5 Local SEO Tips to Improve Local Search Rankings For Your Business [Infographic]

Infographic- 5 Essential Local SEO Tips For Your Business in Plano or Dallas

A local SEO (search engine optimization) strategy is essential for a local business to improve its local search rankings and reach local customers. Our infographic provides 5 essential local SEO tips to improve the local search rankings for your local business in Plano, Dallas TX or elsewhere in the USA.

5 Essential Local SEO Tips For Your Plano or Dallas Business

Here are more details on the 5 essential local SEO tips you should implement for your Plano or Dallas business. Implementing these local SEO tips will help your local business improve its local search rankings in search engines like Google, and help you reach local customers searching near you.

1. Get Listed on Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile, previously called Google My Business, is a free online business listing offered by Google. It allows you to create a business profile on Google and manage the business information that is shown on Google Search and Google Maps.

A Google Business Profile listing is one of the best free digital marketing strategies available to improve local search rankings for a local business. Yet, 56% of businesses have not claimed their Google My Business profile. By not claiming a Google Business Profile, these businesses are losing a lot of potential local business and customers.

Claiming and optimizing a Google Business Profile for your business is a local SEO strategy with very high return. If you have not claimed your Google Business Profile, you should do so.

Your Google Business Profile listing helps your business to:

Reach local customers searching on Google Search and Google Maps for products and services that you offer.
Improve organic local search or SEO (search engine optimization) rankings so that your business is found in the top search pages when customers search online.
Qualify for listing in the coveted Local Pack of 3 local businesses listed on the top of the Google search listings.
Connect with customers directly by receiving phone calls and messages from your Google Business Profile listing.
Direct customers to your website for additional information or to make purchases.
Provide directions to your business location.
Post information about special offers, sales and updates about your business.
Post images about your products, services and business location.
Enable customers to post business reviews on your Google Business Profile.

It is important to regularly update your Google Business Profile with any changes to your business description, address, hours and services. Also, select a primary category for your business, and any other categories that are relevant to your business.

Keeping your Google Business Profile up to date helps you keep customers informed about any changes to your business.

You can create a Google Business Profile at Google.com.

For more tips on creating a Google Business Profile, read our post on How to Create and Optimize a Google My Business Listing for Your Business .

2. Optimize Your Website With On-Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy that is used to optimize a website to improve its rankings and visibility on search engines. SEO helps to increase the quality of organic traffic that your website receives from the search engines.

On-page SEO optimization of your website is required as part of a local SEO strategy to improve search rankings.

Your website must be optimized for on-page SEO optimization to rank well on Google search results and reach local customers searching for your products or services.

It is estimated that Google gets more than 70% of the online search traffic today. Therefore, SEO optimization focuses mostly on Google.

SEO optimization is a long-term commitment. It is an ongoing process. Google alone has more than 200 search algorithms to determine search rankings that constantly change.

On-Page SEO optimization of your website includes:

Descriptive Titles and Meta descriptions that include your keywords, city name and location on every web page.
Quality website content optimized with your keywords and geographic location.
Important keywords in Headers, titles, meta descriptions, URLs and image alt tags.
Internal links to related articles from every page of your website.
External inbound links from other high quality websites.
If your business has several locations, create separate local landing pages with name, address, phone number and hours for each location.

For more information on SEO, read our article on What is SEO and Why is it Important?

More information on On-Page SEO is in our article on What is On-Page SEO?

3. Ensure That Your Website is Mobile-Friendly, Responsive and Fast

Most online searches today are made on mobile devices. A mobile-friendly website with responsive web design is essential to reach mobile users and increase leads and conversions.

82% of people search online to find local businesses (Google).

Having a mobile-friendly, responsive and fast website is required for a local SEO strategy to boost search rankings.

Since the majority of searches are now made on mobile devices, Google switched their entire search index to a Mobile-first search index. Google rolled out their mobile-first search index to all websites in March 2021.

With Mobile-first indexing, Google will crawl, index and rank the Mobile version of a website to add to their search index. The mobile version of the website will be considered the primary version. Since 2015, mobile-friendliness has been a search ranking factor in ranking websites.

In addition to being mobile-friendly, your website must also have responsive design. A responsive website is designed to scale and perform well on all devices of all sizes from mobile devices to computers. Google recommends responsive web design.

Your website must also load very fast. Your website pages must load in 3 seconds or less to avoid losing customers.

53% of mobile site visitors will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Google).

To read more about mobile-friendly websites, read our post on Mobile-Friendly Websites: How To Reach Mobile Users & Increase Conversions

4. Build Inbound Links to Your Website

Links are an important search ranking factor for local SEO for both the “local pack” as well as for organic search rankings.

Increasing internal and external links to your website is important to your local SEO strategy to improve your local search rankings.

Increase the internal links on your website by linking to related content on your website.

Reach out to local businesses and get inbound links from trusted businesses in your local area. This builds trust and authority.

Having a quality blog and publishing content about local events is a great way to attract links from other websites.

Other websites will link to your blog posts if they find it useful. This helps to build up your inbound links and improves your local SEO rankings.

You could get links from local businesses such as local news sites, community blogs, local chambers of commerce, local business associations, local charities and local universities.

5. Get Online Reviews From Your Customers

Online reviews help to improve local SEO rankings. Getting positive online customer reviews helps your local search rankings and builds trust and visibility.

It is important to get positive customer reviews on Google. Google uses the number of positive reviews as a local SEO ranking signal. Reviews are neccessary as part of a local SEO strategy to improve local search rankings.

Reviews are also used by Google to determine search relevance and reach and the number of reviews and their rankings may be listed under the search results for businesses featured in the local pack.

Ask your customers to leave reviews mentioning your services on Google. Also request customer reviews on other relevant sites such as Facebook and Microsoft Bing.

When you get customer reviews, you should always respond to them. Reviews with responses positively influences local SEO rankings on Google.

Conclusion

These essential local SEO tips will help your local business to improve your local search rankings and reach local customers.

Updating and optimizing your Google Business Profile; using SEO optimization on your website; keeping your website updated with the latest information; building links and collecting customer reviews should be an ongoing process with a high return.

We hope you find these local SEO tips useful to boost your local search rankings for your business in Plano, Dallas TX or elsewhere in the USA.

To read more local SEO tips, check out our article on 10 Local SEO Tips to Boost Local Search Rankings.

Article First Published: December 14, 2020. Updated November 14, 2022.

References

1. Google, Understanding Consumers Local Search Behavior,
2. Google, What users want most from mobile sites today

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