Just like with regular SEO, local SEO has many misconceptions about strategy, tactics, and what should be happening when you put together a campaign. With this post, I aim to dispel the myths and misconceptions by going through every part of the process from beginning to end, starting with a local competition analysis. From there we will talk about the building blocks of local SEO: keyword targeting, technical SEO, content, and links.
When approaching any SEO endeavor, it is best to approach with the mindset of not gaming Google, but using white hat, holistic optimization best practices that will help make your site stand the test of time. Without further ado, I’d like to get right into it, because this guide is long. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and feel free to comment, like, and share when you’re done.
A neighborhood rivalry investigation can represent the moment of truth your nearby SEO crusade. By dissecting your opposition, you can get some answers concerning the most vital things they are doing to accomplish natural results. From this opposition investigation, you can push ahead realizing that the data you have will help you accomplish the outcomes that you are searching for.
By taking a gander at substance, it is conceivable to make sense of: what points the opposition is expounding on, what number of words are they composing all things considered, and the recurrence of their substance upgrades. By taking a gander at substance altogether, you can pick up an unmistakable comprehension of what they are doing as such you can adjust your system and beat theirs appropriately.
By taking a gander at connections, it is conceivable to make sense of things like what number of connections the opposition is getting, what sort of connections, who they’re getting their connections from, how frequently they are getting joins, and when they are normally getting their connections.
By taking a gander at on location elements like on-page streamlining, it is likewise conceivable to build up a system that will outlive and beat their neighborhood technique.
The elements you break down in this nearby rivalry investigation will help you make a triumphant methodology.
Focusing on your market, your niche, and your locale, you will want to perform a deep local competition analysis. On the surface, a local competition analysis will include the following factors: content, links, and on-page SEO. Diving deeper, the local competition analysis should include the following in order to gain a clear picture of the local competitiveness of the market. Please make note that not all of these factors will increase local rankings – some will, but they are here in order to help you create a winning local strategy based on everything the competition is doing.
Who is writing the content?
What is the content about?
When is the content being written?
Where is the content focused (locally)?
Why is the content being written?
On-Page Technical SEO Includes:
High quality, validated HTML and CSS coding
Schema.org coding for local SEO
Locally-optimized title tags
Locally-optimized meta descriptions
Locally-optimized URLs
Locally-optimized on-page copy with tight topical and keyword focus
What You are Attempting to Obtain During the Competition Analysis
This competition analysis should focus on the top ten results on Google withing your local search engine edition. Do a search for your local area + keyword phrase in an industry you are targeting. For example, “seo company in ahmedabad”.
always makes sure your site is crawlable from a local standpoint. When using highly targeted, niche keyword phrases, use them in the URL as you name your page. If your site is not crawlable and technically accurate, you can’t expect Google to be able to rank it appropriately.
Yes, I realize what most SEOs are going to say: high quality, valid HTML and CSS coding does not matter. While Google doesn’t have any such requirements in place, high quality coding does matter and can help rankings significantly as a quality attribute. When you code correctly, you reduce the chance of the browser having to “guess” what you’re trying to have it render. When you code and develop a website correctly, you reduce page speed and browser render speed. Page load time has become a factor in Google’s ranking factors.
Regardless, high quality, validated HTML and CSS coding should always be the end result of your site’s development work. If your competitors’ sites in the competitor analysis do not have such validation or high quality coding in their framework, then you have an attribute you can use against them – make sure your site’s coding and page speed is far better than theirs in all areas: well-optimized code, make server bottlenecks non-existent, etc.
Every site being optimized on a local basis should have locally focused title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs. What does locally focused mean? This means, if you are trying to optimize for keyword phrases like “Garden Grove personal injury lawyer” you should be using the city name in your target keywords.
Keywords and topical relevance are important factors to ensuring that your on-page optimization is properly targeted and fully optimized. When you perform your keyword research, you are looking for keywords that have a good search volume (above 70 or so average searches per month is a healthy number to shoot for), lower competition, and highly targeted niche keywords. A locally focused version of a keyword phrase for lawyers may look like this: Fountain Valley personal injury lawyers. If you try targeting personal injury lawyers by itself without a local focus, good luck. It will take massive amounts of links, authority building, and market penetration in order to expand to the type of reach that you want your marketing to accomplish.
When doing keyword research like this, it is important to consider the size of the market as well. If you don’t consider the size of a market like Los Angeles (with millions of pages in Google’s index and businesses that have already built up their authority), you will be in for a rude awakening if you promise a client they will see rankings in Los Angeles within three months. Not going to happen. It will likely take a year or more to achieve results on the first page of Google in a market the size of Los Angeles. And that is assuming that you have what it takes to beat the competition at their link acquisition and other optimization efforts.
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Local SEO is a lot different from your average SEO campaign, and the local search results are changing more rapidly than any other. So we follow techniques at Radon Media that help us getting good Citation Score:
Get your Google My Business page set up. Also Bing Places and Yahoo Listings.
Optimize all of your landing pages with local keyword data.
Ensure your NAP listings remain consistently across the web.
Generate genuine reviews from your customers on Google, BIng and Yelp.
Optimize your search engine snippets.
Focus on localized link building.
Lcal SEO helps to getting backlinks