How To Use Local SEO To Impress The Algorithms And Get Your Site Ranking
How To Use Local SEO To Impress The Algorithms And Get Your Site Ranking
When most business owners think of SEO, they think of optimising their website for the keywords that they are targeting.
However, they often overlook local SEO; the process of targeting keywords related to your local area to boost your affiliation with your region.
So, when internet users are searching for terms like ‘car washing in Greenwich,’ search engines will find them the businesses in their local area.
Nobody wants to travel hundreds of miles just to wash their car, which is why search engines try to find them the best local businesses. Even companies that offer remote services to a national, or even international, clientele can benefit from local SEO.
That’s because some potential customers will still search for local companies, even if they know that they can get these services from anywhere. They like to work with companies in their local area, so you’ll be able to get yourself to the top of their searches if you target local SEO.
Google, the largest search engine on the market, is dedicated to finding the most relevant answers to any given search. Most of the other search engines on the market are similarly committed to finding websites and content that meets the needs of users. That’s why their algorithms revolve around finding out the intention of each search and selecting webpages that meet these requirements.
If your website is optimized to show that it is linked to a specific area, then search engines will offer your site as an answer to queries related to local companies. If you only target topic-specific keywords, without any mention of your location, then you could miss out on local search results, and by extension, a lot of website visits.
That being said, the opposite is not true, and local SEO can boost your overall rankings. That’s because local SEO invariably involves your target keywords combined with the name of the town, city or village that you’re based in. As such, you can expand your rankings for your target keywords at the same time as growing your local SEO.
In all, it’s a win-win situation!
If you’re keen to integrate local SEO into your online strategy, then read on to find a selection of practical tips.
Learn How Users Are Searching For Local Businesses In Your Niche
If you’ve already got a strong SEO strategy in place, then you’ll know the keywords that you need to be targeting to reach the results pages for searches relevant to your business.
Local SEO runs on a similar principle, but that doesn’t mean that you can just stick the name of the town or village your business is based in onto the end of your target keywords.
Instead, you need to find out how users are searching for local businesses and then incorporate these writing techniques into your website content. The easiest way to do this is to for the name of your business market, then put ‘in’ followed by the area you live, at the end.
Check out the ‘Searches related to’ section at the bottom of the results page, as well as the ‘People also ask’ results, so you can find out what questions your website needs to answer and the related keywords you need to use.
You can also use established SEO tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, if you have access to them, to find the related searches that you should be targeting.
Once you have a list of queries that your website needs to be answering and the related keywords that its content needs to include, you can adapt your writing accordingly. Re-write your homepage content, as well as any relevant auxiliary pages, to include these terms and answer the questions that are being asked.
Include Local SEO In Your Content Marketing Strategy
It’s not enough to only optimise your homepage and service pages for local SEO; you also need to make sure the technique is included in your content marketing strategy.
As such, any blog posts, research guides and whitepapers you write and publish, on your website or another, need to include elements of your local SEO strategy.
That might mean including your region alongside your company name, or it might involve trying to create blog posts that reference your local area. You could also write content that answers the questions being asked by local searchers to ensure that you create completely relevant and insightful articles.
You also need to include elements of local SEO on your social media pages; primarily, you’ll need to host your contact details, including your address. You can also add your social media pages to most business listings, which I’ll talk about later.
By constantly considering local SEO, and not treating it as an afterthought, you can ensure that it really makes an impact on your website and helps it to reach the top of relevant local searches.
Take Advantage Of The Local Business Listings Offered By Search Engines
Most major search engines offer local businesses free listings, from which they pull details such as contact information and map listings. These free listings can make a huge difference to your website’s local reach, so it’s crucial that you make full use of them.
Google, which, as I’ve already mentioned is the world’s biggest search engine, offers the Google My Business Account, on which you can list contact details, a link to your website, basic information and more.
It also allows users to review your business so that you can get additional exposure. However, you do need to manage your reviews to ensure that they remain a true reflection of your business and don’t get polluted with fake reviews and nasty comments.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and one of the other top services, which, while still well below Google, is still an important part of the market, also offers a local business listing.
It’s called Bing Places for Business, and it works in a similar way to Google’s business listings. You can add business details, contact info and social media/ website links so that you can grow your business reach on this search engine.
Yahoo!, a search engine powered by Bing, also allows you to list your business and add details. Some other search engines do too, so work out which ones you’re targeting and then find out more about how you can optimize your content for them and take advantage of any local business listings they might offer.
Taking advantage of these listings is an easy, free way to boost your local SEO and enhance your business’s online reach. There’s literally no reason not to use them, and if you don’t take control of them yourself, then they might still exist, because customers might be mentioning your business online. If you’re not using it to its full advantage, then the listing won’t benefit your business and help you to grow your local and overall SEO.
Make Sure Your Website Is Suitable For Mobile Use
While it’s vital that your website looks good on a desktop computer, now more than ever it is crucial that it also works well on a mobile device.
That’s because there are 4 billion active mobile internet users worldwide, and smartphones are more popular now than ever before. Therefore, you need to make sure that you’re not missing out on this vast audience.
Many smartphone users turn to their phones to find the local businesses that they want to visit, with research showing that 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches and that these local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day.
As a result, optimizing your website for mobile use is an essential part of any local SEO strategy. The first step is to test if your website works on mobile devices by using the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool from Google.
If you find that your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, then you need to work with your website development team to improve it and get it working on smartphones.
With a mobile-friendly website, you’ll be able to grow your local SEO reach and enjoy the benefit of an even wider audience for your content.
Optimise Your Website For Voice Search
Thanks to the rise of digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Bixby and more, voice search is a booming trend in the search engine market.
It’s estimated that as many as 58% of online adults have used voice search at some point, which means that you need to make sure that your content is optimized for this blossoming technique.
When you consider the fact that 46% of voice search users search for a local business on a daily basis, you’ll see why this is such an important part of your local SEO strategy.
