What local SEO factors you should take into consideration in 2017

SEO is more important than you would imagine and we have talked about this in several articles here. For now, I will talk about what you should take into consideration for 2017 when you implement your local SEO strategy.

Let’s see why you should work harder on your local SEO strategy:

1 - Local customers are turning to the internet to find local businesses — on desktops AND mobile devices

2 - Local search marketing is highly targeted and timely;

3 - Highest conversion levels of all local advertising channels;

4 - Mobile Internet is Growing;

5 - Great return on investment;

6 - Only 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business local listing;

7 - Many of the best local SEO opportunities are FREE;

8 - Only 20% of Adults Get News from Print Newspapers;

9 - 88% of Local Consumers Trust Online Business Reviews;

10 - Local Customers Rely on the Internet to Find Information About Your Business.

Now you see the reasons why you should invest more time in your local SEO strategy, let’s see how you could do it and what tools you need.

1 - Google My Business Account

Google My Business is like a database of registered businesses. For local SEO, it’s the top performing local SEO ranking factor. If you have a client and his business doesn’t have a Google My Business account, you should explain to him the benefits of an MB account.

This is the first thing you should have to do to improve his local rankings: create for him a Google My Business Account.

A Google My Business Account will give you the opportunity to have people:
Read your reviews;
Call you;
Get directions to your business;
Send people to your website.

Maybe it won’t drive a lot of traffic to your website, but it will drive a lot of income to your business. Lots of the SEO improvements you make on your website will impact how you rank. Let’s find out a few tweaks you can make yo be sure you rank a little higher:

1 - Register the business address in the city you want to rank in;
2 - You can organize your clients into categories to make it more simple;
3 - You must verify your Google My Business listing;
4 - You should optimize for keyword variations as much as possible.

2 - Create inbound links to your website

Inbound links are something normal when we speak about SEO and ranking process. If you don’t know how to build non-industry internal links, we will give you some guidelines:

Think differently about relevance;
Clubs and organisations will help your brand a lot if you get involved with them;
Research whitepaper resource is a plus;
Do something newsworthy;
Get some product reviews.

3 - Proximity

What’s proximity? Proximity is that distance from the location where the person searched for your niche and where your business located. This process of distance and proximity is among the top influencing factors in local SEO, in this moment.

4 - Product and Service Keywords should be present into your listing

The presence of keywords are very important in your content on your website. We all know this, but many trade based businesses contain their keywords in the name of the brand in Google My Business.

5 - Click through rate improved

A normal rank in the SERPs will be clicked on the link that takes them to your site. But if we speak about Google My Business, we should think at:

Clicking to make a phone call;
Clicking to find directions to your location;
Clicking to see the website;
Clicking to read the reviews.