There are plenty of ways in which local SEO may be used to boost your business prospects. However, there are some strategies that stand out. The first step is to use keywords. These keywords should ideally be related to your business – the more specific it is, the better it is. The keywords should be able to define what you do, thus helping the local users narrow down on your company when they are looking with that particular keyword. Some examples of specific keywords would be Boulder Colorado restaurants or Sommelier course New York. You can always start off by tracking the keyword ideas on an excel sheet. You should ideally focus on long-tail keywords with geo-location to further your case as they are less searched and hence less competitive.
Optimizing content and website
The second way in which you can use local SEO to boost your business performance is by having a website that features high quality content about your products and services. These days, content is king, especially when it comes to the visitors as well as the search engines. One extinct advice that you will always receive is to put in a lot of keywords in the content but you can safely ignore that. Both customers and search engines find such strategies to be appalling and disgusting to say the least. You can always look up the net and see what kind of content is good for your website and proceed accordingly.
Using Google Local
Google is the premier search engine of the world and it always pays to use the services created by them for the local businesses. You can use Google Places for Business so that the name of your company can feature on Google Maps and Google Search. This will help people locate your business easily. They will also have ready information about your business such as hours of opening and closing, contact information, and address. The Local Google+ pages are also pretty helpful in this regard.
Creating and claiming local listings
As a local business it is imperative that you are present on as many local business directories and review-based websites as are available to you. If they are not already there then at least you should create a space for your company in these. Each listing is equivalent to a citation and these are important in the context of ranking algorithm used by search engines such as Google and Bing. Apart from Google, you should also focus on search engines such as Yahoo Local and Bing.
The importance of consistency
It is important to feature consistently on the various listings where you are already present. It needs to be kept in mind that no search engine likes inconsistency and it can actually affect your online presence thus affecting your business in the long run. This is why it is important that you have the same company spelling, phone number, address, etc. across all listings. It is always better if the exact same information is also there on your website, local directories, social media profiles, and review websites.
