How to Rank for Local SEO

SEO, the art and science of ranking well in search engines, is one of those things that is easy to learn but hard to master, so let's focus on the easy part. You've got a website and it's not ranking in Google so well for whatever search term you are coveting. So what do you do?

Here are some simple things you can do, or even better tell someone else to do, to get your SEO strategy in gear:

1. Figure Out Your Target Audience
Until you know who you are targeting there is not much point in doing SEO. What words are your potential customers searching with when you want to be found? What are different modes are they in when they are searching? Are they ready to buy? Are they just doing research? Are they big spenders or are they cheapskates?
In general pick terms that match up with your service, that you think will convert and that have good search volume. To get an idea of search volume use Google's Adwords Keyword Tool which can be found here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2. Update Your Page Titles
The page title or "title tag" is perhaps the most important element of SEO. These are the words that appear at the top of your web browser when you are on a page. They are also the words that show up in the blue links in Google.
Put the search terms you are targeting in your page titles. In general keep the titles as brief as possible while at the same time making them appealing to searchers. No easy trick. Put the most important keywords at the beginning of the title. Don't worry about getting this perfect the first time as these are very easy to change and Google usually reacts to these changes quickly. And if your website developer tells you these are really hard or expensive to change, get a new website developer.

3. Make Each Page Title Unique
It is also important that all of the pages on your site have unique page titles. A quick way to see if you have more than one page with the same title is to do the following search in Google:
site:yoursite.com intitle"the words in the title"
The results of this search will show all of the pages in Google that have these words in the title. Once you identify these problem pages you can update the titles to make them unique. And make sure you add your city name to the titles as a lot of people search for your service in your city. It also couldn't hurt if you added some text to the actual page that uses the keywords you are targeting as well, in both the body of the text and the h1 tag, which is typically the headline of the page. If you don't have a page that targets the keywords you are using, add a new page that does. You also should check the meta descriptions tags of each page to make sure those are unique as well.

4. Add a Few Internal Links
The number of links a page gets from its own site and which pages link to it matters. The home page is the most important on the site and so the pages that are linked to from the home page are also important. Figure out which pages you want to rank the most (and don't say all of them) and add links from other pages to these pages. Make sure you use relevant keywords in the text of those links. For example if you want to rank the page for "pizza" use the word "pizza" in the text of the links that go to that page. Try not to use the exact same phrases in each link to make it look more "natural". For example in some of the links use "best pizza" or "man that's a helluva a pizza".

5. Add Your Address to Every Page
Ideally every page should have your address and phone number. This is helpful for users but it also reinforces your location to the search engines. If your business has multiple locations then you may want to create a separate page for each location or at least a single page that lists all locations. Make sure you link to these pages from as many pages as possible on the site. It would probably be a good idea to list as many location names as possible on the home page too.
There are hundreds of other ways to get links like writing articles for other sites, sending out press releases, adding your business info to social media sites, making a fool of yourself in public, etc.

It's important to understand that SEO is not a one-time thing just like running a TV ad campaign is not a one-time thing. It's a marketing tactic like any other. And as more people use the Web to find local services, SEO could become one of the more important components of your marketing plan. So get familiar with it today so you can master it tomorrow.


If you're looking for Search Engine Optimization Services Beast Media is a full services Internet Marketing agency that specializes in helping business with SEO, PPC Management, and large scale media buying.