Our top-tips on how to improve your local SEO
Introduction
Most businesses these days have a website, yet having a company website is pretty useless unless people are visiting and making orders via your website.
This is where local SEO can help, and this is normally where the business will need the help of a digital marketing agency like Top Space which is based in Cardiff, South Wales.
Each agency will have their own process for how they can improve a business’s local seo, in this guide we will explain some of the methods that our agency uses, and how we have placed many businesses on the first page of Google’s results.
What does “Local SEO” mean?
Okay, so let’s say you’re a bit hungry, and you want to order a tasty pizza, so you ask Google “find me a local pizza take-away” shop-and then on your smartphone you get a list of local businesses.
At the top may well be PPC (Pay Per Click) adds, then a picture of a map, and it will list businesses that are local to you here in Cardiff.
Those businesses that appear next to a map, they are called the “Google My Business” results, then you should have a long list of businesses, normally 10 businesses, these will be the organic business results.
Now it depends on which type of SEO you want your business to improve for, that’s to say do you want your business to appear in the Google My Business results? The organic results, or perhaps both set of results?
Most businesses here in Cardiff want to appear on the first page of Google’s results- however this is often a highly competitive space, so to get a business onto the first page the marketing agency must work hard, plus once the business is placed there, they are not guaranteed to stay there for any length of time.
That’s to say a business may well be ranked number one in the organic results for “local pizza take away” yet then the next day they may have moved down say four places, so this is why organic seo and local seo often need a monthly investment to improve the businesses seo on an ongoing basis.
Why is local SEO an ongoing process?
There are over 200 different ranking different factors, this means that Google’s algorithm is looking at how strong your business is across 200 different SEO factors, if a business was to beat your company’s standard of SEO, then your business would move down, and the other business up.
Now, this constant reshuffling of where a business is ranked does not happen say once a month, or once a week, no it can sometimes happen multiple times a day.
That’s to say Googlebot will spot that a direct competitor has stronger SEO than your business, it will then move your business down, this is why a lot of businesses hire an agency, like us, to constantly work on improving where the business ranks.
What does onsite SEO mean?
SEO can be very broadly split into one of two categories, they are onsite and offsite SEO, an example of onsite seo would be improving the businesses meta titles and meta descriptions, and an example of offsite seo would be building high-quality backlinks.
So onsite seo means improving the ranking factors which are onsite, such as improving:
· Meta titles
· Meta descriptions
· Alt text
· Anchor text
· Internal backlinks
· Content marketing
What does offsite SEO mean?
Offsite seo simply means trying to improve the ranking factors which are offsite, such as business citations (NAP) and building high-quality backlinks.
Later on in this article we will explain that not all ranking factors are worth the same, for example if you were to write meta titles and meta descriptions for your website, these are not worth the same as say earning 10 high quality backlinks, as some seo ranking factors are worth more than others.
This is why an agency must work hard to dedicate their time on which ranking factors will make the most difference, that’s to say there’s no point in paying for 10 hours of SEO per month, and for the agency to only be working on a ranking factor which is rather unimportant, instead they should dedicate their time to working on improving the ranking factors which will improve the businesses seo the most.
What are ranking factors?
There are thought to be over 200 ranking factors, these range from backlinks right through to a meta title.
As most agencies will tell you, these ranking factors differ in terms of how important they are, for example if your business was to have say 100 good quality backlinks, which are relevant to your company, then these are likely to improve your seo.
However, if an agency was to spend their time just adding alt text, well this is unlikely to make a significant improvement to the businesses seo, so what the business must do is to make sure that the agency is working on the areas which are mostly likely to bring the best return.
All work should be white hat, and the work should follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, this means that if the business was to use low-quality seo, then the business could incur a penalty.
This is why your business should only invest in white hat seo, but also the agency must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and this means that the work will often take a lot of time and effort.
