A Beginner's Guide to Increasing Your Local Reach Using SEO

A Beginner’s Guide to Increasing Your Local Reach Using SEO

By: OperateBeyond.com

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a way for your business to improve your online presence. If you’re not familiar with how this works, take your everyday Google search for example. If you search for “Grocery stores” your search engine will create a best list of grocery stores near you. This may be based on quality and quantity of reviews, your location, and your utilization of SEO. 

Search Engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, use “crawlers” to search webpages all across the World Wide Web for relevant information to your inquiries. These crawlers will pick up key words, used for SEO,  from different web pages to reference back to. SEO helps users find results faster and with more accuracy, making it essential when trying to increase local traffic to your website. 

Below, we’ve included three ways to reach your local audience using SEO:

Google my Business

If you aren’t already – get on Google! For small businesses especially, this is the best way to increase searchability in your area. “Google my Business” is an online resource perfect for establishing a digital profile. With Google, you’re able to update and add contact information, store hours, address, and much more all in one place. Also, consider adding a Google map to your “Contact Us” page for customers to locate you more easily through the search engine. 

Content Sharing

Continue to add and share content across your social media platforms. Consider joining more groups and local pages to connect your business with users in your area. Keep your business relevant by frequently posting local content including keywords. Local news, stories, and events will help to show search engines and users that you are active in this specific location. Also, be sure to keep important contact information the same across social media platforms for the best results. 

Inbound Links

Inbound links or links directed to your website are a great way for search engines (like Google) to see that you’re a legitimate business. For example, blogs are a perfect way to influence users to use inbound links directing to your content. Give people something to reference on your website, like a blog post or engaging video, to increase your inbound links. All search engines tend to pull the highest quality of relevant information for their users and these links can be associated with that. 

When it comes to SEO, it’s all about the effort you put into your online presence. Unless you take the time to update your contact information,  join local groups, and create locally-oriented content, you may not see the results you’re hoping for. SEO can be very powerful and can ensure you stay at the top of the Google list. Begin implementing these three steps to reach more locals near you and begin growing new relationships with them.