking back to your website) to increase your local SEO. You could also offer free advice or training programs for schools in your area. This is a great way to help you community and increase search potential when parents want to learn more about how you help within the community.
This guide is a great way to kickstart your local SEO strategy. When using our tips here you may not see immediate results BUT that is not the goal. The goal here is long term growth. You want customers finding your business online now, in 6 months and in 2 years time. Some of our tips here are one off’s and easy to implement, others take time, but all will increase your local SEO potential.
Maybe this whole process makes you feel a bit confused and overwhelmed? That’s ok! We are here to help. Give us a call or drop us an email and let us improve you SEO to grow your online business. Think of it this way, you get a professional accountant to manage your finances, why not get professional website SEO specialist to manage your website?