Local SEO is one of the main components of SEO and it is very necessary for businesses with physical locations as someone can just search for a restaurant beside me and google will give, he/she the address of the closest restaurant.  It’s an SEO category that targets a specific location so that a business can rank in that area. An effective local SEO strategy enables a website to appear on top of local search results or when a user expects results just from that area. 

You can use google my business to add your business location to the map so as to be visible to clients, for example if you own a restaurant in Cameroon, you can indicate there and indicate the exact location after which google will send a PIN code to the location, when you receive the PIN Code, you enter it into your google my business account and you will be able to see your business live and see your rating and customer replies.

How to Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

                As a website owner who sells physical products there is high need for you to optimize your site for local SEO so as to increase sales. People who want to buy a product always search for the closest shop around them as the plan on avoiding a lot of movements during the period of COVID.

                Before coming to boost your Local SEO, it is important you boost your on-page, off page and Technical SEO as this will increase your sales and page ranking. The most important things you have to prioritize for local SEO are

• Google My Business
• Local Reviews

Google My Business:

                When applying for Local Optimizing, a business Google my business page is a powerful way to attract visitors to a website or to a business, especially if it’s a physical store. Google my business is a tool used for local SEO on Google. Research shows that the businesses that occupy the first 3 listing receive 80% of traffic so a good Local SEO ranking will help in increasing your sales.

                The following are the steps involved for a successful creation of a Google my Business Page,

• Claim Your Google my business Profile:

It is very important for you to verify that you don’t have a listing yet, for you to do this, search for your business name on Google before you proceed. If the business has already been operating for years, there’s a huge chance a listing already has been made, so you just have to search and choose the particular listing you want then have to click ‘claim your listing’ to claim and verify the listing otherwise for non-existent listings, you just go to the Google my business page and click ‘Manage Now’. Then, go on and click ‘Add your business to Google.’.

• Fill up the form:

After you have chosen your listing, a form will appear on google. Answer the Google form and complete relevant information like business name, address, phone number, business category, and business website. Ensure that the information you enter is the same in every platform, from your website to all other online directories.

• Verify:

Once you’ve saved you created your Google my business profile, you need to verify your listing on Google to confirm you are the real owner of the shop and reduce scams. This authenticates that the owner of the listing is legitimate.

                To verify the site, you will need to input the site location, when you do google will ask you to confirm alongside your name, Google will then send a Code to the desired location. A card with the verification code will be mailed to you in a week or two. When you receive it Go back and sign in to your Google my business account and click ‘verify now’. The code will be written on the postcard, click submit after typing the code and you’re listing is now live.

• Fill Your Google my business Profile:

After Your site is Live on Local Businesses it is important you set the working hours, Business Photos, Phone Numbered. so that the clients can know when the shop is open and don’t go to the shop and find it locked be disappointed, it is very important that you provide them with your phone number as well so they can place commands and you do delivers to them.

Local Reviews:

                Review tells people how google or bad your services/products are and are mostly done by people who visited your shop and your site. Google take all of this into action and rank sites with higher reviews.

                The best way to improve your Local SEO is to manage this customer and know the mistakes the faced if the did and try to ameliorate the site as to make it look more better. For example, if you want to purchase coffee it’s obvious that will go to the shop or store with higher good reviews.

Conclusion:

Have we forgotten to include some thing on Basics of Local SEO, please let us know in the comments below, it will be of help to you and to others?