The Ultimate Local SEO Checklist

As a local business or company seeking to establish a strong local presence, search engine optimization is crucial to your business’s success in your target local market. Your audience is actively looking for the exact type of products and services that you provide, and they are doing it via a search engine.

Local SEO checklist

Optimize your google my business listing

  • One of the most common mistakes that businesses desiring a strong local presence make is to overlook the immense value of a verified, strong Google My Business listing.
  • It takes you, or let’s face it, an intern, less than 30 minutes to accomplish and will reap your business and your company a wealth of incoming website traffic, phone calls, store visits.
  • GMB is the lifeblood that feeds the search engine results that your target audience is looking for.
  • It is even further amplified as a local business looking to reach local customers.
  • Google My Business is also heavily integrated throughout a variety of applications and features that many people utilize on their mobile devices or web browsers.

Utilize social media

  • Social media is now a proven tool for businesses to achieve concrete results and achieve tangible goals.
  • Not to mention that social media also generates a wealth of SEO-friendly backlinks to your website that will only double down on your search rankings.

Reach out for reviews

  • When is the last time that you made a major purchase without doing a preliminary search on a product or service.
  • When conducting that search, how much value do you place on customer reviews that are literally posted on a company website or even a second-party website like Amazon by a complete and total stranger.

Use SEO-friendly URLs

  • Many people overlook the URLs themselves when considering their search engine optimization strategy.
  • This can be a major mistake that can penalize that website in terms of the organic search rankings it could be receiving.
  • Search engines appreciate and reward clean, well-written URLs that relate very closely to the topic that the content of the page they are covering.

Don’t forget SEO titles and descriptions

  • Small or mid-sized companies often forget about the “backend” search engine optimization, also called technical SEO.
  • One major element that is still in style as 2023 rolls in is the inclusion of meta titles and descriptions.
  • Most website platforms have a tab dedicated to this that is relatively easy to use.

Pay attention to backend SEO as well as front-end SEO

  • The leadership within a business doesn’t have a basic understanding of the importance of search engine optimization in today’s world.
  • They may not be aware of the importance placed on the optimization of backend elements of their website and how much they contribute to gaining higher search rankings.

Get backlinks, get referrals

  • Backlinks, also called inbound links, are a very important part of any SEO strategy.
  • These are the type of links that search engines place the highest level of importance on when they are looking at link elements as part of their ranking results.
  • The number of websites with different domains that link people back to your website.

Use outbound links and internal links

  • Outbound links are simply links included within your website’s content, blog, that direct the reader to a different website/domain.
  • Search engines give your website a higher authority ranking and more credibility when you include high-quality outbound links within your own content.

Conclusion

The importance of your website’s mobile optimization when it comes to your search engine optimization considerations. Sites that aren’t optimized for mobile views on mobile phones or tablets are now tangibly penalized in search rankings.