How to Optimize Your Website For Local Search


  • January 25, 2023
  • /   Jamie Walker
  • /   LOCAL SEO,GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE,WEBSITE DESIGN,SEO
How to optimize your website for Local Search
Are you looking to increase your website's visibility on Google and local search? Optimizing your website for local search can be tricky and time-consuming, but the long-term payoff is worth the time. Find out which techniques you should use to ensure your website comes up on the first page of local searches.

Update Your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number). 

Consistency is key when it comes to local search optimization, especially when it comes to your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number). Ensure your website includes all this information consistently and correctly so that search engine crawlers can easily recognize it and identify your website as a local business in your market. Adding your location data in the footer or contact page is also a great way to boost your visibility in local searches.

Take it further by adding a location page to your website for Local SEO. This page should include your services in a given geographic area, contact information, and details about your essential business features like hours of operation, payments accepted, and FAQ. Additionally, add a map to your site to give customers directions on how to get to your store or office. These simple steps can greatly improve your website's organic visibility in local search results.

Add Local Keywords to Your SEO Strategy. Google Search Results Page (SERP)

Including localized keywords in your SEO strategy is a great way to ensure that search engine crawlers will recognize your business as a local presence. Try incorporating city/region names, surrounding areas, languages spoken (if relevant), and other local identifiers into your content. Implementing localized keywords will help your website appear near the top of search engine results when someone searches for businesses in their area.

When writing content for your website, create copy with semantic search terms to optimize your website for local results. Instead of repeating the same keyword multiple times, use synonyms and related phrases. Doing this will help give your content more context and make it easier for search engine crawlers to find you.

Optimize Your Metadata.

Metadata is the information about your website that search engine bots use, including titles, headings, and descriptions. When optimizing for local SEO, it's important to include the name of your city or region in the page title and meta description. This helps convey the relevance of your page to local searches, so when adding a page title to your website, ensure you add geographic location-specific terms.

You also want to ensure your website has a sitemap that accurately reflects the locations of each page. A sitemap is an XML document that lists your site's URLs and is used by search engine bots when crawling the web for new pages. 

Use Structured Data to Get Rich Snippets for Your Business Listings.

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page's content. Adding structured data to your website can be beneficial when optimizing it for local search because it will help search engines better understand your web pages and increase the chances of getting rich snippets in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), such as review stars or other relevant business information.

Structured data can be added in JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa, depending on which type of coding is supported by your website. Utilizing structured data for business listing will enable you to add more relevant information about a business that Google and other search engines can interpret. Basic structured data will be comprised of your physical location address, contact details (phone number, email address), opening hours, prices and so much more – all of which can appear as rich snippets when someone searches for your business from local search.

Claim and Manage Listings on Local Directories and Platforms. 

Creating business listings on popular online platforms like Yelp and Google My Business is an important step towards optimizing your website for local search. Not only will you be able to inform potential customers about your services, but by actively managing these pages, you can boost your chances of ranking higher in local search results. Claiming and managing listings on popular directory sites with high domain authority is crucial to successful local SEO.

When claiming and optimizing your listings, you'll want to include as much detail as possible about your business and your services. Fill out all fields such as business name, address, hours of operation, etc. Make sure that anything you post is accurate and consistent across all platforms (i.e. same business name everywhere). Include images and videos of your business to make your profile stand out in local search results. Finally, ask customers to leave reviews on your listing if they're satisfied with their experience – this will make your business more attractive and credible to potential customers researching companies in your local market. 

Find Out How Your Business Ranks.

Ensuring your website is optimized for Local SEO will help increase traffic and engagement with your business online. We can audit your local search footprint for FREE and provide you with a detailed report showing how you rank in your local market, if there are any NAP (Name, Address, & Phone) issues, and identify any problems with the SEO on your website. You get your free report here: Local Search Audit. 

About NETSIMPLE

NETSIMPLE is a payments technology company that provides software solutions built around payment processing, website design, and marketing. 

NETSIMPLE owns and commercializes” a proprietary, cloud-based Web Platform as a Service (PaaS) that is scalable, customizable, and that can be rapidly deployed across various organizations and industries. 

In addition to providing payment processing and software solutions, we have also vetted hundreds of third-party vendors for thousands of our clients. This market research, and our own software development, have helped us to create a secure and powerful software ecosystem.