It’s no secret that mobile devices are the way peo­ple sur­vive in this tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven world. The num­ber of peo­ple that use their mobile phone for look­ing up infor­ma­tion sur­passed desk­top search years ago. Peo­ple now have access to just about any­thing they can think of from get­ting direc­tions to the near­est laun­dro­mat, find­ing a piz­za place to deliv­er, or order­ing a car to pick them up right from their hand­held device.

What’s com­mon in all of these search­es is that they are look­ing for things that are local to them. In fact, it’s esti­mat­ed that one-third of all search­es are loca­tion relat­ed. That’s why local SEO is so impor­tant in mobile mar­ket­ing efforts. You want your busi­ness to show up at the top of the list when some­one is look­ing for what you have to offer. With a few imple­ment­ed ideas, you can be there in no time.

If you remem­ber, SEO in the old­en days was only about get­ting web­sites and pages indexed. How­ev­er, with the growth in mobile mar­ket­ing and mobile apps, it’s worth get­ting your app indexed too for increased vis­i­bil­i­ty and expo­sure. The rea­son why this is required is not only will a mobile app help in enhanc­ing user expe­ri­ence but also act as a sup­ple­ment to your main desk­top website.

Local SEO Optimized Content

When Google is look­ing for search results for users, the com­put­er­ized sys­tem is look­ing for spe­cif­ic key­words that relate to what the per­son has typed in. So, when you are mar­ket­ing some­thing in a par­tic­u­lar loca­tion geo­graph­i­cal­ly, it’s impor­tant to get those key­words into your con­tent. It’s a great way to tar­get a spe­cif­ic audi­ence and to weed down the competition.

Two things must be fac­tored in when you are opti­miz­ing SEO for local pur­pos­es. You have to have a web­page that is mobile friend­ly and one that local­ized your schema markup. The schema markup adds data in a struc­tured way to your web­site, and then the con­tent is com­mu­ni­cat­ed in a local­ly focused man­ner. It isn’t going to send your rank­ings through to the num­ber one spot instant­ly, but it is a use­ful method for mak­ing you more rel­e­vant in local searches.

You should also have local key­words in both the title and meta descrip­tion. There will be long-tail key­words that you focus on in your con­tent while the web­page or blog title could include the more focused keyword.

Local Link Building

What­ev­er prod­uct or ser­vice you are offer­ing, fig­ure out how you can include con­tent that oth­er peo­ple will want to link to, or that you can link out to oth­er local com­pa­nies in your area. The infor­ma­tion that you offer gives peo­ple in the blog­ging and media indus­try an abil­i­ty to find you by using the ref­er­ences. Local link build­ing is very much the same as oth­er local SEO strate­gies in the fol­low­ing ways:

  • Get­ting men­tions and direc­to­ry links
  • Putting land­ing page link in cita­tions that are related
  • Obtain­ing local media coverage
  • Acquir­ing guest bloggers

Focus­ing on the local SEO build­ing is most impor­tant at first. Then, when you have suc­ceed­ed in that avenue, you can start think­ing about nation­al pub­li­ca­tions when it comes to being a guest colum­nist. It is anoth­er way to get more links built on your page.

Localizing Content

You aren’t going to cap­ture the audi­ence that you want unless you can dis­cov­er who that audi­ence is. Go out and inter­view your cus­tomers and do research on the peo­ple in the local area. This can help you in build­ing user personas.

Some of the ques­tions can include –

What’s your name? Loca­tion? Inter­ests, Hob­bies, Favourites books, hob­bies, favorite places, shop­ping pref­er­ences, edu­ca­tion­al back­ground etc.

You can also do an audi­ence analy­sis through Facebook’s Audi­ence Insights. That gives you a bet­ter idea of the demo­graph­ics in your area. By know­ing who you are serv­ing local­ly, you can bet­ter pro­duce con­tent that’s going to appeal to them.

After your inter­views are over, you can use Google’s Key­word Plan­ner and look for the key­words that are relat­ed to what you have gath­ered. It will help you in reach­ing oth­er mem­bers of your tar­get audi­ence that you haven’t yet with the face-to-face questioning.

Check out your ana­lyt­ics and find out where the traf­fic is com­ing from that you have already cap­tured. It could be that they are com­ing direct­ly to your web­site, or they are find­ing you through social media. You can also find out what key­words they are using to see you in their search­es. It will help you when you are com­ing up with oth­er con­tent and topics.

Keep in mind that local SEO con­tent isn’t just going to be your blog­ging ideas and infor­ma­tion. It comes in many dif­fer­ent forms. To get more ideas you can pur­sue things like:

  • Fol­low­ing local sto­ries in the news
  • Infor­ma­tion­al con­tent about the business
  • Event write-ups that are local
  • Any­thing that is unique to both your area and your industry
  • Cre­at­ing local cov­er­age for the media
  • Giv­ing answers to ques­tions relat­ed to the local area

Organic Visibility

There are a few quick ways to increase your local SEO vis­i­bil­i­ty and boost the way you are ranked organ­i­cal­ly with­out hav­ing to cre­ate new con­tent. Make sure to:

  • Claim all the name, address, and phone num­bers that you can in your local direc­to­ries. Makes sure they are accu­rate and consistent.
  • Claim your Bing Places for Busi­ness and Google My Busi­ness Pages. Fill out all the infor­ma­tion and local key­word sections.
  • Opti­mize your web­site by com­plet­ing all infor­ma­tion fields in Google My Business.

Summary

Cus­tomers today are more intel­li­gent than they were before. They are search­ing for every­thing online – be it a park­ing space, restau­rant menus, flight sched­ules, the best piz­za shop and so on. Hence, it makes sense to con­cen­trate more on local SEO to ensure your mobile mar­ket­ing efforts don’t go to waste.

But, if you still feel that it’s not the right time for you to take the plunge, you’re at sure­ly at a risk of los­ing poten­tial customers.

Good luck!

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