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SEO is ever changing. And so are the SEO strategies! As far as local SEO is concerned, it is more important to optimize your on-site and off-site SEO strategies for clients as well as prospective customers. Due to the amplified intensity of the local competition, you need to make sure that you’re on top of your rankings.

Here is a list of local SEO tips to help you augment the local search rankings for your business this year:

• Go for Generic and Hyper Local Citations

A citation is listed on another website. It includes one or more of the following:

• Business name
• Business address
• Business phone Number
• Website

In general, you should get all four of the above. This combination is referred to as NAP or NAPW that stands for Name, address, phone number, website. Using Local citation finder tools such as Whitespark, you can check how many citations you and your competitors have.

• Make sure your Site Architecture and Keyword Mapping are set up properly

  Ensure to setup particular landing pages for the keywords you’re trying to rank locally for. If you are providing a service, list it on your site.

  Do not mix or merge one page’s keyword with that of another. Keywords should be exclusive for a certain web page. Use your homepage to target the main keyword. Do not use other internal web pages to target the same keyword again.

• Ensure adding up of Location and Niche Specific Data to Each Page

  This is a very important tip as far as ranking goes. When you are adding highly relevant data that is taken from other reliable sources like Wikipedia, ensure that you are not copying and pasting that content exactly the same way. You might take idea, but you need some amount of authenticity to avoid duplicacy. You can rehash that matter in your own words, using your own creativity and originality.

• Make sure to inlcude CTA’s

  CTA stands for Call to Actions. While working on a local site, you should check Google Analytics Tool to see the top trafficked pages.Sort out those pages that have no CTA’s above the fold and get them added as per the sequence. These CTA’s often lead well to properly made conversion funnel.

• Generate a Conversion Funnel with necessary upgrades

  Firstly, choose the platform on which you want to build your funnel. Prepare funnel to promote your products or services that you are selling locally as well as to build in upgrades and one-time-offers.

  You can prepare an auto responder to thank those customers who are purchasing or signing up. You can use the same to promote any of your other products or services in the said email.

• Emphasize on Topical Seeding

  Make sure to seed your main keywords or keyword variations across pages throughout your site. Internal linking, title tags, h tags and other on-page elements make your homepage and other internal sites more relevant.

• Increase the efficiency of your Review Generation

  Review forms one of the ranking factor for the map pack. You can create a group to funnel people and then take steps to promote funnel.

• Get your “Google My Business” optimized

  Select the categories you want to rank your business for. Gather plenty of images of your location, services, and team. You should then change file URL’s of images to match what the images are. Adding keywords into your businesses GMB title is a good practice. Make sure to update your businesses G+ with relevant posts.

• Link internally to other relevant pages

  Include at least a couple of internal links per page. However, do not put many links since the value of each link gets reduced that way. Make sure to internally link on every page back to the home page.

• Setup Offline Conversion Tracking

  Though it is quite common, many a times setting up of offline conversion tracking is not implemented properly. It is vital for your business growth. You can check several YouTube video tutorials to gain more knowledge on how to setup offline conversion tracking.

• Generate Related City and Service Pages

  In case you have a site that targets a specific city, you should create pages for the other cities in the surrounding area. This makes you rank for those other cities as well.

  When you have service pages, make sure to provide a list of all the services with the respective URL path that is similar to domain/services/name-of-service.

• Make use of Schema Markup for Main Pages

  Markup the following pages locally:

• Home (local business markup)
• About (about markup)
• Contact (contact markup)
• Services (product markup)
• Blog (blog post markup)

• Prepare Setup on Bing and Yahoo Local

  Get a local listing on Bing and Yahoo local. This step shall help you rank higher in Google. You might even be able to gather some traffic off the less popular search engines.

• Get into the habit of Embedding Relevant Youtube Videos For On Page

  Practice embedding Youtube videos that are suitable to your theme of business. These videos might have similar keywords to the page you wish to rank.

• Use Testimonials On your Highest trafficked Pages

  Using testimonials on my highest value pages shall increased conversions to a significant extent.

• Make sure to add One Image every Main Page

  This habit helps reduce bounce rates and improve rankings for your entire website.

• Make use of blogs to promote relevant content

  Good blogs on relevant topics that suit well to the theme of your website shall increase the rankings of your site to a great extent.

• Make use of Paid Channels

  Get into the habit of targeting paid channels like Adwords. This helps when there is a low “Cost per click”.

• Organize virtual tours

  This step is beneficial for your Google business. These virtual tours are more effective than images.

• Create plenty of “time on site” opportunities

  Since Google’s ranking algorithm prefers relevance, the more time people stay on your listing, the more authority you shall develop.