9 Effective Tips to Boost Local Rankings
To help you boost your local search rankings, we’ve gathered nine expert tips from founders, CEOs, and marketing professionals. From increasing reviews and ratings to gaining local inbound links, discover the top strategies these industry leaders recommend for improving your local rankings.
- Increase Reviews and Ratings
- Engage With Google Reviews
- Build Local Citations
- Participate in Local Events
- Strengthen Reputation and Community
- Get Listed in Local Directories
- Optimize Google Maps Profile
- Use Location-Focused Keywords
- Acquire Local Inbound Links
Increase Reviews and Ratings
One tip to improve your local rankings is to focus on getting more reviews and increasing your rating. This can help increase your visibility and credibility with potential customers, as well as improve your search engine rankings.
Encourage happy customers to leave reviews on popular platforms such as Google My Business or Yelp, and promptly respond to any negative reviews to address concerns and show a commitment to customer satisfaction.
Joe Kevens
Founder and Director of Demand Gen, B2B SaaS Reviews
Engage With Google Reviews
One of the best tips for improving your local search ranking is to respond to Google reviews, both bad and good. Google is one of the most popular platforms for online reviews. It generates more reviews than its major competitor, Facebook. Reviews influence consumer behavior, meaning they directly affect the conversion rate.
Responding to reviews shows you value your customers and what they think about your business. When you build trust with your customers, Google and other search engines will automatically trust you. This will increase the visibility of your business and the chances of customers doing business with you.
Young Pham
Founder and Project Manager of Biz Report, Biz Report
Build Local Citations
A vital aspect of improving your local ranking is local citation building. These are mentions of your business name, address, phone number, and website (NAPW) on other websites, such as local directories, review sites, and social media platforms.
Having consistent NAPW across the internet can improve your local search visibility and help customers find your business more easily. Ensure that your business listings are accurate and update them regularly. Focus on getting backlinks from local sites to help signal to search engines that your business is relevant in the local area.
Basana Saha
Founder, KidsCareIdeas
Participate in Local Events
Hosting or taking part in local events or sponsoring local community events can improve your local rankings by increasing your brand awareness in the local community and building relationships with potential customers.
It may also result in backlinks to your website and social media accounts, which can help improve your local search engine rankings. Many marketing activities, like content marketing or social media marketing, can be strategized to revolve around these events, which will certainly help you with improved local rankings.
Ajay Prasad
President and CEO, GMR Web Team
Strengthen Reputation and Community
A powerful way to improve your local rankings is by strengthening your reputation and developing a consistent regimen to sustain that.
One approach is by creating a community and maintaining authentic relationships with the market that you serve. This can help boost customer confidence and encourage them to show proof of how your product or service meets its purpose or, better yet, is highly beneficial to them.
Climbing to the top through a strong reputation builds the integrity of your brand.
Tristan Harris
Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Agency
Get Listed in Local Directories
If you can get listed and mentioned in local directories, Google will recognize your website in relation to a specific location. Several links on relevant websites and lists focused on your location can help you stand out for that specific area.
Look for local directories that list companies like yours, provide an opportunity for you to have your company mentioned alongside a specific location, and provide links in articles that mention an actual space.
It’s a great way to get backlinks and improve your local rankings!
Yeonsil K.
Founder and CEO, Home Spritz
Optimize Google Maps Profile
Put more attention on your business profile on Google Maps (e.g., Google My Business). Regular publications, announcements, photo galleries for your business ins and outs, and detailed profile descriptions are a must-have for local ranking. And customer reviews, which are published there, are among the influencing factors as well.
Motivate your customers to share their opinions and add more remarks about your local business, and this will be a good start. There is no need to create long posts specifically for Google Maps. Announcements of your website publications work fine, attracting more visitors to your domain. But a great website with relevant content is the way to keep them informed and motivated to explore your domain.
Olga Bolgurtseva
Marketer and SEO, Serokell
Use Location-Focused Keywords
If your business focuses on local clients, edit your website’s copy to reflect that.
Google crawls through your website regularly to understand your website and what you’re selling or offering.
Using location-focused keywords can help Google understand you’re working locally and rank you higher when someone is looking for a local business. Include location-focused keywords in your copy, meta title, and title tags.
Inbar Madar
Founder and Business Consultant, M.I. Business Consulting
Acquire Local Inbound Links
One tip to improve local rankings is to focus on getting local inbound links. These are links from other websites in your local area that point to your website, and they can have a significant impact on your local search rankings.
One way to get local inbound links is to reach out to other businesses and organizations in your community and offer to collaborate on a project or event.
By building relationships with other local businesses, you can increase the likelihood of them linking to your website, which can help improve your local search visibility.
Ryan Flannagan
CEO and Founder, Nuanced Media
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