The process of search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategic method of making sure your website is found at the top of Google and the other search engines. These search engines now focus strongly on geographically local results, however, which is why you should work together with a local SEO company. So what are some of the things that they will do for you?
What a Local SEO Company Will Do to Get You Found Online
- Search engine registration, which means that the search engines know you exist and want to be found. They will need your Sitemap.xml to achieve this.
- Search engine indexing, which is something you have to do manually for each of your pages, for each of the search engines, following their own specific procedures. Google uses ‘Fetch as Google’ for this.
- Link building, which means third party websites have texts with links that go back to your website. These third party websites should be of high quality, as this tells the search engines that trusted sources believe you are trustworthy as well.
- On site optimization, which involves including keywords and keyword phrases within the content of your site, with a focus on including the right anchor text.
- Content creation, which refers to the content on your websites and that tells Google your site is real through keywords.
- Use of images, audios, and videos, as digital media of this kind is becoming increasingly popular and important.
- Creating mobile responsive websites, which means that those who access your site on the go through their mobile devices can see the site in full, without having to pinch, zoom, or move the screen’s bar sideways.
- Creating native webpages, which are templates for your own site that have been properly tested to load very rapidly across different devices.
- An analysis of keyword competitiveness, so that you know you use words on your site that your prospective customers look for when searching for you.
- Registering you with the various search engine dashboards, so that you can always see how well you rank and how much traffic you have received. Furthermore, these dashboards enable you fix problems on your website, after which you can request for it to be crawled again so that you can improve your rankings.
What makes local SEO so special is that they do all of the above, but with a specific focus on your geographical location. They can go to the widest geographical area (such as the county) to the smallest one (the block on which your business is located). Going local is vital regardless of the type of store that you have, not in the least because people search for you using their mobile phone, and most people have location services enabled. This means that the search engines will show them the results of businesses closest to them first.
As you can see, there is a lot of work to do, which is why you should leave it to the professionals.