If you’re a tradie or run a business like a café or a hairdresser, you need to make sure your local SEO is in order. While you need all your business listings optimised and consistent, your website optimisation is just as important. It may seem like a mammoth task, but it doesn’t have to be.
Today we have some easy steps that can make a huge difference for your local SEO.
NAP — Name, Address, Phone Number
We harp on about this all the time, but you need to make sure that your Name, Address and Phone Number on your business listings, are identical to your website — they must be complete, accurate and consistent. This includes the way you have laid out and formatted your details, for example, you don’t want any variations in the way you write your address, it should read either Unit 5/10 or Unit 5 of 10, not both.
It would help if you made the Google bots’ job easy — they want to crawl your website, check all of your data and content, give you the green light — and be on their way. Like we’ve said before when it comes to consistency, make sure you tick website NAP off your list. This is an easy way to increase your website traffic, Google ranking and overall local SEO.
😊 Just for Fun — (Explicit Content) — Think of Adam Sandler’s rap, ‘Phone, Wallet, Keys’ and you shouldn’t forget Name, Address, Phone Number!
Grab The FREE Google Website
Via Google My Business, you can create your own free Google Website.
This is a great way to get your website ranking higher in search engine results because Google builds it for Google. You can create one in less than 10 minutes, and you can edit it from your mobile or tablet, as well as your PC. Grab a beer or wine at the pub and get creative!
How Fast Is Your Website?
These days an important factor for website ranking is the speed of your website. Look at how quickly your website loads or ask your IT specialist how fast your website is running. Creating a Google Website might be the best way to go because they are simple, professional and fast.
Whether you are using a Google Website or your own, another option to increase website speed is to check the size of your images — you may need to reduce their size and optimise their format for web publishing, or have a scrolling feature whereby images don’t all load at once.
Include Those Keywords
As we’ve mentioned before, like NAP, keywords are vital for local SEO, and they are the road signs for Google bots to find your website. Try to put your keywords in several places on your website, such as your titles, website pages and blogs. And, if you’re a little technical also put keywords in header tags, meta tags, the text for hyperlinks, and in new page URL’s. But bear in mind that Google bots don’t look at meta description keywords, they are mainly for user information, but other search engines might crawl them.
Don’t over-saturate your content with keywords, choose roughly 5 and carefully slot them into your text in a way that sounds natural. Remember to create useful content for your target audience. Google algorithms are becoming very smart, and search engines begin to rank websites based on how helpful they are to people searching for your business and trade services.
Build Your Backlinks
Backlinks are URL links to your website from other places on the web.
It’s ideal to have these links on larger websites with a higher Domain Authority (DA). High DA websites have loads of traffic and are highly ranked in search engine results. If your backlinks are on these websites, it will help your website rank higher. It’s a mechanism for Google to validate you as a trustworthy and useful source.
If you don’t mind a little networking, you can ask other businesses to link to your website, and you can link back to them in return. You can also put your backlinks on large forums and social media platforms. But remember, when you create backlinks, it’s the quality of your links rather than quantity. Google bots will flag spamming, so put your links in useful places.
Mobile Optimisation
You’re probably reading this article on a phone or tablet right now, so your website must be optimised for a mobile or tablet view. It will affect your branding, and you may lose clients if they find a messy unreadable website. Mobile optimisation usually comes standard with many website packages but check that you’ve enabled mobile view if you’re running the website yourself and check that it looks clean and professional.
Consistency on your website and business listings are important, but it's good to break these SEO steps into smaller chunks when you are busy. Plus, here’s a useful Google page to help you get started with website optimisation.
Playing Hard To Get?
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