Now that you have clicked and landed on this article, chances are that you either want to understand what local SEO services are or looking for local SEO services in India. Either ways, you’re in a good place! Let’s dig in a bit further and unravel what local SEO services are all about and how it affects websites and businesses.
People have an innate desire to grow, further their career and taste success. Everybody wishes to have the best possible outcome in their work life and a lot of them turn to doing business as it provides a phenomenal experience as you overlook a ton of things to make it grow and be successful. With a ton of businesses launching every day, there's an increase in competition both online and offline. With the ever growing burgeoning competition, websites still remain one of the best investments a business owner can make to help attract more customers and stand out from the rest of its competition.
However, search engine optimization (SEO) is something that they all pay close attention to. This is because SEO brings in a lot of relevant traffic - all for free. Yes, you read that right! By employing the right SEO techniques, you can quite easily bring a lot of interested readers/customers to your website by paying a princely sum of zero! However, it is not as easy as we may have made it sound (and it's not difficult either).
There are numerous companies on the internet who will be more than willing to do SEO for your website. With SEO though, one thing to keep in mind is that it is a long drawn process. Think of it as a game that involves a lot of patience and the one who has it abundantly, wins.
There are thousands upon thousands of websites launched and they all have a common objective, which is to be right in front of their ideal consumer. Alas, this is not possible. There are only a certain number of slots available on the search engine page and the ones who make it right on the top, get the most clicks and website visits.
But all is not lost. We are not here to discourage you from trying to rank your website. On the contrary, we want to discuss how you can bring your website or blog in front of your intended audience by playing smartly. Let's look at how you can stand out and get those coveted clicks.
The answer to that is by doing local SEO.
Local SEO services are ones offered by SEO companies to frame SEO techniques to accommodate the growing search queries of your audiences in the vicinity. An example of this would be someone going on Google and searching for "Wooden artifacts manufacturers in Mumbai" or "Spine surgeon in Delhi". As you can see, these search queries carry a local intent. In that, the person who is searching on Google is especially looking for service providers in a specific region or area.
In the first query, someone wanted to get in touch with wooden artifacts manufacturers based in Mumbai (a city in India) and the second query was to find spine surgeons who are located in Delhi (another city in India). Thus, focusing your SEO efforts to rank for services within a certain vicinity is commonly known as local SEO.
A great advantage of having your website ranked locally is that it will appear in the local pack. Google's local pack is a section on the search engine page which will display a few business listing related to your search query, that are located nearby. Here's how it looks (I used the same example as above i.e. "Wooden artifacts manufacturers in Mumbai"):
As you can understand, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to make your business visible right in front of your potential customer. Local SEO brings a lot of value to businesses and it is not extremely tough to rank if you take the right steps towards it. Here's what we recommend doing:
1) Have relevant content on your website:
Your website should be a machine that works tirelessly 24 hours a day to pull in visitors that can be your prospective clients. The best way to attract visitors is to provide them with relevant content that they want to read and consume.
If your website is about property listing, then you should write about that business and come up with informative articles, blogs or other relevant piece of content that someone interested in property listings will read and share. Since we're talking about local SEO, try to write content which is focused on local queries such as: Best 3BHK properties in Mumbai.
2) Choose relevant keywords for SEO:
Keeping in line with the relevancy we spoke about above, choosing the right keywords will ultimately decide if you rank on the search engines or not.
For those uninitiated, keywords are the words for a particular page that one wishes to rank for, in the search engine. For instance, if you are a wedding planner based in Mumbai and you want Google to show your website when someone searches for a wedding planner in Mumbai, then the phrase "wedding planner in Mumbai" is your keyword.
You will have to insert this keyword (i.e.: wedding planner in Mumbai) a few times in your article or blog post for Google to understand that your blog post is about wedding planner in Mumbai.
Thus, selecting good keywords that are relevant to your niche and can bring in traffic to your website, is very important. A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and think of queries they may think to search for your kind of businesses on the internet.
