Local SEO Guide – How to position your business on Google Maps

Good local SEO management can be the difference between the success and stagnation of your business. Getting your closest audience to know you and reach your company easily is a great opportunity to attract customers.

That is why at Top SEO Guide we want to teach you what organic positioning for local businesses is all about. In addition, we will explain what you should take into account, and what you will have to apply to improve Google Maps search positioning.

What is local SEO?

It is a set of techniques used to achieve higher search engine rankings for local queries. This helps people interested in your products and services find you more easily.

A user’s search intent determines whether their query is generic or local. For example, if a person searches for “buy sunglasses,” then Google classifies that as a general search.

But if you search for “optics in Delhi”, the search engine will know that what the user needs are results in Delhi. An optician that achieves a good positioning for that search will end up receiving more clients, and their business opportunities will grow.

Not just putting the location in the search phrase can lead Google to determine that it is a local search. Your location can also make the search engine intuit what local results to show you. This occurs if we have the location of our phone active or also by the network to which you connect.

For example, if you search for “open supermarkets”, Google will most likely show you results from your area. The same would happen if you searched for “guard pharmacies”, Google would show you the closest open pharmacies to your location.

To check how the search engine knows the location without telling it the province or population, when performing a search you can scroll to the bottom and there it will indicate the location it is taking.

If you travel a lot, or have just returned from another province, it may be a bit confusing and show results close to your old location. Be very careful with this, so as not to go to a pharmacy from another place…

Why is positioning in your area important?

Appearing in local searches is not only about the website, for quite some time we have seen that the Google GEO Location map with local businesses “sneaks” into the first results and this is what users see first, even before they the web results.

There are many reasons why you should worry about the local positioning of your website. The business opportunities that are opening up are many, and the growth of your project will be evident. Pay attention to these advantages:

• Greater visibility: The first reason why it is important to strengthen the local SEO of your business is to obtain visits. A large number of potential customers will be in contact with your business permanently.
• Recognition of your brand: The logo and the values ​​that your brand transmits will be favored. Users will identify your business with a relevant and practical option to meet their needs.
• Outperform your competition: In a world so competitive from an economic point of view, outperforming the competition from all spaces is essential. Local SEO allows you to be on par with, or surpass, solid businesses that in practice seem more established than yours.
• You save money: You get rid of having to pay for advertising campaigns or ads in local digital newspapers or newspapers. The search engine will do the work for you.
• Increase your global SEO ranking: If your web project also involves global positioning, the traffic obtained in your local SEO is very good. It will help you raise your overall ranking by gradually increasing the authority of your page.

Things to keep in mind before starting to work on the local SEO of your business

You are already clear about how important local SEO is for your project. However, before you start working on it, it’s a good idea to consider these factors:

Define your geographical area

Before going for your SEO objectives, you need to define your area of ​​influence. Local SEO can be defined by a city or a country, but also by a municipality or sector. In fact, you can define your localized SEO from a metropolitan area.

Being clear about the cities or areas where you will work on SEO will allow you to direct your efforts and the creation of content in the right direction.

For this, we also recommend doing a keyword research to identify what terms your potential customers are looking for in your area and surroundings. This will help you make this first decision.

Identify your target audience

In addition to your town or area of ​​influence, it is necessary that you identify your target audience. According to your target audience, and your services, you must create content of interest. This will allow you to understand the search intention of your users and satisfy them.

If you don’t know your buyer persona, it will be more difficult to connect effectively with your audience.

Make a good profile of what you offer

Define precisely and clearly the services or products that you want to show through the web. This way you can better plan how to show what you offer.

It is a basis for planning the content you need to position and in what format to display it. In addition, you will know what information to place in the different web directories where you have to register.

Study your competition

The basis of local positioning is the study of the techniques applied by your competition. When we talk about studying your competitors, we are referring to those who have already worked on local SEO and are positioned in the top positions of the SERPs.

It is possible to study their backlinks, content creation techniques, and the information they provide in the Google My business tab.

Do you have multiple locations?

You may want to apply local SEO for multiple locations in different areas or cities. If this is the case, then our recommendation is to work each location separately.

Create different profiles for each location and develop original content for each one. In each branch you must make its location and characteristics clear so that search engines understand when to show them.

Actions to boost the local SEO of your business

Let’s go to the important thing, the “tricks” to improve the positions! Now we are going to see some of the strategies that you can use both on your website and in your Google My Business listing to ensure the positioning of your company in local searches.

NAP (Name, Address, Phone)

If there is something that you cannot leave aside at every moment of your local SEO campaign, it is the data of your business. The name of your company, its address, and the telephone must be in all the profiles that you fill out.

The SEO Title, and the Meta description of the content you publish is a good space to place your name, address and telephone number.

Keyword + Location

One of the keys to creating content and signing up for local profiles is the combination of Keyword + location. Keywords such as “Fashion store in Delhi” or “Lawyer in Mumbai” are suitable ways to try to position you in local searches.

If you make a good mix of exact or related keywords and your geographic location, search engines will understand your geographic scope. In this way you will obtain segmented and qualified visits from users truly interested in your content.

Google My Business

The Google My Business listing is a great opportunity to establish your physical address on the Google map. It is a very intuitive tool that will help you show the characteristics of your company and receive evaluations of your services.

You can place all the contact information, and the products or services that you distribute in your locality. This tab can also be used by companies with a larger geographic impact. It serves to demonstrate that it is not an exclusive online company, but a business with a physical headquarters.

Improves user experience

Make the user’s permanence time on your website enriching. Every time a person visits your website and receives the information or product they want, it is a point in your favor for your local positioning.

Improving the loading speed of your website is essential, but also making internal navigation a pleasant path for the user. With this you achieve that your business image remains engraved in the minds of your public.

Register in local directories

It is essential for local SEO to register in digital directories in your region. If you don’t know which local directories to sign up for, do a local search for your products and services. You will see which websites are positioned, but you will also be able to check which directories are showing businesses like yours.

Another way to know the local directories where you should register is to look at the incoming links of your competition. This way you can check which local profile websites have signed up to strengthen your brand.

Geo located images

The Geo location of images is another fundamental factor that is giving very good results in local SEO. To do this, you must add information about the place where a photo has been taken, or the town it represents.

To do this, you can rely on some image geo location software that helps you perform this function.

Rich snippets for local SEO

Getting your search results to appear with rich snippets is important for local SEO. This is achieved by implementing structured data from the schema.org library.

You can find the structured data style for local businesses under the name “Local Business”. Review the official documentation to select the appropriate format and fields.

Get good reviews

All the actions that I have shown you are effectively complemented by obtaining good reviews. Every time you complete the sale of a product or service you can ask your users to leave a review.

Always worry about the quality of what you sell, and the complete satisfaction of your users. Inform your buyers or users that their reviews are important so that other people can find your services.

These are some of the SEO strategies that we carry out at Top SEO Guide. Start right now to stand out from your competition and create that audience that you want so much in your city.