How To Set Up Local SEO Signals On Your Website

Some years ago, Google hinted at a shift towards geo-targeted search. In other words, the search engine giant will favour local businesses in search results when end-users include a city, town or neighbourhood in their search terms.

The Big G has stayed true to their promise. In fact, they lurrrve local businesses! Now the semantic algorithm is starting to take hold, there is even more scope for local firms to obtain visibility in local searches.

Pimping your website with local search signals is vital. And not only your website, you need to include you contact details across as many reputable platforms as possible.

Here’s what to do.

Consistent NAPs

The Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) you use in directories and review sites should be consistent with the NAP’s on your website.

When search engines identify a business using different addresses and phone numbers, they flag it up as a potentially fraudulent outfit. How are they to know any better?

It is therefore essential that your NAP’s are consistent on every third party site you use. And you should use as many reputable sites as possible.

I know it sounds painful, and it is, but spreading your NAPs across the net gives you more visibility and builds trust with search engines and consumers.

On-Page keywords

So what about on-page local SEO indicators? These are essentially keywords in your H1 headers, title tags and body content.

Keywords have to be naturally sounding, and now search engine crawlers can understand the context of page content, forcing keywords is not an issue. 

It is beneficial to use keywords often – not all on the same page, but spreading them widely across relevant pages. What you have to consider are the search terms consumers will use to find your products.

It is not always possible to include naturally sounding keywords on all product pages, especially when you have a large number of products.

But there is nothing wrong writing about your products in blog posts. And that gives you more scope to use local SEO signals and describe the benefits of your products in more detail. Just avoid making the content salesy.

Schema markup

Schema markup is the latest strategy search engines have modified to give companies more visibility in search results. There purpose is to offer end-users more information about your business or a product at-a-glance.

There are several types of schema markup. You may have noticed knowledge graphs on many searches which give an overview of address, contact and opening hours.

This is just one example, and it depends on the nature of your business which will work best for you. For example, if you offer several services, you can flag up each service individually with the relevant contact number for each department.

In order to rank higher in local searches, you need to communicate to search engines. This involves priming your website with quality local SEO signals for all your products and services.