Local SEO is essential for small local businesses in the UK. According to a study by Yell, 72% of UK consumers use Google Maps as a local search engine to do a local search to find local businesses right on their doorstep. If your business is not visible in Google Maps, you miss out on a huge opportunity to reach potential customers.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of devising a regional SEO strategy and optimising your business website or online presence so that your site appears higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for local searches.
Local searches are queries in search engines that local customers use that include a location-specific term, such as “restaurants near me” or “supermarkets in Godalming.”
Having a local SEO strategy is essential for businesses that want to attract new customers living or working in the local area and searching Google Maps for their products or services, making it easy for them to find your local business premises. By optimising your website for local searches, you can increase the visibility of your business in search results and attract more customers.
How to claim and optimise your Google My Business listing
Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free service that allows business owners to create a listing in Google Search and Maps. GBP listings include information about your business, such as its name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and website address.
GBP listings are a valuable asset for local SEO. When you create a listing, you tell Google that you want your business to be found by people searching for your products or services in your local area.
What can I do to optimise my local search results better?
You can do several things to optimise your GBP listings for local SEO and create a more substantial web presence. These include:
- Complete and accurate information: Ensure that the information in your GBP listing is complete and accurate. This includes your business name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and website. This will help clarify your business online and boost your search engine rankings.
- Use keywords: When you create your GBP listing, use keywords that people are likely to use when searching for your products or services. For example, if you are a plumber, you might use keywords like “plumbing,” “leak repair,” or “water damage,” which are all valuable keywords local customers enter into search engines to find a local business offering plumbing services.
- Reviews: Encourage your customers to leave positive reviews for your business on your GBP. Reviews are a valuable way to show potential customers that you are a reputable business.
- Claim your listing: If your business already has a GBP listing, make sure that you claim it. Claiming your listing will give you control over the information displayed in your listing and allow you to respond to and manage positive and negative customer reviews.
Getting Local Citations
These citations are mentions of your business on other web pages. These mentions can include your contact details, such as your business name, address, phone number, and website address.
These citations are essential for local SEO because they help Google to understand your business’s local presence. When Google sees your local business listings mentioned on other websites, it is a sign that it is legitimate, professional, and fully operational in your local community. This can boost your local search engine results.
How do I get more citations?
There are several ways to gather high-quality citations. One way is to submit your business to free online directories. You can submit your company to many directories, such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google My Business. If you don’t have a local SEO company to help you with this, then Cude Design can help.
Another way to attract local citations is to ask customers to mention your business on their websites or social media profiles. This could be in exchange for helping your B2B and other local business partners with reciprocal mentions for their business or offering your customers an incentive to spread the word about your business. When your customers mention your business, make sure you respond to them and thank them for their business.
How to optimise your website for local searches
In addition to optimising your GBP listing and attracting local citations, you can also improve your local SEO by optimising your website. Steps can include:
Using specific keywords
When you build your website, use keywords that your target customers will likely use when searching for your products or services. You can use a keyword research tool to help you identify the right keywords.
Creating relevant content
Creating regular, fresh content relevant to your target audience and including your target keywords is essential for good Google search rankings. This content should include regular blog posts, high-quality articles, and detailed product descriptions.
Making your website mobile-friendly
More and more people are using their mobile phones and tablet devices to search for businesses. Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly so that it can be easily viewed on mobile devices.
Building relevant backlinks
Backlinks are links coming from other high-quality websites to your website. Backlinks are a signal to Google that your website is authoritative and trustworthy. You can build backlinks by submitting your website to relevant online directories, guest blogging on sites within your industry, and participating in online forums.
Use local SEO services from Cude Design
If you are uncomfortable doing your local SEO, you can hire a professional company such as Cude Design to help you. We are local SEO experts. A professional SEO company such as ours can help you to identify and implement the best local SEO strategies for your business.
How to target one region with your website
To build good local SEO, you should target one region or county with your website and then target larger towns within that county with their own page and unique content. Local SEO ranking factors such as these will help with your sales revenue.
