7 Common Local SEO Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

While it takes some amount of practice to get it right, you don’t want to mess up SEO and risk your visibility.

Here are all the local SEO blunders you need to avoid.

1. No profile in Google My Business

Having a profile in Google My Business will immediately increase your visibility. Search engines locate you using “NAP” (Name, Address, and Phone) which once updated will show your listing in Google search results.

For example, “cafes near me” would display a couple of them in a map format as your search result. This is where you want to be seen, because the local market is definitely going to serve as your major income standard.

Here’s your guide to creating a Google My Business profile. If you still have some doubts about what is a Business account, Google has an answer for that too.

2. Choice of inappropriate keywords

Keywords form the basis of your SEO optimization techniques. Your content can only reach its target audience if that audience can find you during a search. Overfilling content with several keywords could lead search engine crawlers to mark it as spam. Similarly, very few (or the wrong) keywords) can have a similar effect. Finding the correct balance between reason, intent, competition and traffic is essential.

Keyword optimization is a skill acquired by learning and practice. Take advantage of tools like Keyword Density Checker (which display both the count and density of keywords in descending order of use) to get better keyword optimization for your website.

3. Having irrelevant content on the landing page

Once visitors reach your page, you want them to feel it was worth the effort. Avoid any data that would result in your reader having an unpleasant experience when visiting your website. Bounce back rate is a measured by SEO. So, if people visit your page and leave right away to find something more relevant, it will have a negative impact on SEO. Another reason why it’s also important to proofread all your content – glaring errors and poor writing will chase visitors away.

4. Missing relevant backlinks

Without appropriate backlinks, your website may not attract its target audience. Although generating secure backlinks is a tricky task, it is worth putting in the effort to create authentic backlinks. The diversity, quantity and quality of the links you get from other pages will have a major impact on your local SEO.

Mastering backlinking is one of the best thing you could do for your business. You can learn some of the tricks about link building in 2017 from the world’s most sought-after SEO expert, Brian Dean.

5. No competitive analysis

Irrespective of your position in the ranking table, it is extremely important to keep check of the work done by your competitors. As your ranking increases, keep track of the keywords used by those in the top 5 or 10. This would ensure you have up-to-date knowledge of what’s popular and working for others. You will know what are the keywords commonly being targeted and the type of backlinks necessary for better rankings.

Using a competitive research tool helps in understanding three basic things: organic traffic gained by the competitors for relevant keywords, the quality of backlinks acquired, and whether they are doing paid traffic advertising.

6. Absence  from social media

A budding social media presence validates the value of your content. Google uses social media activity as one of its credentials to rank businesses – which means you can increase your ranking by promoting your content on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You could also share blogs from your website through messaging apps. This ensures growing traffic to your page from various sources, which is very important for visibility.

Each post of your on your social media accounts should make a difference: they should be interesting to read, easy to follow and well written. This means avoiding silly mistakes in writing that can make your website look amateurish.

7. No customer reviews

As a company striving to reach a good ranking through relevant keywords and diverse backlinking, one of your selling points should be good customer ratings and reviews. Just like one doesn’t choose a café that has low ratings, customers won’t choose your business if you don’t have good reviews. In the beginning, the only way to get reviews is to ask customers directly to rate your services. With time, this would happen naturally.

Getting SEO optimization right takes work, but done well, it can do wonders for your company.

** About the Author: Mary Jones is the co-founder and editor-in-chief at TopMyGrades. She has extensive content editing experience and has worked with MSNBC, NewsCred & Scripted. Jones has also authored blogs for Lifehack.org, Wn.com, Medium.com, Minds.com, and many more digital publications.