Why this introduction? Recently a student and faithful reader of the blog, contacted us to ask us about the subject of local SEO. Indeed, it’s a topic that deserves some attention. As a matter of fact, 46% of all searches on Google are about local information, according to Social Media Today. It is, therefore, a subject that deserves to be well explained, so a series of articles, we believe, is necessary. Local SEO is a very specific branch of SEO. It is not a question of opposing them, but of understanding when to use one or the other, even if the two can act perfectly together.
There are a number of techniques to anchor your website in a geographical context, whether by taking actions directly within it (on-site) or also acting from outside (off-site).
A local SEO strategy On-Site…
The first action to take is to select the keywords that make a clear reference to your location or to your desired location. Prefer ” Library Kankakee “, rather than simply ” Library ” … You can imagine that this will naturally be more interesting for the different search engines. These keywords, concerning localities, must be part of the creation of quality content; they must not be “stuffed” into a page. Their positioning must be done with intelligence and discernment. When creating this quality content, which brings real information to users, it can be interesting to use GPS data. This can be found in the metadata present in your photos. This will allow the different engines to associate them more easily with specific locations. Moreover, adding specific structured data will send another signal to search engines.
If you want to do local SEO with specific countries, such as example, the USA or Russia, the use of the “lang” tag is obviously necessary but not only. It is necessary to send other signals, such as taking into account the local currency or optimizing the content for local search engines (like with Yandex for Russia). Moreover, it can be interesting to use a CDN, to improve the speed of your site in these areas or to create a URL with the local extension…
But you should not only create an on-site strategy but also go further by performing a real off-site optimization.
… developed by the Off-Site.
Making quality content that sends multiple signals to search engines is good. Having sites in your geographic area is better. The best thing is to get links from local sites and in your theme. Thus, having a link on a site of a business association, blogs of local events, the site of your city hall, or some local forums (triple attention: forums as directories of companies is to be used with caution. Many of them are of poor quality. It is, therefore, necessary to choose wisely. Otherwise, it can be penalized for your site).
You should also not forget to create a Google My Business listing (we will come back to this in a future article). This listing is essential for good local referencing. It is the easiest action to perform, but also the one that will give you the fastest results.
Conclusion
The different points mentioned in this introduction could and will be developed in future articles. Don’t forget that all SEO strategies, especially at the local level, are built on data, so Google Analytics is really important.
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