Improving your website and making it voice-search-friendly means using natural language and working out how users will speak their queries.
This is because most voice searches are done in natural language; Google reports that almost 70% of the voice searches made on its Google assistant are made in natural language.
Do your research and work out how users will try to find businesses in your industry using voice search and then incorporate these phrases and queries into your writing.
Optimizing your content for voice search as well as mobile, SEO, local SEO and more, might seem like a lot of hard work. Still, the reward is being visible on all relevant platforms and getting your company under the noses of relevant individuals.
Stay Up To Date With The Latest Search Engine Updates
Search engines are constantly evolving and updating their algorithms, as well as developing their interfaces to serve their users better.
It’s crucial that you stay on top of the changes in the market if you want to keep your website ranking for your target keywords and grow its local SEO. These developments could have a serious impact on the strategies you use, so you need to stay updated.
To do this, you have to constantly explore the ways you can improve your website to help it reach the first page, above the fold search result placements you covet.
The best way to stay up to date with the latest updates from Google and other major search engines is to follow them on social media and sign up for their newsletters. Follow their blogs using a newsfeed optimization tool like Feedly to see the latest posts on new developments.
If you don’t want to clutter up your inbox and read through hundreds of social media posts every day, then try following a selection of regularly-updated SEO blogs. Check out the TechWyse ‘Rise To The Top’ Blog and other popular marketing blogs to keep on top of the latest updates.
These blogs will offer you a general overview of the updates and how they might affect your website. If you’re an SEO expert or marketing manager who wants to understand how you can use these developments to your advantage, then UK Linkology’s blog shares expert advice on the practical implications of these algorithmic updates.
By staying up to date with the latest search engine developments, you’ll be able to adapt around them quickly and ensure that you achieve the rankings you want and maintain them.
No website is ever guaranteed to stay at the top of search engine results pages, and without constant vigilance and updates, your site could easily fall to the bottom again. Keep on top of the newest developments in the SEO, local SEO, and digital marketing spaces to ensure that your website is always at the forefront of any relevant search.
Conclusion
Growing your online reach and achieving the search engine rankings that you want takes time, effort and determination. You can’t just create a great website and then leave it. SEO is an ongoing process, but if you work hard, then your investment will pay off.
I hope these tips help you to understand why local SEO is important and how you can use it to your advantage.
Post By Hannah Stevenson (1 Posts)
Hannah Stevenson is the Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology, the UK’s highest-ranking link building agency. A former journalist, blogger and copywriter, she has extensive experience in content creation and SEO. She enjoys writing articles about SEO and the latest developments in this constantly evolving market.
Website: →
4 Takeaways From Top Rank On ESPN Card
A month after mixed martial arts dove back into the live sports pool, boxing dipped its toe.
Bob Arum's Top Rank became the first promotional company to produce a significant domestic fight card in the United States on Tuesday night, returning to ESPN airwaves with a five-bout show featuring a non-title fight involving featherweight title claimant and former Olympian Shakur Stevenson.
The show was broadcast from the conference center at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, with no fans.
Viewers were encouraged to visit ESPN.Hearmecheer.Com and record themselves for use as crowd noise.
The UFC produced three no-fan shows in Jacksonville, Florida before moving to Las Vegas for one show late in May and a pay-per-view production this past weekend. Its shows featured three announcers calling each fight while stationed at separate tables and included post-fight interviews from a remote room.
By contrast, Top Rank's disjointed broadcast included a four-man team with none on site.
Blow-by-blow man Joe Tessitore spoke from an ESPN studio in Bristol, Connecticut, while analysts Andre Ward, Timothy Bradley and Mark Kriegel were in their respective homes in California.
Not surprisingly, it looked and sounded like a first-time operation, with several gaps where no one was speaking, several instances where all tried to speak simultaneously and several times where Bradley was in mid-sentence as a round ended for a commercial break.
Only Bernardo Osuna, who conducted post-fight interviews, was at the MGM Grand and spoke with the fighters while standing six feet away from them on a stage positioned at the opposite end of the venue.
And ring announcer Mark Shunock blandly introduced the fighters from outside the ring as well, unlike the UFC's Bruce Buffer, who did his typical high-energy work from inside the cage even with no audience.
The network will broadcast another Top Rank show on Thursday.
"The title fights and the great matchups will come soon enough," Tessitore said. "But this is an important first step, just having boxing back on TV live."
B/R took in all the action from the three-plus-hour broadcast and put together a list of the most prominent takeaways. Click through to see how your impressions measured up to ours.
How A 'bubble' In Las Vegas Became The Solution For Top Rank And Boxing's Return
Well before the coronavirus pandemic halted sports in the United States in March, Top Rank had to make a decision. On Jan. 23, unified junior welterweight titleholder Jose Ramirez was preparing to fly to Haikou, China, to face Viktor Postol. A call came: Stay home. The fight was off.
A similar call went to Postol, who had landed with his team in China earlier that day. Get back on a plane. The illness sweeping through Wuhan was spreading.
That was the first of many cancellations in sports worldwide. From March until June, boxing has essentially been shut down.
The return of boxing to the United States has taken months of planning. The study of over 20 different protocols from sports leagues to movie studios to large corporations led to the creation of a 20-page, five-pronged plan, which Top Rank delivered to the Nevada State Athletic Commission to make Tuesday's fight card headlined by Shakur Stevenson vs. Felix Caraballo happen in Las Vegas.
"I've been in this business way longer than I want to admit," says Brad Jacobs, Top Rank COO. "And this has been, by far, the most difficult process I've been through."
Tuesday's card -- and the rest of Top Rank's cards for the foreseeable future -- will look and feel different than any other fight night. Instead of an arena, the fights will take place in a studio setting that looks almost like a concert setup inside a room at the MGM Grand Conference Center. The center is part of the bubble MGM and Top Rank set up to quarantine and keep their fighters safe. There will be no fans. Limited media, including ESPN's Bernardo Osuna, will be on-site. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, which helps detect COVID-19, will be commonplace.
