Search engine optimization is the art of making your website seem “more important” than the thousands of others that exist on the Internet today. The goal is to have your website listed higher up in the search engine results pages (SERP) than other sites, which will result in more traffic for your site. Sounds easy enough, right? In truth, quality SEO is easy, at least relatively speaking.
So, how do you optimize your website for your local area? Here are a few tips you can employ to get you started.
Define Your Target Audience
Local search engine optimization has one major goal: to promote your website to a specific audience. In order to do that, you have to know who makes up your targeted demographic. One of the fastest ways to figure this out is to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. For local SEO, try to focus on search terms that have a local relevance to your area.
Update Your Page Titles
These keywords need to be incorporated into the title tag of your web pages. Experts will tell you that your title tags have a huge bearing on the positioning of your website in search engine results pages. In order to be effective, put the search terms that you have just researched into your page titles, keeping them brief, but appealing. The idea is to put the most important keywords at the beginning of the title. The good news is that, if you don’t get it right the first time, you can change them easily.
Another quick note about page titles. Make sure that they are unique. You don’t want to have multiple pages titled the same way. And add local geographical terms to them in order to boost local visibility.
Local SEO For Your Pages
Now that you have squared away your page titles, it’s time to focus on the content of your pages. You should sprinkle your keywords throughout your content, taking care to avoid keyword stuffing. Make sure that you add a keyword to the H1 tag, which is the headline of your content. Lastly, add a keyword or two to the meta description of each page, working to ensure that each one is unique from the meta description for your other pages.
Add Your Physical Address to Every Page
It sounds ridiculously simply, but putting your physical address in the footer of every page of your website not only creates a more professional look, it also significantly boosts your local visibility.
Claim Your Profile on Local Business Directories
Local directories are one of the easiest and best ways to promote your site and business locally. What’s even better is that this process is free. Yahoo Local, Google Places and Bing Maps are great places to start.
Add a Video
Adding multimedia to your site adds pizzazz and draws customers in. Shoot a low budget explainer video or even a promotional video and post it to your site. Upload the same video to YouTube and even to your local directory submissions.
And these are just a few of the ways you can promote your website locally.
