What Is Local SEO? How to Use Social Media To Target Local Customers?

The internet is the most powerful tool in the world. It’s changed our lives and made connecting with people from all over the planet more accessible. But what about when you want to talk to people who live right in your backyard? Suppose you’re running a local business or trying to reach out to your local community. In that case, local SEO is an essential part of how your business can stand out from the crowd—and get discovered by potential customers.

What Is Local SEO?
Local Search Engine Optimization, or Local SEO, is finding your business online through people in your local area. It can accomplish through organic listings on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo and other online directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Maps.
It’s about ensuring you’re showing up in the results of Google searches and other search engines – but it also means optimizing your website so that people find what they need locally. You should also ensure that you have accurate information about opening times on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter so that users can see whether or not they can pop into one of your stores before heading home after work.

How to Use Social Media to Target Local Customers?

Optimize your page for local visibility
You have now taken the first step in local SEO. Now it’s time to optimize your site for local visibility. To do this, you must ensure that your business information is accurate on Google and other search engines. Like adding a local phone number, your mailing address, and business hours of operation, to name a few.

Google My Business
Google My Business helps you gain more visibility in your local community by making it easy for customers to find and connect with your business on Google. How does it work?
After you’ve claimed your business, you can get found when people search on Google Maps and Google search, as well as through ads. In organic results, you’ll also see a snippet of basic information like your address and phone number. It’s important to note that only verified businesses are eligible for this feature.

Facebook Places
Facebook Places allows you to create a page similar to Google My Business.
Your information here will aid people in finding your product or services on Facebook but not on Google. It will help boost the organic reach of your Facebook posts, as they will appear in search results if someone searches for them specifically.
The description should match what you have on other platforms, and use the exact keywords when possible; also, include photos from your website or other social media profiles.

Foursquare
What is Foursquare? Foursquare is a location-based social networking site for mobile devices that gives your business a mobile footprint. With more people using portable devices to search for companies, a presence on Foursquare is a popular social media platform for local businesses. Create a Foursquare Page and connect it with your Twitter account. When you create your page, make sure you complete your Page Profile. Now you want to add your listing to Four square’s searchable database. Just click on “The List My Business” tab, and follow the instructions. If you don’t have a business listing, you can create it at https://foursquare.com/login?continue=%2Fadd_venue. The business listing will ask for your phone number, your website’s URL links to your Twitter and Facebook profiles, hours of operation, and a description of your business. Make sure you include all the information.
Once your business listing is there on Foursquare, claim it. When you claim your location, you are telling Foursquare you are the manager of that venue. You can claim multiple locations of Foursquare; all you need to do is to provide verifiable contact information. Once you have listed and claimed your site on Foursquare, you can begin adding specials, checking your analytics, and much more. But the most important way to use Foursquare is to take the time to build a network of just local followers and interact with them.

Business Information
Make sure your business info is correct in all places. You can use the same name and address on all your marketing materials, website, and social media accounts.
If you’re a new business, set these things up immediately so you can start local search engine optimization as soon as possible. If you already have a website, make sure of all changes across all pages.

Keywords and Hashtags
A helpful tip is to use geo-specific keywords and hashtags. Local SEO is more than just ranking highly in Google. It’s also about targeting customers searching for a specific product or service in their area, so they can easily find you when they’re ready to buy.
You must ensure that your website is suitable for local search and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for any videos and Instagram. Use geo-specific keywords and hashtags on these sites so that people looking for local businesses can find yours.

Conclusion
Local SEO is a great way to grow your business and reach more customers. It’s essential to take steps now so that when you open up your new branch or expand, you will be okay with Google and Facebook. The key takeaway is that local SEO can be compelling if done correctly.

5 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About SEO

CompetitorsWhat your competitors can teach you about SEO

Search engine optimization or simply SEO is one complex mechanism that even professionals get a hard time in cracking out the shell. For a fact, the algorithm has been changing overtime as search engines always want to give the people justifiable and reliable results for their queries. If you are an SEO professional, how can you get your hands on the top page?
To keep the content in top rankings, your search engine optimization strategies should always be legit and updated. Any foul schemes can be detected and eventually will sink your ranking to a lower level. In light of this, here are some tactics that you can practice to catch up with any search engines’ changes in algorithm.

Lesson #1: Content is king

Over the years, the content has remained as one integral factor in search engine optimization success. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have always known that people are up to valuable content and not something empty-worded article. If you want your content to live up with the results, then you better affix high quality attribute. Furthermore, avoid putting duplicate content into your website. Observe your competitors articles in relations with their SEO technique or strategy.

Lesson #2: Getting reliable links

One thing that will surefire the success of search engine optimization is the links. This still works until today, but it now has to do with “natural and earned” links. Even if you buy links, there is no absolute guarantee that these links will count.
So how are you going to earn these links that are acceptable to the search engines? It may take up a lot of hard work and luck, but you can earn these links through endorsements. If you influenced other bloggers or journalists to write something about your business and link it to your site, then the search engine will count it in. You can get a good idea on how your competitors are doing this.