"Everyone understands we're living in a different world here and [testing positive is] part of what potentially could happen," Jacobs says.
"Potentially" became reality, as the system Top Rank put in place showed its efficacy Sunday, when co-feature fighter Mikaela Mayer was pulled from the card after a positive COVID-19 test.
But the card goes on. The fighting will be familiar, but the events will operate differently. Fewer fights a night, a reduction in cornermen and assigned cutmen, adjustments made to reintroduce boxing to the world in the sport's home, Las Vegas.
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There won't be any fans around the ring at the the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. Mikey Williams/Top Rank
From the start, Top Rank president Todd duBoef wanted boxing's return to be in Vegas, though he wasn't always sure it would happen.
In the days following the postponement of Stevenson's March 14 fight in New York and before the country realized how long the pandemic would last, duBoef reached out to MGM to see if he could put on fan-less shows at its Vegas facility. He also checked in with UFC president Dana White to see if the Apex would be available.
Top Rank Boxing is on ESPN and ESPN+. Subscribe to ESPN+ to get exclusive boxing events, weigh-ins and more.
7 p.M. ET Tuesday on ESPN: Shakur Stevenson vs. Felix Caraballo, 10 rounds, junior lightweights
7 p.M. ET Thursday on ESPN: Jessie Magdaleno vs. Yenifel Vicente, 10 rounds, junior lightweights
Soon after, duBoef's thoughts were scuttled. Borders closed. Commissions shut down. Boxing needed, like the rest of the sporting world, to pause. But Vegas remained duBoef's hope. The Nevada State Athletic Commission would have to allow for events to take place.
"It was a little bit of a selfish interest from all of us that seeing the city and the state decimated the way it was, it was like, if we were going to bring back some business or start to show the world, reintroducing sports back into the world on television, we felt it was important because Nevada was our home state," duBoef says. "They needed to be at the center or working with us, the consumer or average person, 'Hey, let's get some confidence back. Las Vegas is still around.'"
This isn't to say they didn't consider other places. Jacobs spoke with at least 20 other venues across the United States as options. But Vegas was the goal. Everywhere else was Plan B or C.
While Top Rank waited for a venue, Jacobs studied. After the initial shock of COVID-19 set in, he created a file in Evernote and carried it with him everywhere he went. It was his constant reference tool, as he began contemplating what a return-to-fight protocol might look like.
If he saw something in another protocol he liked, he jotted it into his Evernote file. Headings such as Testing, Venue, Training Center, Sanitizing Vehicles and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) all took up space.
By April 1, Jacobs put together the first of at least eight iterations of the Top Rank playbook for returning to fights. It began with broad ideas. As he researched, the plan became more detailed.
The latest version, obtained by ESPN, begins with a five-pronged approach: establishing an internal task force; reviewing and identifying any potential exposure risks; establishing a method of emergency communication; creating the safest possible environment to protect everyone; and executing the plan.
Before fighters arrived in Las Vegas for the final stages of camp -- after sparring completed -- they filled out a questionnaire asking if they had come into contact with anyone with COVID-19, if they've had a fever at or above 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 72 hours, what their recent travel history was and whether they had any symptoms before they drove or flew to Las Vegas. While fighters and their teams were encouraged to drive, flying was allowed.
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The layout of the Top Rank "bubble" at the MGM Grand Convention Center in Las Vegas. Top Rank
While the time frame was different for the first card because MGM did not reopen until June 6, main event fighters will typically arrive the Friday before a Tuesday card or the Sunday before a Thursday card. The rest of the fighters will show the following day.
Once fighters land in Vegas, teams are transported in a sanitized vehicle to take a PCR test, the results of which will take six hours. If a fighter or anyone on their team tests positive either at this test or at the test following the weigh-in, he or she is immediately quarantined, and the fight is off. For the first few fights, duBoef said, they don't have backup fighters -- but as they start to build cards, there might be some flexibility to move fights or fighters around at the last minute. If tests are negative, the team will be allowed to check in to the MGM Grand Hotel at a private entrance.
They'll be taken up a back elevator to a designated floor in the hotel for Top Rank. No access will be granted by elevators for other hotel guests, and all movement to and from the floor will come from a back-of-house elevator.
When the fighter arrives, he or she will be given a bucket, water bottle and jump rope with their name on it to use for the duration of their stay. Upon departure, they can either take the equipment with them or have it discarded.
A training schedule at a gym set up in the conference center will be provided -- as well as transportation in a sanitized vehicle from the elevator to the convention center. While the gym will be cleaned daily, it is the responsibility of the fighter and his or her team to clean and sanitize after themselves.
2 Related
Everything will be done in the convention center bubble: meals, training and the fights themselves. Access to the bubble will be allowed only for those who have a dated and color-coded wristband allowing entry. If anyone leaves the bubble, they have to take another COVID-19 test to reenter. Masks will be worn at all times except when eating and in hotel rooms.
"Their initial operation plan was very creative, comprehensive and addressed all the issues," says Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Bennett and Jacobs were in touch often in the planning process, including using the five-page NSAC protocol as a guide. The Top Rank plan already had many of the requirements in place from the NSAC document, including the establishment of a closed system -- or bubble -- for the safety of all involved. The NSAC document also called for the pre-travel questionnaire and temperature checks along with the PCR testing upon arrival. It also addressed the necessity of contact tracing if a positive test occurs (at the expense of the promoter) and a 14-day quarantine for any fighters testing positive, including no air travel.
"To have a closed system," Bennett says, "which means it's coordinated, everybody's accountable that comes in or out of our system."
The trip for Bernardo Osuna will be an easy drive from Orange County, California, to Vegas. When he arrives, it won't be the same. The ESPN announcer will be under the same protocol as everyone else: Arrive. Test. Quarantine. Work.
