3 Local SEO Mistakes You Must Absolutely Avoid – What to Know
Especially for smaller businesses, local SEO is perhaps the best way to make use of SEO. After all, local SEO is beneficial mainly due to its affordability. And not just that, but there’s much less competition in local SEO, making it easier to create a strategy compared to if you were to compete globally. Overall, local SEO will bring in far more results. And even better, one can work with an affordable local SEO agency to help optimize your strategies!
However, mistakes are inevitable, and there are plenty of mistakes that even the best digital marketers make when it comes to local SEO. We’ve listed the most common ones below, so that you can take note and avoid them at all costs:
1. Forgetting maintain your website’s SEO
As you might know, SEO isn’t a one-time job. It’s more of a continued effort to keep your site optimized. This is essential as search engines like Google also regularly change their methods of ranking sites, meaning that you’ll need to frequently adapt to these changes. Unfortunately, because this takes a lot of work to keep up, you might just end up forgetting or ignoring this task completely.
Therefore, don’t forget to maintain your website’s SEO. Since you’re just a small business, it can be expensive to hire people to work for you or train your staff to do so. As such, the best route to go about this is to work would be to work with a local SEO agency. Not only will you give yourself access to pros, but you don’t have much to do on your part as most of the upkeep will be left for the agency.
2. Stuffing your content with keywords
When it comes to SEO, keywords play a huge role. Not only should they be incorporated into your written content, but they should also be included in your headers, page titles, URL, and metadata.
One thing to note, though, is if you stuff keywords into your website, it’s known as “keyword stuffing.” Rather than positively boosting your website’s local rank, it can hurt it quite significantly. Keyword stuffing not only hurts the quality of the content you offer, but it can also be seen as cheating—something Google doesn’t take lightly. If you practice keyword stuffing, expect to find yourself at the bottom of your SERPs. As such, avoid keyword stuffing, and instead optimize your keywords and find different ways to get them across.
3. Being inconsistent with your NAP
Ever heard of NAP? It stands for your company’s name, address, and phone number. As you might be able to tell from the header, being inconsistent with your NAP can hurt your local SEO quite significantly. That’s because search engines like Google utilize NAP for location-based targeting.
Ensuring that your NAP is consistent is vital. This means that your social media, your website, and pretty much any other channel that you use to reach out to your customer must all present a consistent NAP. Inconsistencies not only confuse your customers, but Google might see your business as “fake,” pulling you down in rank.
Conclusion
The mistakes we’ve shared with you are just some of many that can occur when you’re working on your website’s local SEO. While some might not be as detrimental as others, the ones we’ve listed above can seriously hurt your efforts. To minimize the risk of committing any errors when it comes to local SEO, we always recommend that you work with a local SEO agency. With access to their help and expertise, you’ll get to enjoy the best of local SEO without having to worry about it yourself.
Are you looking for a local SEO agency in Greenwood to work with? We’re here for you! Get in touch with us today and let us know how we can help you.