How Your Local Business Is Sabotaging Itself in Terms Of SEO

Native SEO (search engine optimization) can provide the edge you might want to surpass your opponents. It does not matter if your goal is to reach the whole nation or just aiming towards a small audience.

 
Because unless you keep local SEO in check and avoid classic local search engine optimization mistakes, you will not reach any of the two.
To get essentially the most out of local SEO, you want the proper mixture of each on and off-page web optimization, hyperlink constructing, social media advertising & marketing, voice search optimization, and many others.

 
With so many components to think about, it is no surprise that so many small companies forget to invest in content optimization and go with paid advertisement or no investment in search engines at all.

 
For those who have carried out your web optimization ABCs, but still end up caught and getting nowhere on native searches, you could be certainly making one of the next 5 local SEO mistakes

1. Searching for backlinks within improper locations

Backlinks are one of many top 3 ranking factors. In fact, I would go as far as placing it just as important as creating quality content.
Google takes them under consideration when rating an internet site. Nevertheless, to work, backlinks should be extremely related to your pages and should not come from a place like Fiverr. Another important thing to consider is that pages have more value that huge unrelated global directories.

A better tactic is to hunt referrals or possible link opportunities through manual outreach. Search for native companies or organizations with may add worth to your organization. Associate with them to extend your scope.

Another thing you can and should do is to run your competitor’s URL through a keyword research tool in order to see which links are linking to them. After that, get an excel file with all the names and start contacting each referring domain not only related to your niche, but also (hopefully) related to your location.

2. Having a poorly optimized site

With the evolution of mobile devices, online searches slowly transitioned until a “mostly mobile” type of queries. To seize these users and solve their problems, your blog or website ought to be optimized for UX (user experience), which implies having a responsive structure, a clean & understandable look, and fast loading times.
When reviewing your website’s interface, try to enter your user's head and simulate a logging session.
After that, be sure to ask yourself:

Does the user know what the page is about in less than 5 seconds?
Are your landing pages simple to navigate and skim?
Are there enough images to make the reading easy to the eyes?
Is the font I am using easy to read?
Make sure that your guests can discover what they are searching for rapidly and add social media sharing buttons to extend the attain of your merchandise.

3. Not Investigating Who Your Online Competition Is

Prior to now, an easy Google search on your local opponents would provide you with all the data you needed to start a content strategy.
These days, Google takes so many aspects under consideration (location, personalization, intent matching, and many others) that you make you rank different pages and different keywords in a variety of positions depending on the language, location, search intent and device the user is using to make the search.
To seek out your true native opponents, do a Google search for every focus keyword your company is trying to rank for, and start filling a spreadsheet as detailed as you can. While you are at it, look at the type of content that they are ranking with; are they:
Case studies?
Blog posts?
List articles?
Services page?
The power is on the data so do not get too lazy about it.

You will have to repeat this in all the areas your company has a presence on, or at least every place you wish to rank on. Once you have gone through every area and studied every competitor you found, you will have a clearer view on who your competitors are, and how to outrank them.

4. Neglecting your NAP citations

Citations are mentions of your enterprise across the internet. The term stands for Name, Address and Phone number— and they should always be typed and found both by users and Google in the same. No spelling mistakes, no different addresses, NAPs must always be congruent. Based on Moz, citations are one of many top-ranking components for native searches, so constructing your citations and guaranteeing they've consistent NAP info will do quite a bit to your Google rating.

I would suggest you have a word file at your desktop and fill all the information that directories such as Google My Businesses or Yelp ask for. Through this small action, you will not ever forget or cause incongruencies across the different platforms you wish to sign up for.

5. Forgetting to optimize your photos

Local searches are not restricted to textual content. Due to the blended nature of search results, customers can see pictures on the SERPs and Google images. So, what better approach to stand out from your opponents than by having a gorgeous picture show up whenever they do a search?
Since engines like google can’t see photos like we do (They read the code and content from it) , you can potentially rank inside the image results through proper addition of keywords to alt tags, picture names, file name, and textual content inside the image.

Keep in mind that the more these meta descriptions and alternatives texts get associated to the key phrases searched, the higher the chance that your photos will pop up within the search results.

Though native web optimization is not that difficult, most small companies fail to take full benefit of its numerous advantages. While this is sad to hear as someone who works on SEO, it is a good advantage for those of you who take the time to visit websites such as this one to learn about good SEO practices.

In case you have any doubts related to this topic, or SEO in general, be sure to contact me through the comment section, my website, or even through my SEO podcast which can be found in any major directory as “Frugal SEO”.