He'll also be alone. The rest of his usual team calling the fight for ESPN -- play-by-play man Joe Tessitore and analysts Mark Kriegel, Andre Ward and Tim Bradley -- will be remote, each in their own separate location. A remote broadcast app will be set up in Osuna's hotel room to allow for live TV segments. The crew has gone through preparatory runs, but Bradley knows it will be different because he won't be able to see some of the things he catches live. He'll miss hearing the punches.
Instead, Bradley will be watching the monitor inside his home office, with his 20-year-old son, Robert, as his emergency IT guru. The rest of his family, because voices carry in his home, are expected to leave for San Diego for the week on Tuesday morning.
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Timothy Bradley won't be ringside, but will do his part on the ESPN broadcast team from his house. Timothy Bradley/ESPN
He'll have an iPad hanging above an open laptop as his dual visual apparatus, with the iPad showing him the feed of the fight and a Zoom call with Tessitore on the laptop so he can at least see his broadcast partner. The hope is his longtime work with Tessitore will make any potential talking-over-each-other issues easier to navigate.
"The main thing I really worry about, honestly, is the connection," Bradley says. "What happens if my internet dies just for a second? Sometimes it happens, man. You get a shortage in your internet for a split second and it's like, 'Where's Tim Bradley? Oh, I lost Tim Bradley.' Now I got to find my way back home."
If there is a technical glitch, Osuna is on-site, though he's there to be a reporter. Osuna will try to get information from corners during rounds and talk with trainers -- from 6 feet away. With it likely being quieter in the studio, Osuna is concerned some trainers might not be as willing to share information at risk of being overheard, but he's hopeful.
He'll also be doing interviews with a fish pole boom mic to make sure social distancing remains in play.
"The whole reason I will be in Vegas is because I will provide those eyes and ears," Osuna says.
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Mark Kriegel welcomes the return of boxing following a long hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mayer just wanted to fight. She had finished a long camp preparing to face Melissa Hernandez on March 17 when COVID-19 emerged and shut down her fight. Mayer traveled back to Colorado, and once she realized she wouldn't be fighting anytime soon, Mayer secluded herself on a weeklong camping trip with her two best friends.
Then, she came home, put up an Everlast heavy bag and tried to stay in shape. She cleared out her house to learn how to inline skate -- a one-day experiment shut down remotely by one of her coaches, Al Mitchell. This worked for a couple of weeks, but motivation waned, so she packed up her Jeep with her dogs, Luna and Moose, some belongings and her best friend and fellow boxer, Ginny Fuchs, for a 20-hour drive from Colorado to Washington, D.C., to start training and quarantining with her other coach, Kay Koroma.
"We didn't even have the lights on in the gym," Mayer says. "There was no electricity running while there was quarantine, they shut that all off, but we had it opened up for us. Coach Kay had a friend there who opened it up for us, and we would bring one or two people in for sparring while we were there.
"It was just us, four or five people in the gym."
Those surroundings changed in mid-May as soon as Koroma moved camp from Washington, D.C., to Houston's Main Street Boxing. Fuchs and Mayer packed up the Jeep again and drove to Texas -- doing what they could to stay away from people despite traversing the country in preparation for a fight. With relaxed social restrictions in Texas implemented soon after she arrived, gyms were opened up.
After all that time isolated, Mayer was now in a crowd.
"[It was] super weird and a little nerve-wracking because all of a sudden the gym is packed with younger people, and I'm like, 'How safe are these young people being before they come into this gym?' Even though I wasn't quarantined at home like a lot of people were, locked in their house ... I was very cautious."
Mayer needed the sparring work ahead of her bout against Helen Joseph, so she continued to train and understood the risks. She took precautions not only for herself, but as a way to look out for her coaches. She says she consistently washed her hands after touching public surfaces, used hand sanitizer and avoided touching her face.
"Boxing is really the only thing I'm willing to risk my life for. Like, the career that I've built for boxing is worth my life," she says. "So this is my livelihood. I wasn't going out to go out and hang out at peoples' houses or doing anything like that. That's not worth it to me.
"Being in the gym and training for a fight, that's worth it. So I had to do what I had to do."
Mayer left Houston for Las Vegas late last week and took the only plane ride of her journey over the past three months. She entered the "bubble," then isolated as she awaited her results. On Saturday she was asymptomatic, but positive.
It's not clear where she contracted COVID-19, but regardless, she was ruled out. Instead of quarantining in Vegas, she decided to drive solo back to Colorado to recover. Both Mayer and Top Rank hope to get her back in the ring later this summer if she tests negative for COVID-19.
"After two hard back-to-back camps, not being able to step [into] the ring both times, you can imagine how disappointed I am," Mayer wrote on Instagram. "However, these protocols were put into place for a reason and it's more important to care about the health and well being of my team and the people at this event."
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A wide view of the conference room in Las Vegas where Top Rank boxing will take place on June 9. Mikey Williams/Top Rank
With no alternates available for this card, Joseph was left without an opponent and, just like Mayer, will have to wait to get back into action. Top Rank shifted another fight, Jared Anderson vs. Johnnie Langston, into the "co-main" spot, fired up its marketing efforts and refocused on executing Night 1.
Top Rank also had to work with Stevenson and Anderson on Monday to find a new cornerman after Koroma was removed from the bubble due to his contact with Mayer since arriving in Vegas. Koroma was scheduled to corner both men in their respective fights.
That sort of flexibility is going to be the key. Top Rank can put all its plans in place, safeguard its fighters and its staff as much as possible and hope everything goes right -- until it doesn't.
Jacobs said they'll evolve as they learn. He knows things change fast. Right now, the biggest concern is safety -- and getting a good first show off. Everything else can be tweaked later.
