If you want to succeed in Local SEO I suggest you put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment.
If you’re looking for product or service nearby, where would you go? That’s right. You’d visit a search engine.
What business would you choose? There’s a few considerations you’d make:
- Who’s close.
- What Business has given the best information
- Which business got the best reviews.
If you don’t have a local SEO strategy you might not be appearing when customers look for your company, product or service.
If you’re not appearing prominently in search results you’re losing revenue and customers to your competitors.
What’s the solution?
You need a strategic approach to constantly improve your local SEO.
I’ve compiled multiple questions people ask about local SEO and put them into a useful bookmarkable piece of content. This guide is a great starting point for businesses that need to improve their local SEO.
If you feel you need more professional advice don’t hesitate to book a consultation.
What is Local SEO?
Local Search engine optimisation is a specific SEO technique dedicated to improving search engine ranking in a set of local search results.
The process focuses on improving map listings and location focused product and service pages.
Examples:
‘Solicitors Near Me’ or ‘Solicitors in Dublin’
‘Dentist Nearby’ or ‘Dentists in Sandyford’.
‘Best Restaurants Near Me’ or ‘Best restaurants in Cork City’
This form of search engine marketing is designed to get people to your address or highlight your service to a customer in your location.
Local SEO tries to ensure you take the most prominent position for a local search or map result and get the best customers to your doors.
Is Local SEO Important for an Irish Business?
Yes, it’s very important for physical businesses who serve customers at their location or if you’re serving customers in a certain location.
According to Google 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours and 28% of those search result in a purchase.
There are tones of stats from Google saying how US businesses necessary such as:
- 90% of consumers went online to look for a local business in the last year, 33% of them were looking every day.
- 4 out of 5 customers use search engines to find local information.
- People interested in your company look specifically for store address, opening hours and your availability.
- 82% of customers decided to read online reviews and consumer feedback for a local business.
I couldn’t find too many statistics available for the Irish Market but I’d guess we’re pretty similar.
How Can I improve my Local SEO results?
Map Listings: Ensuring you get your Google My Business Listing. It’s a free service with some new premium features being released. You can also set up a Bing Places for Business, again, get a free account.
You’ll notice that I’m the top result if you type in Digital Marketing in the Waterford area but I probably don’t show up anywhere on the map for results in Dublin or Cork.
A good local SEO strategy can see you dominate your own county.
Local Business Directories
Search engines look for correlations and citations when determining the value of a local business in their results. Submitting your website to local business directories in Ireland can really help – Golden Pages, Yelp, Hot Frog, Ireland YP etc.
Note: Don’t submit your website to random directories. Make sure they are valuable and your potential customers might be on there.
Local Citations
Getting your business address or map listing mentioned on other local blogs show a consistency in your address and this helps search engines determine that your map address is correct and mentioned on the web in multiple places.
Number of Reviews
If you can get reviews from multiple places you could see improvements in your local results. Ask your best customers to review you on your Google My Business Listing, your Yelp, Glassdoor or Trustpilot account. If you have more positive reviews you’re going to get more reward.
Keywords and Content In Reviews
Getting reviews and stars on the review is great but quality feedback in the form of a writing review is even better. If they mention the service or product they used with you it’s a good signal to local SEO ranking signals.
Positive & Negative Reviews
Just like good reviews having a positive effect on your ranking, negative reviews could see you negatively impacted in search results. Make sure you respond to positive and negative reviews.
Eventually someone will leave a negative review. Be prepared in advance. Don’t react.
Cian Murphy
If you’re disappointed or find a review harsh, be professional. If you have a valid reason to disagree with the customer review make sure you come across professional. Your future customers could be watching and see how you interact.
Local Focused Web Pages & Landing Pages
Create content for your local audience. If you focus on local information on your website or landing pages search engines will work out your relevancy to your audience. Ensure you put local in the meta title and descriptions.
Schema Mark Up for Local SEO
There’s numerous pieces of schema that can help improve your local promotion. You could geo tag images to tell Google these images are for a certain location. I use Geoimgr.com.
If I took a picture of Cork and I was using it on my landing page, it’s a great idea to use the image schema. It’s just one more element to search engines to understand your local relevance.
Getting Local Inbound Links in Ireland
Links are just as important for the SEO strategy. The more inbound links you can get for your business, the more you’ll be rewarded in search engines.
Your local links should be organic and you should never use link building tactics that go against search engine guidelines.
Some great places to get links from if you’re lucky enough are:
- Local News Websites – almost every county has a local newspaper you could feature in.
- Radio Stations – Getting featured on a radio station website like WLF, Cork’s Red FM or Spin in Dublin would be good examples of attaining local links.
- Local directories: Some directories allow a business profile to have a link. The Golden Pages is a great example. Some directories are paid for but could be worth it if they have your audience.
- Area Business support: LEO (Local Enterprise Boards), Chamber of Commerce or Local Business support websites are a great place to be featured.
Not all links are created equal and you should speak with an SEO consultant before you start a campaign. Conducting link building in a black hat manner could have detrimental effects on your local SEO campaign.