If you are reading this article it is because you are interested in local SEO and you want your business to appear in Google in the first results of your city.
It may also be that you do not know what I am talking about, in that case I will explain it to you, because it is essential that you use this SEO strategy as soon as possible if you want your company's website to gain positioning and your business to be the first result found. a user when searching for a service or product on the internet.
First of all, if you want to position your business in your city, you have to read this SEO Guide for beginners. From here, you can already know all the local positioning techniques in this article since you have many opportunities to greatly multiply the opportunities of your project.
Local SEO is a pending issue in many businesses and many times we try to position a project in Google for all of Spain and even Latin America and we do not realize that SEO applied to a specific location is essential and also in many occasions it is easier to get out in the first Google results, let's see it.
In addition, mobile search results are increasingly geolocated.
If you have a business or a store in your city, it is taking time to use a series of techniques to gain positions on your website in your locality.
It does not matter if you are an SME or a large company, using local positioning is essential and an opportunity that you should take advantage of as soon as possible.
I am going to explain what you have to do to position your business in Google step by step quickly and easily.
There are no secrets but there are a series of factors that will make the local positioning of your business occur more or less quickly.
If you have a physical company or store and you have not heard of Local Seo, my recommendation is that you hire an SEO consultant who is capable of doing all the steps for your company to climb positions, this is recommended. If you want to jump into the puddle, I'll explain the necessary steps to make the most of local positioning.
Take note because by following all the steps, little by little you will enhance your brand and you will have another means of advertising the company and another monetization channel to create a profitable business.
What is local SEO
If it is still not clear to you, the definition of local Seo is simple, it can be said that it consists of a series of techniques and strategies that, used well, will make your business appear in the first Google results.
Not all projects are the same or have the same objectives, some do not need to reach all of Spain, even the next town on occasions, but it is essential that it be visible to the city where you live.
It is useless if, for example, you have a car workshop in Badajoz and the business website appears in the search results for Galicia, it doesn't make sense.
But imagine the advantages, sales and benefits that you would have if someone from your city searches in Google for "workshops in Badajoz" and your website appears first.
This is what local SEO consists of, using everything in your power to appear in search engines in two ways:
- In the first results of Google My Busines
- In the first organic positions
And not only that, if you combine it with an Adwords campaign, you could have up to three results on the first page of Google.
It is recommended that you sign up for My Business with the same Gmail account that you use for Google Analytics and Search Console.
How local positioning works
Local SEO will make your business appear first on Google. Are you not going to take advantage of it? I'll tell you how to do it step by step
I give you an example, imagine that I am in New York City (NYC) and that I need to go to a toy store in that city, I search in Google for "toy stores in new york city", and this one knows perfectly well that I am in that city at that time by ip tracking or even simply typing the word "toy stores" from the mobile device.
Google, the first thing that usually shows in its results are the toy stores that are best positioned in Google My bussines and then the websites of the toy stores ordered according to the value it gives them.
As I said, Google by geo-location already knows that I am in New York City (NYC) if I write the word toy stores in its search engine but this will show me different results.
If the search is from Dallas for example, there could be a contradiction between the search and the geolocation, in this case the results will be different and Google will give priority to the search.
You also have to take into account that the results that Google shows will be slightly different depending on the device you use, the browser and even depending on the browsing history.
The results that Google shows will be different for each location, browser or history that is used
How to do local SEO
Let's get to the interesting;
To do Local SEO you have to carry out a very simple methodical process, but it must be worked little by little.
It is important that the process you are going to apply is natural, progressive and constant.
You have a very good opportunity to sell in your city using Local Seo, you must take care of every minute detail for the method to work.
Depending on the sector, you will gain positions more or less quickly, you have to do things right and be patient until Google values the local job you have worked for, any optimization requires time.
We started
Local Web Architecture and Seo On page
If you have a website with a business focused on your city, you are taking time to apply all the steps that you are going to see.
I don't need to tell you how important it is that your website has a good architecture at the SEO level, it is very necessary that you prepare a good study of keywords to obtain the most searched keywords for which you want to position yourself.
That is, if you sell toys in Badajoz, it is normal for the keyword toy store and the word Badajoz to appear within your headings and texts of the page that you want to position locally, that is, use the keyword + city.
Example:
- Business + location: New York City (NYC) marketing agency
- Service + location: office cleaning New York City (NYC)
In addition, you must also include on the different pages or the one you want to position other semantic .and related keywords that support and reinforce the main keyword
Create a specific page focused on Local SEO
Think that we have to send signals to Google, this has to see when it crawls your site that the word toy store and the keyword New York City are elements that define the theme and location of your site.