"Healthy and safe is the No. 1 priority," Jacobs says. "After that, having great fights that are entertaining and [for] a person sitting at home, watching the fights with a smile on their face, we succeeded."
They recognize it's a chance to bring the sport to a new audience, too, as Top Rank will be the only live sporting event on Tuesday and Thursday nights for the time being. In Las Vegas.
When most business owners think of SEO, they think of optimising their website for the keywords that they are targeting.
However, they often overlook local SEO; the process of targeting keywords related to your local area to boost your affiliation with your region.
So, when internet users are searching for terms like ‘car washing in Greenwich,’ search engines will find them the businesses in their local area.
Nobody wants to travel hundreds of miles just to wash their car, which is why search engines try to find them the best local businesses. Even companies that offer remote services to a national, or even international, clientele can benefit from local SEO.
That’s because some potential customers will still search for local companies, even if they know that they can get these services from anywhere. They like to work with companies in their local area, so you’ll be able to get yourself to the top of their searches if you target local SEO.
Google, the largest search engine on the market, is dedicated to finding the most relevant answers to any given search. Most of the other search engines on the market are similarly committed to finding websites and content that meets the needs of users. That’s why their algorithms revolve around finding out the intention of each search and selecting webpages that meet these requirements.
If your website is optimized to show that it is linked to a specific area, then search engines will offer your site as an answer to queries related to local companies. If you only target topic-specific keywords, without any mention of your location, then you could miss out on local search results, and by extension, a lot of website visits.
That being said, the opposite is not true, and local SEO can boost your overall rankings. That’s because local SEO invariably involves your target keywords combined with the name of the town, city or village that you’re based in. As such, you can expand your rankings for your target keywords at the same time as growing your local SEO.
In all, it’s a win-win situation!
If you’re keen to integrate local SEO into your online strategy, then read on to find a selection of practical tips.
Learn How Users Are Searching For Local Businesses In Your Niche
If you’ve already got a strong SEO strategy in place, then you’ll know the keywords that you need to be targeting to reach the results pages for searches relevant to your business.
Local SEO runs on a similar principle, but that doesn’t mean that you can just stick the name of the town or village your business is based in onto the end of your target keywords.
Instead, you need to find out how users are searching for local businesses and then incorporate these writing techniques into your website content. The easiest way to do this is to for the name of your business market, then put ‘in’ followed by the area you live, at the end.
Check out the ‘Searches related to’ section at the bottom of the results page, as well as the ‘People also ask’ results, so you can find out what questions your website needs to answer and the related keywords you need to use.
You can also use established SEO tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, if you have access to them, to find the related searches that you should be targeting.
Once you have a list of queries that your website needs to be answering and the related keywords that its content needs to include, you can adapt your writing accordingly. Re-write your homepage content, as well as any relevant auxiliary pages, to include these terms and answer the questions that are being asked.
Include Local SEO In Your Content Marketing Strategy
It’s not enough to only optimise your homepage and service pages for local SEO; you also need to make sure the technique is included in your content marketing strategy.
As such, any blog posts, research guides and whitepapers you write and publish, on your website or another, need to include elements of your local SEO strategy.
That might mean including your region alongside your company name, or it might involve trying to create blog posts that reference your local area. You could also write content that answers the questions being asked by local searchers to ensure that you create completely relevant and insightful articles.
You also need to include elements of local SEO on your social media pages; primarily, you’ll need to host your contact details, including your address. You can also add your social media pages to most business listings, which I’ll talk about later.
By constantly considering local SEO, and not treating it as an afterthought, you can ensure that it really makes an impact on your website and helps it to reach the top of relevant local searches.
Take Advantage Of The Local Business Listings Offered By Search Engines
Most major search engines offer local businesses free listings, from which they pull details such as contact information and map listings. These free listings can make a huge difference to your website’s local reach, so it’s crucial that you make full use of them.
Google, which, as I’ve already mentioned is the world’s biggest search engine, offers the Google My Business Account, on which you can list contact details, a link to your website, basic information and more.
It also allows users to review your business so that you can get additional exposure. However, you do need to manage your reviews to ensure that they remain a true reflection of your business and don’t get polluted with fake reviews and nasty comments.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and one of the other top services, which, while still well below Google, is still an important part of the market, also offers a local business listing.
It’s called Bing Places for Business, and it works in a similar way to Google’s business listings. You can add business details, contact info and social media/ website links so that you can grow your business reach on this search engine.
Yahoo!, a search engine powered by Bing, also allows you to list your business and add details. Some other search engines do too, so work out which ones you’re targeting and then find out more about how you can optimize your content for them and take advantage of any local business listings they might offer.
Taking advantage of these listings is an easy, free way to boost your local SEO and enhance your business’s online reach. There’s literally no reason not to use them, and if you don’t take control of them yourself, then they might still exist, because customers might be mentioning your business online. If you’re not using it to its full advantage, then the listing won’t benefit your business and help you to grow your local and overall SEO.
Make Sure Your Website Is Suitable For Mobile Use
While it’s vital that your website looks good on a desktop computer, now more than ever it is crucial that it also works well on a mobile device.
That’s because there are 4 billion active mobile internet users worldwide, and smartphones are more popular now than ever before. Therefore, you need to make sure that you’re not missing out on this vast audience.
Many smartphone users turn to their phones to find the local businesses that they want to visit, with research showing that 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches and that these local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day.
As a result, optimizing your website for mobile use is an essential part of any local SEO strategy. The first step is to test if your website works on mobile devices by using the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool from Google.
If you find that your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, then you need to work with your website development team to improve it and get it working on smartphones.
With a mobile-friendly website, you’ll be able to grow your local SEO reach and enjoy the benefit of an even wider audience for your content.
Optimise Your Website For Voice Search
Thanks to the rise of digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Bixby and more, voice search is a booming trend in the search engine market.
