The Essential Guide to Local SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has become a pillar of the modern digital economy. Generating organic traffic to your website or other online channels through search engines with strategic writing, backend programming and more is vital to staying competitive in the 21st century business landscape. However, with the consistent rise of AI-slop content clogging the search engines, along with the localised nature of many businesses, sometimes a general SEO approach isn’t sufficient, with local SEO best practices being necessary.

Learning how to properly approach London, Bristol or Manchester SEO (for example) is essential to businesses that rely on physical storefronts or limited areas of service. This blog will offer the essential practices to ensure your business will show itself to people searching for location-specific goods or services. 

Google Business Profile techniques

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) needs to be created with localised searches in mind. It’s important to fill your details in accurately and completely, including elements like: 

• Business name
• Physical address (even if you run the business from home)
• Phone number

(The three of these elements being consolidated as NAP)

• Website address
• Hours of operation
• Category of service provision

All of this information, especially your NAP, needs to be consistent across your various online platforms, along with any directories your business shows up on. Other local GBP optimisation techniques include uploading high-quality photos of your business, regularly posting local updates and encouraging/responding to customer reviews.

Remember, if attempting to enact local SEO for multiple locations, you will need to create distinct listings for each of them. 

On-page local SEO

Content structure is a massive part of on-page optimisation, as any local SEO company will tell you. But there’s more to reaching your specific audience than following the typical construction of a blog or web page. One such important element is including location-specific keywords across prose, title tags and metadata. 

With this in mind, it’s also logical to create locally relevant content, like blogs or news announcements about the local market, history or upcoming events. 

Backend optimisation | Schema markup

A schema markup is a piece of additional backend code that attaches to your HTML to allow search engines better understand your business. It can be used to better indicate what it is you do, key details about the business and, of course, its location. 

Link building

Link building is a huge element of any good SEO strategy, and can be leveraged effectively to make an impact locally. Acquiring links from other local businesses, community forums and organisations is a great way to build a relevant profile in your area. Remember, keeping things industry relevant will only strengthen your authority online. A local SEO agency should be able to secure these links for you if you’re unaware of where to start.

Final thoughts

At the end of the day, if you follow these best practices, the impact on your business should come down to aspects like: 

• Distance to the searcher
• Your relevance to their search
• How prominent your business is in the market context

With the right local infrastructure, you can start to truly make an impact in your home marketplace. If you’re unsure of how to enact the guidance in this blog, why not enlist the help of professional local SEO services? It could significantly speed up the process and allow you to mark your territory much more efficiently.