Do not think that by inserting these words in excess, Google will position you before, but it is necessary that these keywords are used.
Google is increasingly smart and could position you without using the keyword of the city in the long term, but remember, Google has to help a little bit to follow a path that you must indicate by making it easy for them.
For this, it is a good idea to create a specific page that talks about the service offered by the business and that contains the keyword to be treated and that the url also contains these local keywords.
In that specific page you must include your city but without abusing it, Google already understands that you are in that locality, you do not have to repeat it every paragraph.
If it is important that you include your city in several sites on the web to specify more to the Google spiders that your website has a local business.
Address and telephone
It is very important that your website contains the name of your business, the address and the telephone number (this is known with NAP = name, address, phone )
It is also important that you add the email, city and a description that includes the keywords with which you want to position yourself locally.
A good location for these company data is usually the footer or footer, although also in contact or on the home page, but this information must be on the web, on all the pages if possible or on some specific ones that you want Google to consider as locally positionable.
It may also be a good idea to place the phone at the top near the contact section to tell Google that we are a local company.
This data must be the same that you will use for everything related to local SEO, both to give you in Google My Bussines (we will see it later) and to use it in the different local directories to receive force through your links, save it in a sheet of text
On-page SEO
As I have already told you, you must repeat the keyword on which you want to position your site, as well as the name of your locality, around 2% although there is no fixed rule for this percentage, increase more or less this value according to the niche in which you move and the use that the competition makes of it, but as I always tell you, you have to be natural.
In addition to these keywords they have to appear on your website:
- Meta tag Title: it is highly recommended to include the name of your city at the end of the title of the page that you want to position locally.
- Description meta tag: this description has to be the same as the one you will include in the different directories and Google my business (we will see it)
- H1: the h1 titles of each page to be positioned are an excellent claim to local positioning, as long as your website allows it for aesthetics,
- H2, h3…; Take advantage of these headings to insert keywords related to the main keyword that we want to position, it is a good idea to also include the city as much as possible.
- Url: it is important that several urls on your website contain keywords focused on local seo, but you have to be careful not to repeat them, for this use related words, you can create a couple of internal pages or a post to promote this local positioning.
- Content: you must include the keyword and the city in some parts of the web.
- Combination of keywords: it is important that combinations are made with the local words that you want to position, this is important not only to give more naturalness but also to take advantage of the anchor text of the internal link to enhance local SEO.
- Images: it is important that some of the images on your website and in particular those of the page to which you want to apply Local SEO, have a name and an alt assigned with the word to position, a good example is keyword + city.
It is also important that these images are geolocated as they help the SEO of the company
How do you do that? very simple, I'll explain it to you:
How to Geolocate Images for a Local Business
To geolocate images, access the Geoimgr tool , in it you will be able to upload the image you want in jpeg format and when assigning the physical address, this tool will show the Google Maps map, giving you Longitude and latitude values.
You also have to assign a name for the document and another for the description of the image, when you save the photo you will have these geolocated data.
It is as simple as uploading a photo, enlarging the map that appears to us until we reach our location, clicking on “ tag photo! ”So that the web will add the altitude and longitude values to our photograph, which later we will download again from the web itself through the“ download photo! ".
To check once the image is saved that it is geolocated, you can see with the right mouse button (properties) how said data appears in the image fields.
That's it, now simply upload the photos to your site and you will be giving more local specific data to Google.
This process of geolocation of images will be the same that you will have to use to upload the same or other photos to Google My Business as we will see later.
Image geo-location is a factor that helps local positioning
This does not end here because we can give more clues to Google to tell Google where we are. We see it…
Kml + Geo sitemap
The process is simple and consists of uploading the KML file and a geositemap to the root of your website.
For this you can use the geositemapgenerator tool .
Here to follow a couple of steps:
- In the first step, you will have to fill in the name, description, address, city etc ... using the same NAP data used previously.
- A second step where to enter the url of the business website and the author
Once finished, you have to "click Generate" and two files will be downloaded.
These are the two files that must be uploaded to the root of the web .
Once uploaded you have to go to Google Search Console> sitemap and write geositemap.xml and upload this new sitemap by clicking on submit.
This is done, we will give even more clues to the search engines that your business is local and it will help the local seo.
Google tools for local SEO
Google Maps
The map with the location of your business has to be on your website, a good option is the contact page.
In this way we will tell Google that we have a physical business, it does not matter if you work from home, put that address, but remember, the one you use is the one that you will have to continue putting in all the sites for this local Seo strategy to work.
Local Guides
Signing up for Local Guides helps to some extent to boost your Local SEO, this other Google platform allows you to connect your Gmail account and give evaluations of other businesses, propose meetings or start conversations with other users in the environment.
