Best Practices for Local SEO in 2016

With the majority of people turning to mobile devices to perform their searches, local SEO has become more crucial than ever.

Find out how you can enhance your local SEO efforts in 2016 from Fort Lauderdale online marketing agency, Tandem Interactive:

1. Geo-tag your images on Google My Business – Google My Business (GMB) now has a feature that allows you to tag the location of an image you upload to your GMB page. Many businesses have reported receiving great results from doing this.

2. Prepare for voice search – More people are becoming comfortable with using voice search on their phones, such as Siri and Google Now. In 2016, be sure your local SEO marketing agency is using voice-friendly keywords to prepare for the future of voice search.

3. Use an address in the area you are attempting to rank in – Even if you don’t have a physical location in that area, use a virtual office or mail forwarding service to claim an address in a desired city. For example, if you run your business from your home in Jacksonville, Florida but want to target customers locally in Miami, find a virtual office in Miami that offers mail forwarding services and obtain a unique address from them.

4.  Pay attention to your site’s Direct Data – Google is constantly improving on its ability to give people exactly what they are searching for. For example, if a person is searching for a hair salon, they will most likely want to know prices, hours of operation and services provided. Therefore, Google is going to show results for hair salons that list all or most of the pertinent information customers are looking for.

5. Acquire and respond to customer reviews – Encourage your customers to leave reviews on your Yelp and GMB pages. Businesses with 4 and 5 star reviews have greater authority and better local search results.

6. Update your local listing – Build your business’ online credibility by taking the time to complete a local SEO audit of your company to determine where you currently stand as far as listing consistency and completion. Software, such as Moz Local, makes this process easy and can be done for as little as $84 a year. Once you complete your local SEO audit, prepare a schedule to begin fixing any incorrect, inconsistent or missing listing information. Every listing should have the exact same name, address and phone number of your business.

7.  Make sure your site is mobile-friendly- Although our online marketing firm doesn’t consider this a “new” local SEO effort, there are still businesses that have yet to update their websites to mobile-friendly status. These businesses are significantly losing out on local visibility.

8.  Maintain presence on social media platforms – If you haven’t already, incorporate social media engagement into your local SEO strategy in 2016. Try to interact with your audience on a regular basis, whether it be twice a week or twice a month.