It’s estimated that as many as 58% of online adults have used voice search at some point, which means that you need to make sure that your content is optimized for this blossoming technique.
When you consider the fact that 46% of voice search users search for a local business on a daily basis, you’ll see why this is such an important part of your local SEO strategy.
Improving your website and making it voice-search-friendly means using natural language and working out how users will speak their queries.
This is because most voice searches are done in natural language; Google reports that almost 70% of the voice searches made on its Google assistant are made in natural language.
Do your research and work out how users will try to find businesses in your industry using voice search and then incorporate these phrases and queries into your writing.
Optimizing your content for voice search as well as mobile, SEO, local SEO and more, might seem like a lot of hard work. Still, the reward is being visible on all relevant platforms and getting your company under the noses of relevant individuals.
Stay Up To Date With The Latest Search Engine Updates
Search engines are constantly evolving and updating their algorithms, as well as developing their interfaces to serve their users better.
It’s crucial that you stay on top of the changes in the market if you want to keep your website ranking for your target keywords and grow its local SEO. These developments could have a serious impact on the strategies you use, so you need to stay updated.
To do this, you have to constantly explore the ways you can improve your website to help it reach the first page, above the fold search result placements you covet.
The best way to stay up to date with the latest updates from Google and other major search engines is to follow them on social media and sign up for their newsletters. Follow their blogs using a newsfeed optimization tool like Feedly to see the latest posts on new developments.
If you don’t want to clutter up your inbox and read through hundreds of social media posts every day, then try following a selection of regularly-updated SEO blogs. Check out the TechWyse ‘Rise To The Top’ Blog and other popular marketing blogs to keep on top of the latest updates.
These blogs will offer you a general overview of the updates and how they might affect your website. If you’re an SEO expert or marketing manager who wants to understand how you can use these developments to your advantage, then UK Linkology’s blog shares expert advice on the practical implications of these algorithmic updates.
By staying up to date with the latest search engine developments, you’ll be able to adapt around them quickly and ensure that you achieve the rankings you want and maintain them.
No website is ever guaranteed to stay at the top of search engine results pages, and without constant vigilance and updates, your site could easily fall to the bottom again. Keep on top of the newest developments in the SEO, local SEO, and digital marketing spaces to ensure that your website is always at the forefront of any relevant search.
Conclusion
Growing your online reach and achieving the search engine rankings that you want takes time, effort and determination. You can’t just create a great website and then leave it. SEO is an ongoing process, but if you work hard, then your investment will pay off.
I hope these tips help you to understand why local SEO is important and how you can use it to your advantage.
Post By Hannah Stevenson (1 Posts)
Hannah Stevenson is the Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology, the UK’s highest-ranking link building agency. A former journalist, blogger and copywriter, she has extensive experience in content creation and SEO. She enjoys writing articles about SEO and the latest developments in this constantly evolving market.
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4 Takeaways From Top Rank On ESPN Card
A month after mixed martial arts dove back into the live sports pool, boxing dipped its toe.
Bob Arum's Top Rank became the first promotional company to produce a significant domestic fight card in the United States on Tuesday night, returning to ESPN airwaves with a five-bout show featuring a non-title fight involving featherweight title claimant and former Olympian Shakur Stevenson.
The show was broadcast from the conference center at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, with no fans.
Viewers were encouraged to visit ESPN.Hearmecheer.Com and record themselves for use as crowd noise.
The UFC produced three no-fan shows in Jacksonville, Florida before moving to Las Vegas for one show late in May and a pay-per-view production this past weekend. Its shows featured three announcers calling each fight while stationed at separate tables and included post-fight interviews from a remote room.
By contrast, Top Rank's disjointed broadcast included a four-man team with none on site.
Blow-by-blow man Joe Tessitore spoke from an ESPN studio in Bristol, Connecticut, while analysts Andre Ward, Timothy Bradley and Mark Kriegel were in their respective homes in California.
Not surprisingly, it looked and sounded like a first-time operation, with several gaps where no one was speaking, several instances where all tried to speak simultaneously and several times where Bradley was in mid-sentence as a round ended for a commercial break.
Only Bernardo Osuna, who conducted post-fight interviews, was at the MGM Grand and spoke with the fighters while standing six feet away from them on a stage positioned at the opposite end of the venue.
And ring announcer Mark Shunock blandly introduced the fighters from outside the ring as well, unlike the UFC's Bruce Buffer, who did his typical high-energy work from inside the cage even with no audience.
The network will broadcast another Top Rank show on Thursday.
"The title fights and the great matchups will come soon enough," Tessitore said. "But this is an important first step, just having boxing back on TV live."
B/R took in all the action from the three-plus-hour broadcast and put together a list of the most prominent takeaways. Click through to see how your impressions measured up to ours.
How A 'bubble' In Las Vegas Became The Solution For Top Rank And Boxing's Return
Well before the coronavirus pandemic halted sports in the United States in March, Top Rank had to make a decision. On Jan. 23, unified junior welterweight titleholder Jose Ramirez was preparing to fly to Haikou, China, to face Viktor Postol. A call came: Stay home. The fight was off.
A similar call went to Postol, who had landed with his team in China earlier that day. Get back on a plane. The illness sweeping through Wuhan was spreading.
That was the first of many cancellations in sports worldwide. From March until June, boxing has essentially been shut down.
The return of boxing to the United States has taken months of planning. The study of over 20 different protocols from sports leagues to movie studios to large corporations led to the creation of a 20-page, five-pronged plan, which Top Rank delivered to the Nevada State Athletic Commission to make Tuesday's fight card headlined by Shakur Stevenson vs. Felix Caraballo happen in Las Vegas.
"I've been in this business way longer than I want to admit," says Brad Jacobs, Top Rank COO. "And this has been, by far, the most difficult process I've been through."
