Techniques to improve local SEO

As you may already know, SEO is used to get your website to appear in the first places of a search engine, that is to say, to have a good positioning on the internet, especially on Google, so local SEO is nothing more than SEO for small businesses, a fundamental element for this sector as it will help you to make yourself known in the community.

You should bear in mind that when you have a small business you are interested in positioning yourself in the locality where it is located, in this way you attract customers from the area and increase your sales. With local SEO you also provide information, whether in the form of content, customer reviews or accurate location, which gives value to your website at the level of local searches.

The 11 best techniques and keys to improve and take care of your local SEO

1. take care of your NAP (Name, address and phone). The name, address and phone number are the three key points of information about your business. In every place on the web where your company appears these data should always be the same, because they will help you to position yourself and give confidence to users.
2. use Google My Business. The giant Google created this tool with the aim of grouping local businesses and connecting them with their customers. When your business has a Google My Business profile, it automatically connects to Google Maps and Google +. Keep in mind that Google + is Google's social network and when you use it frequently, you will be positioned in the search engine .
3. promote yourself on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Use them in connection with each other to offer a coherent image of your eCommerce and promote the general and local SEO of your business.
4. take care of and respond to customer reviews. When you get good reviews, not only do you build trust, but you also give yourself a better ranking. Likewise, getting good reviews helps Google's algorithm to improve your ranking .
5. register in directories. This will make you known in your geographical area. For Google and Bing algorithms, registering in directories is taken into account and will rank you higher. On the other hand, it is also important to be careful with unreliable sites because they could damage your SEO. Some directories are: Yelp, Yellow Pages, Einforma, Salir por España, among others.

6. Local schema markup: Include structured data or schema markup on your website to provide Google with more information related to your local business. You can visit the Search Console help centre to check the data markup for local businesses that you need to fill in. You can also use Google's data markup wizard or use a plugin to help you implement it. There are plenty of them for the different CMSs on the market, but most of them do not include local data markup in their free version.
7. search for keywords and competitors. You should perform a keyword or keyword search to determine which keywords or search terms your customers normally use to search for your products or services.
8. work on local linkbuilding. Linkbuilding or link building technique is fundamental in web positioning, as through links you will increase the authority of your domain and indicate to Google where to place your website, which together with the relevance of your content and technical SEO aspects is what will determine whether you manage to reach the top positions in the SERPs.
9. position your photos and videos. Don't forget that all the content you create can become your ally for your local positioning. Also, remember that Youtube is one of the most used search engines in the world, and belongs to Google. Introduce whenever possible in your videos your keywords to improve local positioning, that is, the name of the locality, the type of business or the location of your neighbourhood.
10. keep everything updated. If Google has made it clear that stagnant pages, with poor and immobile content are not to their liking and will position them below other websites that do meet their requirements. Take time to adjust and add good content to your website and your Google MyBusiness profile. It is important that Google detects this activity, and also that we can adapt this content to new SEO trends, new interesting keywords or that we can apply all the knowledge we have learned about SEO.
11. Add your embedded Google map, i.e. include the Google map on your website, with the location of your business marked with a pin.

Finally, remember that local SEO makes your small business profitable, so implementing a good local SEO strategy is necessary to give greater visibility at a regional level as well.