If you are a small or medium-sized business (SMB) owner looking to increase the footfall coming from localized search, you need to keep up with local SEO best practices. If you have been putting off local SEO fearing it will eat into all your time and resources, you can stop worrying right now. These quick and easy strategies for local SEO will help your business rank higher in no time:

Online directories and citation listings

Your first step toward acing local SEO should be correctly listing your business in the top online directories like Google My Business, Bing, Yelp, etc. It is also imperative to get your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) and website URL on all major data aggregators, such as InfoGroup and Acxiom. Be consistent with the information you provide to these sites.

Optimization and populate

The next step would be to populate and optimize each section of the listing, including giving your business a carefully-worded description, high-quality images, hours of operation, payment modes, etc. A complete Google My Business profile increases the chances of your business getting features in top results of Google Maps also. So, when someone searches for ‘Digital Marketing Company in Noida’, Google Maps will show your listing right below the search box.

Getting local reviews

This is one of the major factors influencing the rankings in local searches. You must request and encourage your visitors to leave a review, especially if you are in a service-oriented industry. Give incentives to your customers to write reviews, if you must. For example, you can have a lucky draw every month to reward a random reviewer.

Local content is king

Having unique content that is relevant to your target audience is key. You can add business-specific phrases – like ‘Digital Marketing Services Noida’ – to your content, but never cram pages with keywords. Having a blog that talks about local community news or events is a good way to get the attention of search engine algorithms. You should also work on quality link building, instead of throwing random links into your content.

Leverage social media

The first thing to consider is that not all social media channels will benefit you equally. So, choose the ones you want to invest in carefully. Mention your NAP in your profile bio and link it to your business website. Post regularly and keep a track of how your posts are performing. Promote your local content aggressively to engage your audience and rank higher. If you cannot manage your social media in-house, you can always hire a reputed digital marketing company to do that for you.

For more FREE tips on optimizing your business for local SEO, get in touch today!