As SEO grows more prevalent and complex in response to the evolving sophistication of Google’s search algorithm, it becomes more challenging to execute a formal strategy and reap the benefits adequately. In an anticipatory move, most modern optimizers adjust their system to be more specialized and targeted, drawing up a niche. Local SEO, which has grown in importance over the past few years, is one of the most common niches to choose—by competing with other companies in your city rather than other companies throughout the country, you’ll significantly enhance your visibility and reduce the number of resources needed to sustain the effort.
However, modern local SEO is far more than just stuffing your city’s name into your articles and meta tags. To be successful, you’ll need to become more locally active on every possible marketing channel you can—using other marketing strategies to support your local SEO development. One of the best examples of this is using your social media presence to improve your local relevance in the eyes of Google.
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Company Profile Cues
The first thing to look at is how your company information appears online. One reason is that the way it seems across the broad web significantly influences how well your website ranks in local searches.
According to one source, users clicked on Google’s first result 38.6% of the time last year, meaning it’s worthwhile to learn how to achieve the coveted top spot. That tally increased significantly compared to the average click-through rate of 28.5% in 2020.
Considering what you read above, your company information must be thorough and accurate so that you rank favorably in local searches. Google’s algorithm makes decisions on search engine result rankings by tapping into hundreds of sources of data to determine the following:
- The prominence of a brand
- Company information, address, phone number, and hours
But here’s where the proverbial rubber hits the road. If you want this data to be thorough, accurate, and easily accessible, you need to do the following:
Claim as many profiles as possible for your company on as many social networks as possible. After doing so, comb over all the information to ensure all your data is accurate, consistent, and up to date. But this is more than just a one-and-done process. It would be best if you kept them updated.
Audience Makeup and Networking
The composition of your target demographic and connections can also play a crucial role in how well-established your business is as a regional authority. For instance, a Houston-based company with 50,000 active Houston-based followers will generate a higher local power than a Houston-based business with 500 active followers spread out across the U.S.
When leveraging social media’s power to bolster your local SEO strategy, finding followers close to home is critical. And don’t underestimate the value of finding followers who will actively engage with your brand. That’s the secret sauce that’ll empower your strategy.
Local Story Sharing
One way to improve your authority status is by the types of stories you share on your company profile pages. Your accounts need to be strategic and relate to your region in some way. Once you’ve crafted the correct articles, you can share them to get more regional titles into your newsfeed. Another option is to scour the internet for more local news from news channels and your followers in the area. Share the articles you think are especially interesting, practical, and relevant, and respond to anyone commenting on the stories you share. You want to demonstrate that you’re an integral part of your community.
But when it comes to creating stories, how do you go about doing so correctly? Continue reading for several things to remember when crafting shareable stories:
- Know Your Audience: You need to know and understand your target demographic to know what constitutes exciting ng and relevant content. You also must speak your audience’s language and give your followers what they need to know.
- Select Strong Characters: Concentrate on the key performance indicators (KPI) your audience cares about — or focus on relevant local issues and key players. Don’t inundate your audience with details that aren’t relevant to them.
- Create a Strong Plot: When writing shareable stories, ensure you have a solid start, a riveting middle, and an exciting conclusion. Your audience needs a reason to consume your content from start to finish. Doing these three things will help.
- Engage With Your Followers: If you create shareable content, your active followers will likely engage. Follow up on comments and stay engaged.
Doing these things will ensure you build a relationship with your local followers.
Local Syndication Channels
Using social media to further your local SEO objectives involves more than just posting content on your social media platforms. It would be best if you also had other influencers in your geographic region share your content. According to one research firm, the worldwide influencer marketing segment was worth $16.4 billion as of 2022. That’s more than double what it was in 2019. So, don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t reach out to influencers in your area.
Case in point: if you update your site with a new press release, try to get it published and syndicated on the social media outlets of your local news providers. If you write a new blog about new developments in your industry and how these developments will impact the region, find an individual authority and ask them to share the blog with their followers.
Event-Related Hashtags
Hashtags are a quick and powerful way to associate yourself with a given event immediately. At any given time in your city, there are probably dozens of events, each with its signature hashtag. Ensure your company participates in these local events and use the appropriate hashtags when you post about these events. Doing this regularly will accomplish the following two things:
- It will increase your visibility on social media searches for that hashtag.
- It will make your posts more relevant in Google’s eyes—main thanks to the new Google-Twitter tweet indexing partnership.
Increased Local Traffic
Traffic is a significant indicator of domain authority. So, the more people visit your website and the longer they spend checking out the various pages, the better your search rankings will be. If you’re not on the first page of search results — and preferably high up on the top half of page one — there’s a good chance that users won’t see you. The reason is that many only look at page one of search results.
A more significant number of more active local followers on your social media platforms means more active, engaged people on your site—and those people will mostly be from your area. The Google algorithm will deem your business a significant local authority and reckon that residents appreciate your site.
Increased Local Reviews
When strategizing your local SEO plans, don’t forget the role local reviews play in helping you achieve your objectives. Reviews you receive on local directories like Yelp factor heavily into your overall rank. That means the more reviews people write and the more positive those reviews are, the higher you’ll appear in local searches. It could be the difference between showing up in the top half of page one search results and appearing in the bottom half of page one. And the higher you are, the more likely users will click your company’s URL and visit your website.
Use social media to encourage people to write reviews about their experiences. You can do it directly or indirectly and urge them since some people will need a nudge to leave a review. If you attach some benefit to leaving a review, that might be enough to get a review from someone who might otherwise not write one. If you get more customer reviews, you’ll ultimately see more and more customers doing likewise. And this will boost your search engine rankings.
Once your social media strategy is geared toward increasing your local relevance and visibility, you should have no problem climbing to the top of your city’s search engine results pages (SERPs). You’ll attract a critical mass of customers and potential customers to your website, which will help to drive sales in the right direction.
With more people relying on local and mobile searches than ever, the increase in your total traffic should be substantial.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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