When you search for “IT companies in London”, Google suggests numerous results for the same. It tries to display the best IT companies working in London. It happens because of Local SEO. After Google’s Pigeon update back in 2014, the Geographical search is an important ranking factor which can’t be ignored by the digital marketing professionals. Google evaluates websites for local search terms and determines their ranking accordingly.
If you run a service based website, eCommerce site, business websites, etc, for specific countries, it is very important to optimize them for local search results. Do you run a WordPress website? Looking for local SEO best practices to improve its ranking and the conversion rate? If yes, then go through the below-mentioned tips:
1. Optimize Your Content For Search Engines And People
All experienced webmasters know that having a professional website with lightning-fast load times, appealing structure, and look is not sufficient in the SEO game. Before optimizing your content, just think what the targeted audience expects from you. Once you have a clear understanding of your audience’s pain points, you can create all sorts of compelling content accordingly.
Once you get the content, do OnPage and OffPage optimization. Fortunately, WordPress offers lots of SEO Plugins. You can use them in your content optimization efforts and boost the ranking of your website on all major search engines. WordPress SEO plugins recommend important SEO factors and keyword occurrences, help you to complete the SEO work easily and smoothly.
2. Adopt A Fair Linking Practice
We all know that links are one of the most important ranking signals when websites are optimized for localized search results. The quality of your backlinks, total number of domain links to your site, and the optimization of your link anchor text- all these must match your local SEO practices. You should be careful in link building practices. You can apply the following recommendations:
- Adopt external and internal linking practices whenever you update your website with a new content. External linking makes your website authentic and a knowledge hub. Internal linking improves the indexing and ranking of your website or its pages.
- Track and eliminate all 404 pages on your website. You can use WordPress plugins to get rid of 404 pages easily and quickly.
- Optimize the Anchor Text of your website and add your city’s name for local search results. Don’t overdose it as it will have negative consequences too.
- Make the best use of all linking building opportunities.
3. Add Location Terms In Your URLs
A customized URL can please both search engines & visitors alike and help websites to rank well on all search engines. When you optimize your WordPress website for local search results, include location keywords in your URL so that visitors can easily find your website or its pages through organic search and other resources.
4. Attach Structured Data To Your Web Pages
Did you ever consider why some local business websites attract reviews, star ratings, and robust descriptions, but others fail to do so? It happens because of difference in the structured data. Just add Google additional information about your business. This will help visitors to get more information about your company in search engine results, such as physical location, hours of operation, price range, etc. It will encourage higher click-through rates, which increase your site’s ranking on all prominent search engines.
5. Never Ignore The Huge Importance of Business Listing
The ultimate goal of a website is to attract visitors and generate business opportunities for its owners. Always keep in mind that business descriptions, categories, user reviews, and physical proximity matter a lot when websites are optimized for local search results. So, just attach Google My Business, hours of operation, description of your business, plugins and widgets (that show key ranking signals like a business map, and customer reviews, etc,) to your website. All these will help customers to easily find your website on the web.
6. Optimize Your Website With A Mobile-first Approach
A A large number of visitors look for local business opportunities through different mobile devices. Apart from this, Google gives more importance to mobile-friendly websites. So, it becomes imperative to optimize your website with a mobile-first approach.
So, just take your WordPress website to the mobile platform with the help of a WordPress plugin. If you have enough resources and budget, get in touch with a WordPress development company and ask its developers to create a separate mobile version of your existing website.
If you have budget restrictions, just make your website responsive to mobile devices. Ask an app development company to create a mobile app for your website and get it listed on Google Play store and other similar places.
Once you take your website to the mobile platform, optimize it with a mobile-first approach. This will help you to get more traffic to your website and convert visitors into paying customers.
7. Make Your Website Faster
Today’s tech-savvy people don’t have enough patience to tolerate the nonsense of slow loading websites. They want to visit fast loading websites or web pages to find the required information easily and quickly. Slow loading websites irritate visitors. So, they desert such frustrating sites and find its alternative.
Therefore, you should make your website and its pages by all possible means. Here are some useful steps:
|
Website Speed Optimization Tips |
Benefits |
| Simple and straightforward website design | Minimal use of website resources, fast loading of website and its pages |
| Avoid unnecessary redirections, Popups, Commercial ads, etc | It makes your site light and faster |
| Use a CDN | Quick downloading of your site’s content |
| Implement website caching | Minimal HTTPs requests to your website’s server and fast loading of website and its pages |
| Clear unnecessary database off from time-to-time | It makes your website light and faster |
| Limited use of WordPress plugins | No more pressure on your site’s server, fast loading of website and its pages |
| Image optimization | Fast loading of website and its pages |
| Selection of a Good hosting server | Fast loading of website and its pages |
Final Words
Local SEO ranking of your website matters a lot when you expect more business from local customers. By following the above-mentioned SEO practices, you can easily optimize your WordPress website for local search results and mint a lot of money eventually.