7 Must Know Tips On How To Optimize For Google Local Search

This is a great guest post by Ben Hook, search marketer and owner of Navaro

Google local search is an often overlooked part of increasing a  websites visibility, and although it doesn’t drive as much traffic as  natural search, it can be a valuable addition to a search marketing  campaign to help gain an edge over the competition. With this in mind here are a few things you can do to help optimize your local listing and get the most from this search vertical:

1. Include Address On Pages

By including your company address on every page of your website, you  not only make it easier for customers to find you, but it reassures  the search engines that you are where you say you are. Try to include  the exact address that you use on your main local search listing for  maximum benefit.

2. Include Keywords In The Title

Businesses often just use the company name in the local business  listings. I have found there can be a lot of benefits that come from keywords by your company name. For example, if you had a toy store called “Joey’s”, rather than just using the name of the business try to use keywords like “Joey’s Toy Store”. Once again 
helping to reassure the search engines that your business is relevant  they should show it.

3. User Reviews

It has been shown that user reviews can directly affect your business listing. Google gathers a lot of data about the business from other websites and reviews. If you can help give these reviews a push in the right direction, maybe get clients to write some reviews, this can help increase trust. If you are in a very competitive market, it’s worth backtracking on your competitors to see where they are getting their reviews from and  where you should be. You can do this by clicking on their local business listing and Google should list user reviews that it deems relevant.

4. Place Marker Closer To Center Of Town

The position of the marker on the map can also have an effect on your listing. Most of the time the closer you are to the center of the location the better. Changing this is a weigh up between customers the exact location and local search positioning. Google does offer the ability to “fix incorrect marker location” which allows you to select the center of town.

5. Create Multiple Ads For Different Areas You Work In

If you have one base, but you operate in different areas you could try experimenting with more than one local search listing. Although not technically correct as you are specifying you have multiple locations, if you are able to operate in these areas there is no harm being listed.

6. Include Locality Keywords On Page

To reiterate to the search engines even more that you are relevant to a location, try to include this in the content on page or the title tag. It just helps.

7. Alphabetical

Not so much an optimization trick but it is worth noting that businesses tend to be displayed alphabetically. I’m not recommending you change your business name but it’s worth making note of.

By applying these strategies you can help get your business listed in what can prove to be a very valuable resource. Got any more strategies 
for optimizing Google local search? Let me know in the comments below.

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Ben Hook is a search marketer and owner of Navaro, a search engine optimization company in the UK helping clients to  increase their online visibility.

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