Local SEO: A comprehensive guide for Small business in Kenya

What is Local SEO and why is it so important

Local search engine optimization is a branch of SEO that is focused on the optimization of a website for well local search.

Basically, Local SEO is a strategic process that focuses on emphasizing the optimization efforts of local brick and mortar business.

Link building, content and on-page optimizations all with a focused, localized intent are part of these efforts. The focus, however, changes when it comes to localizing link acquisition.

Making sure all potential local signals across Google local search landscape are consistent and correct. if they are not, or you accidentally provide different information for the same business, you could potentially experience situations where your local results display something different than what was intended.

WHO BENEFITS FROM LOCAL SEO AND WHY?

Every business can benefit from local SEO may it be lawyers, doctors, plumbers or restaurants.

One of the biggest benefits of local SEO for clients is that Google shows a call button directly in the local search results on mobile phones.

Think of this, when a potential client pulls out their phone and they are in urgent need of a certain product or service, do they usually go store to store searching for it? No, they usually go to Google to search for the product or service they need that are near them.

Google search results provide an easy way for someone to call let say for instance, a plumber directly, read reviews and access local service or product they need immediately if they have such an emergency.in addition, it allows people to see quite efficiently, the company providing service and product in their neighborhood.

WHO WONT BENEFIT FROM LOCAL SEO

While, everyone can benefit from local SEO and sell services to more clients, the reality is that some businesses just don’t lend themselves well to local SEO efforts.

However, businesses like online-only e-commerce shops, local authors, businesses that don’t want to share their local information, and private online sellers who want to keep their information private are likely not great candidates for local SEO services.

WHAT ARE THE IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF LOCAL SEO?

Local SEO just has local focus – keyword research, content links, and on-page technical SEO.

These elements are important to get right for your website and its industry overall in order to outperform the competition in the SERPs.

However, these parts contain more of a local focus on searches people are performing in the immediate area surrounding the business such as local city names.

Let look into some of them: –

Keyword Research.

Keyword research has not changed that much, although some aspects are a little bit different.

Statistics show that people have more access to devices like smartphones, amazon Echo and Google Home.

These devices pave way the way for voice search to be one of the primary avenues of executing local searches.

It is much easier to say find me a restaurant near me for instance than to type it Thus a rise in local queries based on conversational voice search. For service-based industry, try out keyword variations that include questions.

SEMrush topic research tool, keyword.io, and AnswerThePublic all provide ways to see questions people are searching for along with their search volume. This is an excellent way to target keywords that have local intent.

If your industry is a local brick and mortar, service-related business such as plumbing, an attorney or a lawyer or restaurant try keyword variation that have a conversational tone and focus.

This can surprisingly increase search volume and can achieve when you do keyword research in this way.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT TO YOUR LOCAL SEO EFFORTS

Depending on your industry, content with local focus, depth, breadth and knowledge tends to result best.

Content has to fit the user intent behind the query the best, don’t focus more on the word count for the query.

To achieve quality content that Google wants to return for certain local results, focus on writing custom local content with all these factors.

 

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN IT COMES TO CONTENT?

Wikipedia-type content is the worst type of content you could write. Reason been that not only is the content usually thin, the value that it brings and the value of the research put into the content is usually just thin.

Thin content adds little value to your SEO efforts.

LOCAL SEO LINKS

Local SEO links are a little different than organic SEO.

While building links you must consider Google Webmaster Guidelines when acquiring all links. If you build links that violate any Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you might attract penalty from Google and eventually will get deleted by Google. The next thing you know your entire website could disappear from the organic search results

In local SEO, there are various link categories that make up a quality local SEO link profile. These include: –

1. Citation/ NAP sites.

These are site where you submit your money site to in order to increase its local search presence. They are usually NAP (name, address and phone number of your business) focused.

2. Local Directory websites

It is good to focus on local directories as the general link categories, as building the local directories helps increase your website’s link authority for local searches.

3. Industry-Related Local sites

These are local sites that might offer local link opportunities such include: newspaper

Schools/ universities

4. Government associations.

These will help increase the value of your local link profile significantly and will help add the authority and uniqueness that Google rewards.

5. Local partner websites

Google forbids excessive link exchanges, but enlisting the aid of your business partners locally to achieve links isn’t a bad thing. It

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF LOCAL SEO?

Current statistics, data and trends suggests that local SEO is headed toward a paradigm shift in significantly improved context and understanding.

The proliferation of devices like smartphones, Amazon Echo and Google Home suggest a trend towards the creation of devices that have more conversation like approaches that equal or exceed human understanding.

I could even be suggested that these devices implement higher-quality, faster and overall improved algorithms to serve enhanced voice search to results to the user.

Moreover, Google is always adjusting and updating its algorithms. Thus it remains to be seen what will happen, but hopefully it will help improve all search results.

WHAT ARE THE TOP LOCAL SEO RANKING SIGNALS?

Below are some of the most critical local SEO ranking signals. All these signals are backed by statements from Google or by research when possible.