Using it promptly to level up helps.
It all adds up and having your gmail account on this platform can help Google to give more value to your local intention.
Google My Bussiness
If you have a local business you have to be on this platform indisputably, whether you have a website or not, you must register as it is a very important advertising channel and the best thing is that it is free.
Google My Business is currently synchronized with Google Maps, thus allowing any user to have more possibilities to locate you more easily.
Registering with Google my bussines is very simple and you do not need to have a website to use this service, although having both options is ideal to take the top positions in your city since both platforms complement each other and help to scale positions .
What to keep in mind in Google My Business:
- Use the same address, phone, hours or description (with keywords) that you are using on the web if you have one.
- Use the publications option : periodically, with it you can promote products, offers or advertise events and it will be visible for 7 days, in this way Google will see that the tab is in constant movement and you can get visits to your website or possible sales.
- Upload geolocated images to the my business file to give you more specific local data.
- The 360º images are valued for the local SEO.
- Try to get positive reviews from customers with a 5-star rating and if the positive review includes a photo of the customer, even better.
It is important that you try to get these types of reviews, either naturally, offering product discounts in exchange for a review, contests or even end up buying positive reviews.
Do not be afraid to ask for reviews from a client who you think has been satisfied with your work, if this has been the case, surely he will have no problem writing it, yes, make it easy for him and do not waste his time.
Structured Data Bookmarks for Local Businesses (schema.org)
If you want search engines to value your business at the local Seo level, it is important that we attend to the technical part and use structured data.
There are several ways to bookmark data with schema.org to help Google understand that your website is geared in part to local business.
You can insert this structured data in several ways:
- In Google Search Console : the simplest way, to do this, go to "data markers" and indicate that you are going to highlight the data for local companies, assign the address, telephone etc ... and that's it.
Another much simpler and more effective alternative is to use the Rank Math plugin that allows you to create a schema locally quickly without complications.
- Manually: for this you can generate a script with Json-LD that you can insert inside the head tag in the header.php folder.
The local code to be inserted, you can create it on platforms like Jamesdflynn or in Technical seo
To validate if the structured data is well created you can use the Schema Validator.
You can use metadata but Json-ld is data that Google assimilates very well and the generated script does not affect the loading speed of the web .
The schema is simpler than it seems and it simply consists of using one of these tools and filling in the data depending on whether the business is a restaurant, a clinic, a store etc ...
Local Directories and Linkbuilding
The directories lately have been very persecuted by Google when considering them a spam site, in local SEO it is different, you are looking to advertise your business on the internet, it should be seen naturally, especially in directories focused on promoting local businesses.
In any case, I always recommend, placing the data and links on these sites has to be done naturally and progressively.
One piece of advice is that before signing up, make sure that the directory is reliable and has some authority.
Recommended general directories for local SEO
- QDQ
- Yellow Pages
- Foursquare
- Citiservi
- Guiaespana.com
- Starofservice
It is important that you make sure that these directories are not penalized or have had a significant drop in traffic, in that case it is better not to use them.
Remember to include in each field of the different directories the data (address, telephone ...) in the same way that you have used in other sites, with the same spaces, capital letters, commas etc ...
Insert in each directory the url that you want to position locally, in this way you will get a backlink to your site, and although most of them will be nofollow, it is still interesting for your Linkbuilding strategy .
It is interesting that you also leave your data in specific directories of your subject, these types of links are usually seen in an even more natural way than the previous ones since they focus on the same categories of businesses in your locality.
Search in Google:
As always, you have to study your competitors and for this, what better than to do a search on Google with the name and street of your competitor.
This way you can see which directories your local competition is using.
You can also find local directories by typing in the search engine "directory-city name"
In the same way, it is interesting that you do a link study to see if you can also get links from a website or local newspaper.
For this you can do a study of backlinks in free tools such as opensite explorer or open link profiler or in ahfrefs (paid)
Linkbuilding
It is important to get links from local websites, this will reinforce the positioning since Google will give it greater value when considering that it comes from the same city.
In the same way, getting authority links from any site that reinforces the domain and points directly to the page that we want to position locally is also important.
conclusion
You are missing a unique opportunity to position your business or store on the internet if these web positioning strategies.
Local SEO positioning is a very profitable strategy that can distinguish you from the competition and take over the market for the most part,
As you have been able to read the article, the process of telling search engines that you have a physical business that you want to give visibility to is simple.
In your hand is to apply this series of steps that well applied will give a boost to your project since it is part of another source of visibility and sale.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that Google my business is only for physical stores, it does not have to be that way, it depends on the business it is almost always possible to use this free platform.
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