3) Pay close attention to your competitors:
As the saying goes 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer', this is especially true when it comes to SEO. Keep a watchful eye on what your competitors are doing and try to mimic it if you're new to the business. Go to their website, study it carefully and try to incorporate their good strategies into your own (without being a plagiarist, of course!).
As you regularly keep following and tweaking things, you will adapt the process for your business without having to resort to your competitors on a frequent basis.
4) Make use of local directories and local data points:
As much as you brood over the prospects of a successful website, it just won't happen by letting it sit and imagining hordes of people magically frolicking on it one fine day.
That won't happen and there's a word for it - it's called daydreaming!
Rather than contemplate over fine-tuning it to your heart's satisfaction, it'll do more good if you reach out to your local directories and submit your website. These local directories have a ton of information already and they are looking for more to add. Once you have your local directory submissions done, it'll give a certain nudge in terms of SEO and that is always good news for any business.
Another way to put your foot in the industry is to start small and start locally. Every business needs to start somewhere and a local neighbourhood provides a great opportunity to showcase your business. It doesn't matter if you are just a one-person show, just ensure that your marketing efforts are directed more so towards the local vicinity to create an awareness for your business.
5) Create and keep an active blog:
Having a website made from a professional is just one part of the battle. There's another part which is to keep your marketing efforts alive and kicking. One of the best ways to gain more followers, leads and potential customers is to have a dedicated blog for your industry and business.
Blogging is perhaps the cheapest way to attract visitors if you know how to do it correctly. It is not rocket science, it will take up a quite a bit of your time but it is worth pursuing as getting it right will mean an endless stream of visitors on your website, all for free.
Ensure you blog about your business regularly, speak about the various aspects of it, there are thousands of topics to write about and people are eagerly waiting to consume it. Having relevant fresh content on your website every now and then will not only attract more visitors but also retain those already loyal ones. Needless to say, it will give a tremendous push to your SEO endeavours.
6) Keep your social pages active:
It is an undeniable fact that social media is a force to reckon with. There are millions of people using social media every single day and the amount of advertising that happens thereon is quite frankly insane (in both good and bad ways!).
Almost everybody today has at least a few social media accounts, be it - Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others. Wouldn't it be amazing to leverage this humungous network of social media to let people know that you're in business? It's a great way of keeping yourself in front of the audience by posting regularly about your services and business. You can do a million things to get your potential customers interested - you could start a contest, a giveaway or simply respond to their question and queries.
This way, not only will you be able to kindle a relationship between your business and your customers, but it also sends signals to search engine which will lend a boost to your local SEO efforts.
7) Get those reviews:
Reviews are such an important part of any business. There are times when the best client you've had, came in through by reading the positive reviews your previous customers left on your social pages.
As any business, we take reviews and feedback very seriously too and we cannot stress the importance of asking your current and past customers to leave you with their reviews. When your website is seen by a fresh face, they don't know who you are and how you work. One of the most logical step is then to check for reviews of past customers to see what they have to say about you. Do they talk about you highly or do they wish they hadn't worked with you? Reviews, thus can truly make or break a business.
Getting quality reviews can be awkward to ask but they help tremendously in the long run. Besides, search engines do take into consideration how a business is perceived as a lot of negative reviews will force the search engines to push you way down in the chain.
As mentioned earlier, collecting customer reviews, testimonials and feedback is imperative for any business. You can check our Google reviews here.
Practicing the above mentioned pointers will certainly help you - as a business owner - get some local SEO benefits. We understand that it can get extremely overwhelming and there are a lot of things to remember and a whole lot of other things to do. However, taking the first few steps is crucial and it'll become a habit for you eventually. Local SEO is a great way to display your business in front of a tremendous amount of people and if you do it assiduously, the rewards you'll get will compensate for the hard work you put in!
We hope you now have a decent understanding of what local SEO services are, what to keep in mind and how to strategize your efforts. Of course, the post isn’t exhaustive but it should help you with a good overview of it. If you are looking for local SEO services in India, you know who to contact!
Get in touch with us today.
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