Lesson #3: Not overdoing keywords optimization

A content enriched with keyword can be the downfall of search engine optimization. You should take note that search engines can read between the lines. Therefore, keep the specific keywords at bay and use other keywords instead. You will notice how a certain site have good use of keywords but never overdo it.

Lesson #4: Work on social media

Social media plays an integral role in uplifting your online ranking. It should be remembered that the stance of social media is wide and so is its capability to bring quality traffic. Therefore, be active in updating your social media accounts and do not forget to link your content back to your site as part of your search engine optimization strategy. Look at your competitors site and notice how well they do this-normally on the right side of their pages.

Lesson #5: Be patient and always be updated

One time search engine optimization will not instantly make your site recognizable by the search engines. It takes times as you implement several tasks to attain a long-lasting impact on your website’s traffic and rankings. Apart from being patient, you also have to keep yourself updated on the current happenings on the algorithm of search engines. It is through knowledge that you can tailor your strategies in optimizing a website.

If you don’t know who your competitor is simply “google” your keyword or phrase, and the first three sites are going to be the competition. But you’re not going to want to compete with the “big boys” as of yet, so look for websites close to your size for they will be your real competitors.
Indeed, working with search engine optimization is no easy task. In order to be successful, you should unify all the factors or techniques in SEO to reap out justifiable and good ranking.

6 Effective SEO Tips to Guarantee Good Website Traffic

Woman In Traffic

6 Effective SEO Tips to Guarantee Good Website Traffic

When was the last time you found yourself stuck on a freeway during rush hour, or downtown in a traffic jam, or just  simply trying to cross a busy street? There just doesn’t seem to be anything good about the word “traffic.” But that was before the wonder world of the internet. Now if you have a website of any kind, and you want to be found-you need traffic. Good traffic! And the more the merrier. So it’s important that we touch on a few effective seo tips to guarantee good website traffic.

Whether you are running an eCommerce website or a blog, it should speak for itself and reach millions of people online. This would only be possible if you get through of what you can call as Search Engine Optimization or simply SEO. However, many beginners and even veterans encounter troubles in making it on top of the search engine results due to complexity and demands of the process.

According to Blog Growth, there is more than 100 billion searches that occurs on a monthly basis and 70% of it takes place on Google. With this, SEO come into the picture to resolve your conundrum on how you can be on top. Speaking of being on top, SEO is quite demanding and yet, it will greatly contribute to your website’s reputation and credibility.

To get ahead against your competitors and earn massive traffic, bear these tips in mind. Efficient execution of the following  6 seo tips will highly tantamount to your success. So let’s get started!

  • Focus on Long-tail Keywords. One of the basics of SEO is keyword research.  If you are struggling to be on top, then try finding long-tail keywords through the Google’s Keyword Tool. Long tail keywords are a type of keyword phrase that has at least three, and some times as many as five words in the phrase.  For example, “home remedies for bed bugs” or “how to get rid of depression” are long-tail keywords compared to the more competitive search terms “bed bugs” or “depression”.

For a fact, the significance of keywords is undeniable to SEO. It is through these key terms that Google looks on articles, images, and website pages as they are being searched by the users. Although there are thousands of helpful articles or content, not all of them are being brought on the first page. Only the most relevant are shown.

  • Create Quality Content. “Content is king.” This is what SEO will always say in optimizing a website. Well, there is no doubt to it since people are always searching for quality articles. Therefore, always do an extensive research and write uniquely.
  • Optimize the Articles. Once you have created the article, it is about time to optimize it. The essentials to these are keywords, descriptions, and meta-title. As for the keywords, these are the terms that can be found in the post. Insert the keyword in the title to make the permalink keyword-rich as well. The second one which is the description should be concise around having less than 160 characters only. It should be in a descriptive paragraph form. Lastly, the meta-title should have less than 60 characters and should be SEO rich.
  • Practice Ethical Link Building. SEO does not only have to work on-page. It also covers the off-page aspects and embedding keyword links is the pillar to off-page SEO. You can ask someone or a credible source to embed the keywords back to your site. Anyhow, it will yield good results. Apart from this, you can also link your new post to your previous content covering the same niche.
  • Make Use of Multimedia. Images and videos are contents that generate more clicks in   comparison    with texts. Therefore, you will also have to optimize them by adding keywords and descriptions.
  • Ease of Websites. You should remember that search engines also consider the interface of websites. If it is poorly designed and burdens a user to navigate the site, then it will not attract the search engines. Therefore, avoid putting large files on your website that delays loading. Nevertheless, make it more appealing and friendly to the search engines and searchers.

SEO
So all traffic is not bad traffic anymore. Now there’s good traffic! There are a lot of ways to let your brand or website known in the cyber world. It only requires hard work and efficient execution of SEO strategies, and these seo tips will help. Nevertheless, it is only right to say that SEO is the mastermind behind organic searches so that others can find you online.

I hope you enjoyed this post on 6 effective seo tips to guarantee good website traffic.

Reginald Jackson
Social Media Specialist and Blogger in Dallas Texas

What Is Social Media

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