If you are a small business owner, it is important to optimize your SEO strategies to attract the people who are searching for your business locally. The competition for local SEO is heating up, and you must be on top of the rankings if you want to be noticed by potential clients.
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Here are some tactics that you can use to help your business ascend in the local rankings:
1 – Optimize your title tag and meta description
Title tags and meta description tags are elements that can be customized to reflect the content of your web page. Choose your words carefully as the text of these elements is displayed in the search results, serving as a miniature ad for your business.
Your title tag should be just a few words, no more than a sentence length, that summarizes what your page is about. Likewise, the meta description should do the same but you can write longer; 2-3 sentences. I’d recommend that your first sentence in your meta description summarizes what the page is about. The second sentence can elaborate on your value propositions, why your product/service is better, etc. Your last sentence should have a call-to-action; “Click now to learn more about XYZ.”
The addition of your city, state, or target geographical term within the title tag and/or meta description will be a good qualifier to benefit rankings, too.
2 – Get listed
It is important for your local business to be included in citation data aggregators such as Infogroup. Verify your business name, address, and phone number to ensure the info is accurate. Look for inaccuracies across other aggregators, too. If there are discrepancies, Google may not be able to identify your business and list you in local search results as accurately.
Instead of manually updating your listings in local aggregators, I recommend to simply use https://moz.com/products/local instead. The small fee (less than $100) will save you way more than that $ in time wasted if you submit to dozens of local aggregators manually.