Intro to Local SEO: 3 Easy Ways to Get Started

Intro to Local SEOThese days, the majority of consumers are mostly or solely looking online to find and compare local businesses. If you’re a business owner marketing to a specific geographic area, getting on board with local SEO is a must.

Local SEO is an extremely effective form of online marketing that is designed to generate traffic from location-based searches. This means it allows you to target prospective customers right in your service area. You may have an up-to-date website with successful on-page SEO, but if your business’s web presence isn’t optimized for local SEO, you still might be ranking lower than your competitors in local search results.

Here are a few ways to help boost your company’s online presence and search engine ranking locally—and quickly:

Create a Google Business Listing

Claiming your Google business listing validates your business and ensures the information is accurate, which can improve directory listings. Plus, managing information such as your business category, website, business hours, photos, and social media links—not to mention customer reviews—only helps reach your target customers. An unclaimed Google business listing can frequently provide incomplete and/or inaccurate information.

Update Your Citations

Your citation—your company’s name, address, and phone number—may be the most critical component to optimizing local SEO. It may sound simple, but ensuring that your information is accurate across all of your online directory listings can make or break your search engine ranking, as accurate citations play a major factor in search engine ranking algorithms.

Add Your Business to Directories

These are the webpages where your business citation lives, such as Superpages or Yelp. Not only is it critical to have accurate information in these directories so prospects can find you, but as mentioned above, it’s also critical for ranking. While there are thousands of directories out there, different directories hold greater value when it comes to ranking, so it’s important to list your business in the right directories.

Now that you know how it works, the question is, are you being found locally?

Get a FREE REPORT to see your visibility score in local listings, and let the energy industry’s marketing experts help optimize your company for local SEO to start getting found today.