Trying to move up in local search results?

Looking for the best local SEO tips?

While search engine optimization (SEO) alone is important for all websites online, as a local business, it's crucial that you're focusing your efforts in on people who live nearby. Local SEO tactics will help the people who are most likely to use your products and services find your business online.

Below we'll look at the 5 top tips you can use to instantly improve the local SEO of your business website.

1. Claim Your Google My Business Page

The first thing you need to do to improve local SEO is to claim your Google My Business page. With Google My Business, Google offers several tools for local businesses. These tools will allow you to easily edit your business information and optimize your profile.

Remember that even if you're already using other marketing tactics for your business, it's important to improve your SEO as well.

So why do you need SEO when you are running PPC Ads? While you may already be getting in front of people with PPC ads, improving your SEO works well as a more cost-effective and long-term solution for getting new customers online.

Google has been known to prioritize businesses in search results who have an up-to-date and optimized Google My Business page. Make sure to optimize your business profile and ensure that contact information, business hours, and address are all correct.

2. Find Backlinks and Citations

Backlinks, links that are pointed to your business website from elsewhere on the web, are also a factor that plays into how well your business ranks in search results. It's important to look for ways to get backlinks from other sites on the web. Ideally, these should be relevant to your industry and location.

Similar to backlinks, citations are directory links from sites such as Yelp, Facebook, and more locally specific web directories. Getting these local citations is also very important and will go a long way in improving your local SEO.

3. Get More Reviews

Believe it or not, online reviews are incredibly important for making sure your local business succeeds online. Google, Facebook, Yelp, and other sites allow users to log in and leave a review on their experiences with your business.

Make sure that you're getting as many good reviews as possible. You can do this by encouraging your customers to leave a review for you online if they're satisfied with your business.

Additionally, if there are any negative reviews of your business online you may want to address them and consider doing some online reputation management.

4. Ensure Consistency of Business Information

In addition to verifying contact and business information on Google, it's also important to do this for other sites on the web that list your business. Yelp, Foursquare, and TripAdvisor are a few sites that you'll want to check and verify the information on to make sure that it's consistent.

Contact information, business hours, and the address should all be consistent and line up with exactly what is also on your Google profile and on your website. Doing this will help Google to know the correct information about your business and will make your site more likely to rank as a result.

5. Add Locally Relevant Keywords

It's also important that you make some changes to your website as well. Make sure you add in some great keywords that are relevant to your local area.

Local keywords should be on service pages, your home page, and contact pages. These keywords should ideally relate to both your industry and your location and may include your city name or the region that you operate in.

Implementing the Best Local SEO Tips

Improving your local SEO is a critical step if you're serious about getting more customers online. By using the local SEO tips above, you'll improve your digital marketing strategy and will ensure that the most relevant local customers find your business website.

Looking for more of the best local SEO tips? Click here to learn about the local SEO mistakes that you need to stop making immediately.