4 Factors That Play a Large Role in Your Local SEO – What to Know
No matter what size your company is, large or small, SEO is always a valuable player when it comes to making yourself visible to your audience. Without SEO, even if you offer the best product in your industry, the chances are that you’re losing out on more than half of your potential customers who are going to your competitors for the sole reason that they do not realize you exist.
That said, if you’re a small business, your SEO strategy won’t exactly be the same as a large enterprise. While they’re busy ranking on a global scale, you’re going to be ranking locally. Why? There are many reasons for this, one of them being lesser competition.
That said, as a small business, what local SEO factors must you pay attention to that affect your ranking the most? Here they are:
1. Your Reviews
There are two things a search engine will take about your reviews: the many reviews you have, and how high your scores are. Another factor that still plays a role, albeit not as much as the first two, would be how often you get reviews.
For example, a company with over a hundred 5-star reviews will rank higher than another competitor with only 50 5-star reviews. However, a company with the same amount of reviews and rating as its competitor, the only difference being that the competitor is being reviewed much more recently and frequently, will be ranked higher as well.
2. Your Location Page
A location page is vital to any website that’s built for any business. It is not the same as a contact page. Instead, a location page contains much more thorough information on how to get to and contact your business. It will include information, such as your email address, telephone number, opening and closing hours, physical address, a geolocation schema, and any other location-related information.
Do note that if you have multiple locations for your business, you will need a separate location page for each of them.
3. Your Social Media Presence
As you might know, your social media presence is vital to the performance of your business. After all, with over thousands and even millions of people on these platforms every single day, it is an excellent source of potential customers.
How does this affect your local SEO? Well, your business can get ranked on whether you have a social media presence. That means that you will be listed higher by merely having a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account for your business. The best part about this is that creating an account is free. However, you’re given the option to invest in your social media efforts, such as opting for PPC ads.
4. Your NAP
Do you need a NAP? Your business sure does. NAP is an acronym for Name, Address, and Phone Number, three of the essential pieces of information you need to have consistent on all your business platforms.
That means that if you have a website on multiple platforms, or have an account in different places, your business information should remain the same. For example, if your company is named “JIP Food and Services,” that name must stay consistent everywhere else your business shows up. It will allow the search engine to send all the right signals for your business. Moreover, a consistent NAP also makes it a lot easier for customers to find you.
Conclusion
These factors, as well as quite a few more, such as links, citations, and the likes, are what you seriously need to pay attention to when trying to build your local SEO strategy. Failure to do so in any of these aspects could spell trouble for your business as it gets overtaken by competitors that do.
That said, if you do not have the means to optimize your local SEO all by yourself, we highly recommend working with third-party SEO solutions to get the job done for you! With their skills and experience, they’ll help you rank higher than you could have all by yourself.
Are you looking for a digital marketing agency to help you with your SEO needs? Contact us to see how we can help.
