Boost your Google rankings with these 7 easy to implement Local SEO content tips and attract more visitors to your website. The good thing is that you don’t need any coding or prior SEO experience to execute any of these tips.
Google uses over 200 signals to decide how to rank websites in its search results. Some of these signals come directly from your website content. In the SEO industry, they are known as On-page signals because they are directly located on the content of your pages. The good news is, they are easy to implement and although you might not climb up to the number 1 spot on Google when you optimize them, it will definitely help you on your journey there.
Improve your page loading speed
Your page loading time is important for a few reasons. First of all, if your load speed is too slow, Google will recognize this, and it will harm your ranking. But a slow website will also impact the way your website visitors engage with your pages. As a result, those negative interactions will hurt your ranking too.
RelatedStories
How slow is too slow?
Research shows 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. What’s even more shocking is that 80% of those visitors won’t return to that website. This is terrible for your SEO ranking because it ultimately kills traffic to your site. But on the flip side, if your page loads fast, people will keep coming back. Google’s algorithm will recognize your website’s popularity and adjust your search ranking accordingly.
[READ MORE: Why we prefer dollars to other currencies]
Embed a Map on Your Contact Page
Embed a Google Map on your “Contact Us” page by searching for your business on Google Maps, then clicking “Share” on the left, and then “Embed” to get the code on your website and make sure that every page of your site has your business name, physical address, email, and phone number with local area code.
Optimizing your URL, or if you prefer the address of your page, to target a specific city where your business is not located:
How?
Let’s say you’re a plumber and you want to rank for the keyword “Plumber Yaba” which is an area in Lagos.
You should add the keyword “Plumber Yaba” in your URL to help Google understand this page is about, you guessed it but be careful not to be too spammy. If your domain name already includes part of the keywords, do not repeat it again in the URL.
Optimize the meta title of your page
The Meta title of your page is the HTML code that shows the name of the page in your browser like here and is also what is used by search engines to display results in search like here. The meta title of a page is in the source code of the page and can easily be updated manually depending on what Content management system you use.
This is an important component of your content for multiple reasons because:
- it plays a small part in rankings;
- people are more likely to click on an appealing title than a bad one which will drive more traffic to your site.
It is therefore very important to optimize it.
How? Do you optimize it?
- Include your target keyword in your Meta title but once again don’t spam it.
- When you write a Meta title for your page think “Newspaper headline”, would you click on it yourself?
- Don’t go over the character limit otherwise your title will be truncated. To make sure you don’t go over the limit, use this title tag checker tool https://www.portent.com/serp-preview-tool.
Here is a good example of a title:
‘’Best pizza in LAGOS – World class dough topped with fresh ingredients’’
Here is a bad one
‘’Lagos best pizza’’
Add a killing meta description to your page
Your Meta description is the little snippet of copy you see under the headline in search engine results. Like your page title, the description is also a piece of HTML code you can easily access from your content management system. And although it has absolutely zero impact on your rankings as such, writing a killer description that encourages people to click through will drive more traffic to your site.
There is, however, speculation that Google’s results with a higher click through rate will be rewarded with better rankings so you shouldn’t ignore it.
Use Keywords in Image File Names
Use keywords in image file names when relevant, and the titles and descriptions you use when uploading those images and videos to your Google My Business page.
Choose Your Category Carefully
Your category, chosen from Google’s extensive list, is a deciding factor in whether your business will be deemed relevant to a search. Make sure to choose the category that best fits your business.
Get Reviews
Businesses with more reviews are likely to rank higher. Get reviews by asking your existing customers to review you.
Respond to Reviews
You will also want to respond to both negative and positive reviews because owner response could boost your ranking as well.
[READ ALSO: Difference Between Fixed Deposit and Treasury Bills]
Evaluate Rankings
Once you have changed what is above and still notice your rankings are low, then you might need to have your business cited more. You can do this two ways.
- Find out where those competitors who rank higher than you are cited.
- Do a search for their business and if they come up in a directory, find out if your business is listed there. If it’s not, add it.
