local-small-business-seo-tipsEarlier this year, we investigated general SEO trends that will affect virtually every website owner. In this piece, we take a look at SEO tips specifically tailored for small local businesses. With these tips, you can improve the popularity and exposure of your business online.

Create more citation for your business

Citation in SEO works exactly as we have seen it in the academic world. The popularity of a business will be increased when more people talk about it online. Therefore, small businesses looking to improve their popularity must do what they can to get more people talking about their brand online. Common tips include writing more quality content and encouraging customers to leave reviews on popular consumer communities.

Content marketing must not be ignored

Regardless of what changes are made to the algorithms of Google and other search engines, content marketing will continue to be one of the most powerful tools to drive leads and sales in a quantifiable manner. Local businesses therefore must strive to continuously publish high-quality content ready to take care of likely questions from people in their particular niche.

Images and videos must be properly optimised

Gone are the days when you could use anything as filename for the images and videos on your web page, and those you share on social media sites like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Vimeo. The title of the image, captions and hashtags used are not as important as the actual file name! Therefore, you need to avoid uploading images with xxyytris23.jpg as file names if you want to improve your online discovery.

Don’t ignore semantics in your keyword implementation

For some time the Link Building Service providers have talked about how voice search is becoming more popular, and is a key future factor to focus on. This means more people will search for local businesses without entering all the usual keywords that are common with typed searches. Local businesses can key into this by making sure keywords are used carefully alongside likely voice-search queries. For example, using “ladies shoes” as a keyword will not work as well as “where’s the best ladies shoe shop in Birmingham”.

Your site must be properly optimised for mobile environments

Mobile searches lead to a visit to the shop 50% of the time. Therefore, you are shooting yourself in the foot if people still have to squint to read text on your page, or zoom out the page to be able to click links. Apart from the impact of this are on your sales, Google now takes the mobile friendliness of websites seriously.

Don’t Ignore Schema and Map Listings

Online discovery is only 50% of the challenge for local businesses. Getting customers to walk through the door is another challenge that must not be left to chance. You can deal with this challenge by listing your business on as many GPS and Map services as you can and also using “Schema”. With Schema, you will be able to, with some coding, add more data to search results relating to your local business. It allows you to enter contact details, ratings and reviews in search results. This is a great way to improve the number of real-life visitors you get from the search engines.