Choosing the right local SEO keywords is essential when targeting a specific region or county. You can use a keyword research tool to help you with this. For example, if you run a plumbing business in Surrey, you might want to target keywords like “plumber Surrey,” “plumbing Surrey,” or “leak repair Surrey.” These keywords target your local market or region where it would be comfortable to cover your plumbing services.
You can then go on to create individual pages to target towns in Surrey, for example, a page for plumbing services in Godalming, which would help many residents in the town find you with a simple search for “plumber Godalming” or “Godalming leak repair.”
Create relevant content with local intent
Once you’ve chosen your local area keywords, you should create content for your website, blog, social media pages and product or service descriptions relevant to those keywords. For example, a plumber in Surrey might write a blog post about the different plumbing services you offer in the Surrey area. Creating fresh posts should be part of your local SEO campaign to help you maintain consistent local SEO.
Your plumbing services may cover many towns within Surrey, so you can create a separate page for each town where you are happy to offer your services. This will allow you to tailor your content to the specific needs of the residents of each town. For example, you might create a separate page for the following towns: Guildford, Woking, and Farnham.
Maintain local relevance
Be sure to use local keywords on each of your individual pages. This will help your page to rank higher in local search results and boost your existing online presence. For example, if you are creating a page for Guildford, you might use keywords like “plumber Guildford,” “plumbing Guildford,” or “leak repair Guildford.”
Once you have created a separate page for each town you want to cover with your business, you should promote them on your social media pages. This will help you to reach a wider audience and attract more customers looking for locally-based companies. For example, create a Facebook post for each town’s page and share it with your followers.
Use local photos and videos
You can help to improve your local Search Engine Optimisation by using local images and video footage. Local photographs and videos can make your website more visually appealing and recognisable to your target audience. However, when choosing shots and videos to include in your posts, ensure they are relevant to your target town. Use local landmarks and have photos of yourself participating in annual local events such as fairs, festivals and regular local markets.
Helping local businesses and charities
It can help to get involved in the local community wherever possible. Get your business known by attending events, sponsoring local shops and organisations, and donating to local charities. This will help you build trust in the local community and forge strong relationships and a high level of local relevance with potential customers while improving your local SEO.
Your social media pages are a great way to connect with potential customers in the local area. Make sure that you use your social media to promote your business website and regularly share fresh local content relevant to each town you are targeting.
Local SEO services UK from Cude Design
Cude Design is a digital marketing agency and local SEO consultant that offers various services, including local SEO services, which optimise websites for local search results. This can help your business improve local search visibility and attract more customers in your chosen local areas.
Cude Design’s local SEO services include:
- Keyword research: Cude Design will research the keywords most relevant to your business and target audience. They will then use these keywords to optimise your website and content to improve your local listings and local presence in the community.
- On-page optimisation: We will ensure your website is optimised for your chosen keywords. This includes optimising your title tags, meta descriptions, and content.
- Off-page website optimisation: We offer local link-building services that will build backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites. This will help to improve your website’s authority and ranking in search results.
- Local citation management: Cude Design’s local SEO services include adding citations that will ensure your business is listed in all the major local directories. This will help to improve your visibility in local search results.
- Local SEO audit: A local SEO audit evaluates your business web pages and online presence to establish how many searches you get and identify areas that can be improved to improve its ranking in local search results. Our in-house team can offer you plenty of local SEO tips and even help you with ideas for your local SEO campaigns, including ways to boost your general organic SEO.
- Local SEO best practices: Whether you want to attract customers to buy online by boosting your website traffic or come into your brick-and-mortar stores, we can help you attract potential local customers with our best practices.
Leading local SEO agency
You can do many things to help your local SEO, but if you are struggling to be found locally or don’t have the time to manage it, call us. We are SEO experts and want to help you to get your local business to the first page of Google; whether locally or nationally, we are here to help you!
We have helped many local businesses improve their search engine optimisation to boost their local presence online, help local customers to find their physical location, and get the word about their local services out to more customers.