Tuesday's card -- and the rest of Top Rank's cards for the foreseeable future -- will look and feel different than any other fight night. Instead of an arena, the fights will take place in a studio setting that looks almost like a concert setup inside a room at the MGM Grand Conference Center. The center is part of the bubble MGM and Top Rank set up to quarantine and keep their fighters safe. There will be no fans. Limited media, including ESPN's Bernardo Osuna, will be on-site. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, which helps detect COVID-19, will be commonplace.
"Everyone understands we're living in a different world here and [testing positive is] part of what potentially could happen," Jacobs says.
"Potentially" became reality, as the system Top Rank put in place showed its efficacy Sunday, when co-feature fighter Mikaela Mayer was pulled from the card after a positive COVID-19 test.
But the card goes on. The fighting will be familiar, but the events will operate differently. Fewer fights a night, a reduction in cornermen and assigned cutmen, adjustments made to reintroduce boxing to the world in the sport's home, Las Vegas.
From the start, Top Rank president Todd duBoef wanted boxing's return to be in Vegas, though he wasn't always sure it would happen.
In the days following the postponement of Stevenson's March 14 fight in New York and before the country realized how long the pandemic would last, duBoef reached out to MGM to see if he could put on fan-less shows at its Vegas facility. He also checked in with UFC president Dana White to see if the Apex would be available.
Top Rank Boxing is on ESPN and ESPN+. Subscribe to ESPN+ to get exclusive boxing events, weigh-ins and more.
7 p.M. ET Tuesday on ESPN: Shakur Stevenson vs. Felix Caraballo, 10 rounds, junior lightweights
7 p.M. ET Thursday on ESPN: Jessie Magdaleno vs. Yenifel Vicente, 10 rounds, junior lightweights
Soon after, duBoef's thoughts were scuttled. Borders closed. Commissions shut down. Boxing needed, like the rest of the sporting world, to pause. But Vegas remained duBoef's hope. The Nevada State Athletic Commission would have to allow for events to take place.
"It was a little bit of a selfish interest from all of us that seeing the city and the state decimated the way it was, it was like, if we were going to bring back some business or start to show the world, reintroducing sports back into the world on television, we felt it was important because Nevada was our home state," duBoef says. "They needed to be at the center or working with us, the consumer or average person, 'Hey, let's get some confidence back. Las Vegas is still around.'"
This isn't to say they didn't consider other places. Jacobs spoke with at least 20 other venues across the United States as options. But Vegas was the goal. Everywhere else was Plan B or C.
While Top Rank waited for a venue, Jacobs studied. After the initial shock of COVID-19 set in, he created a file in Evernote and carried it with him everywhere he went. It was his constant reference tool, as he began contemplating what a return-to-fight protocol might look like.
If he saw something in another protocol he liked, he jotted it into his Evernote file. Headings such as Testing, Venue, Training Center, Sanitizing Vehicles and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) all took up space.
By April 1, Jacobs put together the first of at least eight iterations of the Top Rank playbook for returning to fights. It began with broad ideas. As he researched, the plan became more detailed.
The latest version, obtained by ESPN, begins with a five-pronged approach: establishing an internal task force; reviewing and identifying any potential exposure risks; establishing a method of emergency communication; creating the safest possible environment to protect everyone; and executing the plan.
Before fighters arrived in Las Vegas for the final stages of camp -- after sparring completed -- they filled out a questionnaire asking if they had come into contact with anyone with COVID-19, if they've had a fever at or above 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 72 hours, what their recent travel history was and whether they had any symptoms before they drove or flew to Las Vegas. While fighters and their teams were encouraged to drive, flying was allowed.
While the time frame was different for the first card because MGM did not reopen until June 6, main event fighters will typically arrive the Friday before a Tuesday card or the Sunday before a Thursday card. The rest of the fighters will show the following day.
Once fighters land in Vegas, teams are transported in a sanitized vehicle to take a PCR test, the results of which will take six hours. If a fighter or anyone on their team tests positive either at this test or at the test following the weigh-in, he or she is immediately quarantined, and the fight is off. For the first few fights, duBoef said, they don't have backup fighters -- but as they start to build cards, there might be some flexibility to move fights or fighters around at the last minute. If tests are negative, the team will be allowed to check in to the MGM Grand Hotel at a private entrance.
They'll be taken up a back elevator to a designated floor in the hotel for Top Rank. No access will be granted by elevators for other hotel guests, and all movement to and from the floor will come from a back-of-house elevator.
When the fighter arrives, he or she will be given a bucket, water bottle and jump rope with their name on it to use for the duration of their stay. Upon departure, they can either take the equipment with them or have it discarded.
A training schedule at a gym set up in the conference center will be provided -- as well as transportation in a sanitized vehicle from the elevator to the convention center. While the gym will be cleaned daily, it is the responsibility of the fighter and his or her team to clean and sanitize after themselves.
2 Related
Everything will be done in the convention center bubble: meals, training and the fights themselves. Access to the bubble will be allowed only for those who have a dated and color-coded wristband allowing entry. If anyone leaves the bubble, they have to take another COVID-19 test to reenter. Masks will be worn at all times except when eating and in hotel rooms.
"Their initial operation plan was very creative, comprehensive and addressed all the issues," says Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Bennett and Jacobs were in touch often in the planning process, including using the five-page NSAC protocol as a guide. The Top Rank plan already had many of the requirements in place from the NSAC document, including the establishment of a closed system -- or bubble -- for the safety of all involved. The NSAC document also called for the pre-travel questionnaire and temperature checks along with the PCR testing upon arrival. It also addressed the necessity of contact tracing if a positive test occurs (at the expense of the promoter) and a 14-day quarantine for any fighters testing positive, including no air travel.
"To have a closed system," Bennett says, "which means it's coordinated, everybody's accountable that comes in or out of our system."
The trip for Bernardo Osuna will be an easy drive from Orange County, California, to Vegas. When he arrives, it won't be the same. The ESPN announcer will be under the same protocol as everyone else: Arrive. Test. Quarantine. Work.
