While most businesses dream of national or global exposure, what every small or emerging business should know is never to underestimate the power your local market has to help your business grow and succeed. Local SEO is essential to let locals know that you are nearby with the products or services they need. Many may never have heard about you until you show up highly in search engine result pages for your location.

Hubbard’s 2060 Digital Cincinnati knows all about the power of SEO. Our expertise, attention to detail, and phenomenally talented team of professionals are the reason we were awarded Top Digital Agency. As a Premier Google Partner, we know how to optimize your digital strategy. Keep reading to learn the top five SEO tips we recommend for increasing your search engine rankings in your local market.

SEO Tips To Help You Outrank Your Competitors on Search Engine Results

A local SEO strategy to outrank your competition in SERPs delivers more traffic to your website or storefront, increasing leads and conversions. Focusing on your local market and increasing your brand recognition gives you an advantage over national brands. But what, exactly, does local SEO mean? It means making your website more visible on search engine results, particularly in your local area.

Let’s say you own a florist shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, specializing in weddings and events. If a resident Googles florists in Cincinnati, they are likely to get many results. These results can include aggregator sites and other florists from all over the nation who are not in or from Cincinnati but simply deliver there. However, if you’ve put the right local SEO strategies in place, you will show up at the top as a local florist who can meet in person with your clients.

Finding the right combination of techniques to put your business at the top of the rankings takes knowledge, expertise, and strategy. When you are growing a business, do you really have time to experiment with your SEO? Working with a highly experienced digital marketing partner eliminates trial and error or guesswork. We use the following SEO tips with other digital strategies to get you results that put you on track to meet or exceed your goals.

Create a High-Quality Home Page

Your home page is often the first impression of your business for virtual visitors. They are often looking on their mobile devices and want to quickly determine who you are, where you are, and if you offer the goods or services they are looking for. Then they want to see your value proposition. In other words, why do you offer that should make them choose you over your competition?

Your home page should position you not only as a professional but a leader in your field. That means having high-quality, engaging content that is relevant to what the customer needs. It should be concise while still conveying the critical details of your business using the most important keywords so that Google can position you correctly. Don’t forget other details like page title tag, meta description, and header tag.

Build a Webpage for Every Product, Service, and Location

If you are attempting to do SEO on your own, you may be tempted to put the basics about your business on one page, including multiple locations or general statements about your offerings, and call it done. While being concise is among the SEO tips for keeping your home page readable, it doesn’t work for giving your visitors a good customer experience or improving your SEO rankings. Consolidation isn’t the best SEO tactic if you want to end up at the top of the SERPs and beat your competitors.

Structuring your website to have individual pages for each location, product, and service allows you to leverage the powerful Google algorithms to position your business more accurately and highly in the search results. Done correctly, it provides a better sitemap for all search engines. Embedding geo-specific keywords within the metadata and content connect each of your locations with its unique services, products, or promotions. That means customers searching for specific items near them will find exactly what they want: your business. Click here to learn more about website development to grow your business.

Claim and Complete Your Google My Business Page

Google My Business is a free tool from Google that allows you to manage your online presence so that customers can find you in search results. It optimizes your presence across Google, including Search and Maps. Your GMB page is a critical tool for your business, ensuring it shows up in local searches with the information most critical for your potential customers to know about you. Making sure it is up-to-date and accurate is key.

Your business may already have a basic, bare-bones GMB page. By claiming it, you have the ability to administrate and edit as needed, ensuring the details are factual and current. If you have multiple locations, claim your page for each. Each of your GMB pages should have as much information as you can provide to improve your SERP ranking.

Get Your Business Into Local Directories

Of all the SEO tips, building citations and getting established in local directories can return the highest ROI. It takes time and effort, but it is key to ensure you have the right NAP information on each directory listing and citation. Having a consistent name, address, and phone number help optimize your online presence for local searches, as Google seeks accuracy and consistency across listings. Because it can be a time and resource-intensive undertaking, many seek out the help of a digital marketing partner for this task.

Make Sure Your Social Media Pages Point to Your Physical Location

Another of the most important SEO tips for you to consider is ensuring your social media pages align with your brand and your physical location. It not only allows you to be more location-specific with your marketing efforts but helps you develop campaigns and promotions for each target audience. Having a solid social media strategy should be complementary to your overall digital strategy. Social media marketing can help improve your local rankings when they point customers to your location.

Beat Your Competitors Out With the Experts at 2060 Cincinnati!

Getting your business’s digital marketing strategy right can be overwhelming without the help of an experienced digital marketing partner. When you are ready to outrank your competition by showing up at the top of local searches, it’s time to call in the professionals at Hubbard 2060 Cincinnati. Get back to taking care of your business while we do what we do best. Contact us today or give us a call at 513-699-5100 so that we can get started designing a strategy for your business that will beat your competitors and create more leads and conversions for you.

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