5 Local SEO Strategies That Will Help You Rank
Did you know that 80% of online searches are conducted by local people looking for local businesses?
75% of people who find local, helpful information in search results are more likely to buy the product/service from their local business
According to Roofing Contractor Magazine over 90% of roofing work begins with an internet search.
The importance of ranking your website on the search engines is growing every year as more and more people turn to the internet to make buying decisions.
Before you begin any local SEO campaign you have to understand what are the most important factors in ranking a website in the local search results.
Moz releases a list every year of the most important factors in ranking a website for local search results.
As you can see the three most important factors are link signals, on page signals, and my business signals.
The following 5 strategies will help your website rank locally and takes into account these local search ranking factors.
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Google My Business
Google My Business is Google’s online directory. It has replaced the yellow pages as the biggest and most important directory in the world.
Google crawls the internet for every local business and creates a listing. A lot of contractors are not even aware that they have a listing.
The first step you should do is if you have a listing is to claim and verify that you are the owner. If you don’t have a listing then you should create one. It’s free.
There are a lot of articles that explain this in detail but I would follow Google’s instructions.
Once you’ve claimed and verified your listing the next step would be to complete as much information on your listing as you can. Here are some instructions from Search Engine Land that will help you with this:
- Add a long, unique description that’s formatted correctly and includes links.
- Choose the correct categories for your business. (Roofing contractor)
- Upload as many photos as possible.
- Add a local phone number to your listing.
- Add your business address that’s consistent with that on your website and local directories.
- Upload a high-resolution profile image and cover photo.
- Add your opening times/days (if relevant).
- Get real reviews from customers
NAP (Name Address Phone Number)
The next step, which ties into Google My Business and other directories, is to make sure that the name of your business, your address, and the phone number are all correct and are seen on every page of your website.
The best place to add this information is in the footer of your website.
The reason that this information has to be accurate is that you’ll use this information to submit to the different directories across the web.
2. Local Reviews
Local reviews play a big factor in getting rankings. There are many different review websites but the three that I would focus on are Google, Facebook, and Yelp with Google being the most important.
Getting reviews from your customers is not easy. It takes time and dedication. The first thing I would do is target the low hanging fruit by asking previous customers if they can review your business.
Next, I would create a standard operating procedure in which I would make every salesperson in my organization ask for reviews from customers.
The more positive reviews you get the better your rankings will be.
Local reviews also will help you make more sales. Over 88% of consumers trust online reviews. It helps establishes your credibility and your capability.
3. Local Link Building
Link building is the most important factor in achieving search engine rankings. However, unlike most SEO campaigns, getting links from local websites is more important than just regular links.
Here are a few ways to get local links
- Release a press release in the local newspapers
- Contact local businesses for sponsorships and ask them to link to you once you’ve done an event
- Line up interviews with local publications, radio, etc…
- Write guest posts for local websites. If you can’t find any then just do a regular guest posting.
4. Citations
A lot of contractors ignore local business citations. This is a mistake. A great way to get ranked is to make sure that your website is listed in different online directories.
Online directories like Yelp, Merchant’s Circle, and CitySearch are all important.
You should also use online directory aggregators like Infogroup, Neustar (aka Localeze), Acxiom and Factual
Make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is consistent across all these directories.
5. On Page SEO
Your website plays a big factor in search engine rankings. You have to optimize your website for SEO
What does this mean?
It means that your website needs to have certain things in place for it to be optimized for search engines.
Brian Dean from Backlinko provides a useful infographic on the 16 most important factors in On-Page SEO.
Check this out:
https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
If you are using a WordPress website I would recommend that you download the Yoast SEO plugin.
This plugin will help make your website much more SEO friendly.
To give you an idea of what your website should have you should read this:
Conclusion
Local search results are one of the best ways to get more roofing leads for your business. It takes time and effort to get this working for you but the benefits are enormous.
The importance of ranking in the search engines will only increase as more and more people turn to the internet to make buying decisions.
Whichever roofing company owns the front page of Google will be dominating their market.