The Basic local SEO ranking signals

This covers the most foundational ranking signals. If you want any chance at all of ranking well for local SEO, these are the factors you need to address.

These include:

• Google my business,
• Google my Business Categories (categories describe what your business is, not what it does or sells),
• photos on google my business page,
• bing places for business,
• online directories/ citations,
• listing on review sites,
• Create a Facebook business page,
• social listing 

The Nitty Gritty local SEO Ranking Signals

This details the more in depth ranking signals. These are signals to address if you are looking to move to the very top and knock a competitor out of the coveted local pack.

Keep in mind most of these re not quick fixes they may require a massive shift in strategy.

These include:-

• structured data markup
• click-through rates from search results
• localized content
• on-page location keyword optimization
• title + meta description
• high-quality inbound links
• diversity of inbound links,
• inbound links from local relevant sites
• inbound using local keyword in Anchor text
• domain authority of your website.

Read: 7 SEO tools for small business in Kenya

WHAT IS LOCAL BACKLINK  & HOW TO FIND THEM

Local back-links are done with intention to build relevance for a website toward its locality.  So a back link should serve the following criteria: link back to your website and provide the opportunity to speak to your audience.

 It is good to note that, those who influence your specific local market might not command a highly authoritative site. They might be small themselves.

However, because of the influence they have in your small market, getting a link from them might be more valuable than from safaricom, media houses post, or equity banks and such great organization in kenya.

While, we must also understand the limitation that local business are dealing with and more often than not the lack of budget to produce the type of content that these big publishers are looking for.

Although it is amazing to reach for the stars, but we need to understand the parameters we re working with. So:- start with citations

Citations

They are great because they offer the ability to place your NAP information somewhere and allow you to put a link down on some fairly decent websites that are not spam and might even be seen by some random searches if the query is low enough in competition.

The whole idea to this process is to get business name out there in as many sources as possible. Services that allow you to tackle citation building include:. Yext and Moz Local

WHERE DO THE OPPORTUNITIES LIE AND WHERE YOU CAN FIND THEM

Link opportunities are much more limited. You’re fighting to rank for hyper-local keywords, which tend to not have a lot of search volume, and you will be working with websites with low authority to start. that’s why those who do local SEO need to be more creative than those doing SEO for giant brand.

The opportunities are vast and if you are doing SEO for a local space, its  important to understand where the limits of local space are and make that space your new earth.

Understanding your limitation will allow you to think more creatively and effectively find opportunities in that space, which will ultimately lead to the most value for the business website you’re working on.

HOW TO FIND MORE LINK OPPORTUNITIES

Exploring other local businesses and where they have acquired press, will help you get some insights on how other businesses not in our industry have builds links in the same local space.

TYPES OF CONTENT THAT WILL HELP YOUR LOCAL SEO

Content is a super effective way to rank for less competitive, local keywords. So unless your local business has achieved high status , you’ll want to keep reading

EXAMPLES OF CONTENT FOR LOCAL SEO

Do I really have to create content for each of my location? This is a question that come up pretty much since clients dread the whole content creation situation and you might dread too,

but when you realize the content they worked so hard to produce isn’t cutting it. Still not creating content for your locations is risky.

No one is going to come to your party without an invitation. Your local content needs to be relevant and useful. note, every piece of content needs a reason to be on your website.

Looking to grow your SEO, check out our Search Engine Optimization Page

Here are some different types of content that will help your local SEO.

• City-specific Landing Page

Can you rank for local keyword item without a location webpage? While you might succeed after a few sleepless nights but its much easier to rank in the local SERPS if you’ve got a location webpage.

However, if you’re a smaller local business building separate websites for each location is overwhelming and may dilute your authority. Just keep it simple with one page per location.

• State or regional page

It’s hard to get any client excited about creating more content. But when you’re competing in the local SEO space, content could make or break your move page 2 or 3 to page 1 on google.  If creating multiple city-specific location pages sounds like daunting task start with the city or region of your locations.

• FAQ Pages

With voice search changing the way people search industry is seeing a shift in how people consume content.

• Specials

Specials and discounts are the crème de la creme for local business owners. Give your customers what they want by personalizing specials to local residents thus you’re appealing to your local audience and making them feel special.

• Host local Events

As a marketer, I love seeing local businesses use Facebook events to drive awareness and seeing the event on their webpage. Announcing it on your website is a major local SEO mojo.

• Partner with local events

If you find the idea of hosting local events too overwhelming consider partnering with a local event.

• Blog Content

This is where the magic happens. If you’re a local business looking to compete in the local SERPs having an active blog will help improve rankings.

• Best of Guides

 when it comes to creating a best of list, you can have whatever you like. With ‘best of list’ build a guide that gives your reader whatever they like about a topic

• Press Pages

They are like fast food, you know they are there, but you rarely pay attention.

conclusion

The bottom line is that you cannot ignore and wish away Local Search Engine Optimization. with google emphasizing more and more on local search engine optimization, it only makes more sense to make sure your website is ranking more for local search engine optimization.

credit: Search Engine Journal