Performing Effective Local SEO in Competitive Environment

You may be missing the days when taking a local business to top spots in SERPs was as easier as making a website, submitting it in a few business listing websites and claiming it on Google My Business; BOOM. Sadly, those days are gone and local SEO has become more of a challenge for most of the businesses.

One of the main reasons for local SEO being more challenging is the competition. A few years ago, local businesses had no idea about enhancing channeling their marketing efforts on online media. Now, most of them have realized that Indianapolis SEO can seriously improve ROI. Hence, they have started working on the basic levels and this trend has made basic level local SEO more challenging. This competition has urged not only the business marketers to go at advanced levels but also the search engines to update the ranking signals.

With this change in local SEO environment, it is now important for the local businesses to adapt some advanced measures to boost their SEO efforts.

Local 3-Pack and Google Maps

Over a year ago, Google had reduced its 7-pack for showing business listing in the maps to 3-pack. This reduction in the pointing of businesses has created more competitive environment among local businesses. Soon this 3-pack will have 2 spots for the businesses with improved SEO strategies and one for the paid-for businesses.

This situation demands the marketers to embrace this challenge and start working on enhancing Google My Business profile in a robust manner. Moreover, the business websites now should have more localized unique content that would truly be audience oriented.

Local content

Local business websites used to have very basic type of content and contact details on their pages. This approach was enough for a business to get traffic and, eventually, the customers. Now, Google has started to emphasize on creating better local content by making content a ranking signal. What does the local content mean? It basically includes blog posts, local news, local market trends and much more. You stick with a few of these and you will see improvement in your local discoverability.

Citations and local business listings are still powerful

Citation websites and local directory submission sites like Yelp CitySearch and foursquare have their importance unchanged. The backlinks coming from these websites are useful and are used as ranking signals by Google. Another reason that these websites hold their importance is that these websites have credibility with Google.

Online reviews

It has now become more important for the businesses to have positive feedback from satisfied customers. With the help of positive reviews, your business will not only be able to convince search engine about your business’s credibility but it will also impress the customers, potential customers to be precise.

Here is a little stat to show you how positive feedback can boost a local business.