He'll also be alone. The rest of his usual team calling the fight for ESPN -- play-by-play man Joe Tessitore and analysts Mark Kriegel, Andre Ward and Tim Bradley -- will be remote, each in their own separate location. A remote broadcast app will be set up in Osuna's hotel room to allow for live TV segments. The crew has gone through preparatory runs, but Bradley knows it will be different because he won't be able to see some of the things he catches live. He'll miss hearing the punches.
Instead, Bradley will be watching the monitor inside his home office, with his 20-year-old son, Robert, as his emergency IT guru. The rest of his family, because voices carry in his home, are expected to leave for San Diego for the week on Tuesday morning.
He'll have an iPad hanging above an open laptop as his dual visual apparatus, with the iPad showing him the feed of the fight and a Zoom call with Tessitore on the laptop so he can at least see his broadcast partner. The hope is his longtime work with Tessitore will make any potential talking-over-each-other issues easier to navigate.
"The main thing I really worry about, honestly, is the connection," Bradley says. "What happens if my internet dies just for a second? Sometimes it happens, man. You get a shortage in your internet for a split second and it's like, 'Where's Tim Bradley? Oh, I lost Tim Bradley.' Now I got to find my way back home."
If there is a technical glitch, Osuna is on-site, though he's there to be a reporter. Osuna will try to get information from corners during rounds and talk with trainers -- from 6 feet away. With it likely being quieter in the studio, Osuna is concerned some trainers might not be as willing to share information at risk of being overheard, but he's hopeful.
He'll also be doing interviews with a fish pole boom mic to make sure social distancing remains in play.
"The whole reason I will be in Vegas is because I will provide those eyes and ears," Osuna says.
1:37
Mark Kriegel welcomes the return of boxing following a long hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mayer just wanted to fight. She had finished a long camp preparing to face Melissa Hernandez on March 17 when COVID-19 emerged and shut down her fight. Mayer traveled back to Colorado, and once she realized she wouldn't be fighting anytime soon, Mayer secluded herself on a weeklong camping trip with her two best friends.
Then, she came home, put up an Everlast heavy bag and tried to stay in shape. She cleared out her house to learn how to inline skate -- a one-day experiment shut down remotely by one of her coaches, Al Mitchell. This worked for a couple of weeks, but motivation waned, so she packed up her Jeep with her dogs, Luna and Moose, some belongings and her best friend and fellow boxer, Ginny Fuchs, for a 20-hour drive from Colorado to Washington, D.C., to start training and quarantining with her other coach, Kay Koroma.
"We didn't even have the lights on in the gym," Mayer says. "There was no electricity running while there was quarantine, they shut that all off, but we had it opened up for us. Coach Kay had a friend there who opened it up for us, and we would bring one or two people in for sparring while we were there.
"It was just us, four or five people in the gym."
Those surroundings changed in mid-May as soon as Koroma moved camp from Washington, D.C., to Houston's Main Street Boxing. Fuchs and Mayer packed up the Jeep again and drove to Texas -- doing what they could to stay away from people despite traversing the country in preparation for a fight. With relaxed social restrictions in Texas implemented soon after she arrived, gyms were opened up.
After all that time isolated, Mayer was now in a crowd.
"[It was] super weird and a little nerve-wracking because all of a sudden the gym is packed with younger people, and I'm like, 'How safe are these young people being before they come into this gym?' Even though I wasn't quarantined at home like a lot of people were, locked in their house ... I was very cautious."
Mayer needed the sparring work ahead of her bout against Helen Joseph, so she continued to train and understood the risks. She took precautions not only for herself, but as a way to look out for her coaches. She says she consistently washed her hands after touching public surfaces, used hand sanitizer and avoided touching her face.
"Boxing is really the only thing I'm willing to risk my life for. Like, the career that I've built for boxing is worth my life," she says. "So this is my livelihood. I wasn't going out to go out and hang out at peoples' houses or doing anything like that. That's not worth it to me.
"Being in the gym and training for a fight, that's worth it. So I had to do what I had to do."
Mayer left Houston for Las Vegas late last week and took the only plane ride of her journey over the past three months. She entered the "bubble," then isolated as she awaited her results. On Saturday she was asymptomatic, but positive.
It's not clear where she contracted COVID-19, but regardless, she was ruled out. Instead of quarantining in Vegas, she decided to drive solo back to Colorado to recover. Both Mayer and Top Rank hope to get her back in the ring later this summer if she tests negative for COVID-19.
"After two hard back-to-back camps, not being able to step [into] the ring both times, you can imagine how disappointed I am," Mayer wrote on Instagram. "However, these protocols were put into place for a reason and it's more important to care about the health and well being of my team and the people at this event."
With no alternates available for this card, Joseph was left without an opponent and, just like Mayer, will have to wait to get back into action. Top Rank shifted another fight, Jared Anderson vs. Johnnie Langston, into the "co-main" spot, fired up its marketing efforts and refocused on executing Night 1.
Top Rank also had to work with Stevenson and Anderson on Monday to find a new cornerman after Koroma was removed from the bubble due to his contact with Mayer since arriving in Vegas. Koroma was scheduled to corner both men in their respective fights.
That sort of flexibility is going to be the key. Top Rank can put all its plans in place, safeguard its fighters and its staff as much as possible and hope everything goes right -- until it doesn't.
Jacobs said they'll evolve as they learn. He knows things change fast. Right now, the biggest concern is safety -- and getting a good first show off. Everything else can be tweaked later.
"Healthy and safe is the No. 1 priority," Jacobs says. "After that, having great fights that are entertaining and [for] a person sitting at home, watching the fights with a smile on their face, we succeeded."
They recognize it's a chance to bring the sport to a new audience, too, as Top Rank will be the only live sporting event on Tuesday and Thursday nights for the time being. In Las Vegas.
Good article
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