Some businesses will expect to see results overnight, but for organic and local seo, it often takes many months before a business can see an improvement. This is why if any business was to over promise, or say that something is obtainable when many other company’s are stating that it will take longer, the business must make sure that they are obtaining white hat seo, as if the work is low-quality then the business will incur a penalty.
What are the different ways a business could improve its onsite SEO?
There are many different ways that a business could improve its onsite seo, below our SEO consultants have listed a number of ways that we would improve a business’s onsite seo.
Meta titles and meta descriptions
So, let’s say that your looking to purchase a new mountain bike, yet you know the brand of mountain bike that you want, and you are now looking for a company that stocks that brand.
So you simply ask Google, “mountain bike + brand of bike” and Google then shows a few local businesses which are next to a map, these are the Google My Business listings, then it will show what us SEO consultant’s call the organic business results, there are normally 10 businesses which show in the organic business results.
Now, one business may standout, that’s because in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) it states the make of the bike, plus then that the company offers free home delivery) now this has caught your interest.
Our agency would therefore say that is an example of a well-written meta title, and meta description, now you might say well, what does “meta title” and “meta description” mean?
It simply is the title and few lines of text that are shown in the SERP’s to describe what that page is about.
So for example, the meta title and meta description could simply be:
Meta title: We stock this brand of mountain bike, we also offer next delivery
Meta description: Here at “name of business” we have been selling bikes for over 14 years, we stock “name of brand” mountain bikes, plus we offer free next day delivery.
Your agency should spend quite a bit of time writing meta titles and meta descriptions for each page, as if the meta title and meta descriptions are not well written, the business may have a low click through rate.
Equally if the agency does not write the meta titles and meta descriptions correctly, and the meta titles and meta descriptions do not describe that page, then the shopper may click the meta title, then find its not say the mountain bike that they were looking for, and the business may obtain a high bounce rate.
This is why your agency should optimise your businesses meta titles and meta descriptions. For example, lets say someone is looking for a brand, or a model number of lets say a new T.V, there will be 10 other businesses in the organic business results, so if your business can standout, that’s by stating that you stock that brand of T.V or model of T.V then your business may improve its CTR.
Homepage
It’s especially important that your homepage is well-designed, we say this because if the homepage has say a main menu that’s difficult to use, lets say on a smartphone its difficult to use because the drop-down menu offers so many different options, well, this may mean that the business incurs a really high bounce rate.
A high bounce rate could negatively effect the businesses seo, so a marketing agency should work with a web design company to make sure that the homepage is well designed, and that the business is reducing its bounce rate.
H1-H6
Lets say you are writing a rather long blog post, as you own a law practice here in Cardiff, and there’s recently been a major update to say employment law, so you want to write a long blog post, now if the blog post is one solid block of text, then this might well be off-putting to a reader.
So often an agency will use H1 to H6 titles to split the text up, also many agencies use H1 to H6 titles as they can tell Googlebot what that page is about.
So for example, lets say you are selling men’s clothing, if you were to use H1 to H6 titles, with titles such as men’s shirts, men’s tie’s, men’s formal shoes, it would be obvious to Googlebot what that page is about, and that your company sells men’s clothing.
Ever Green Content Marketing
Your marketing company should spend a long time writing the evergreen content marketing for your website, that’s because the evergreen content marketing is the text that’s placed on pages on your website which are often the most read.
So for example, lets say you sell insurance products, such as home insurance, pet insurance and car insurance, the text that’s placed on each page, to sell your insurance products will often be read the most, so this is why the marketing agency should take a long time to write the text, this is so that you are able to reduce the company’s bounce rate, and also to encourage customers to purchase from your business.
If the evergreen content marketing is not written that well, that’s to say that each page only has say 2 lines of text to describe each service that the company offers, well the companies website may have a very high bounce rate.
Plus, Google’s algorithm may deem the website to have “content thin” pages, which can also be another reason why a website is not ranking on the first page of Google.
Internal backlinks
Okay, so lets say that your business sells many thousands of different products, and lets say that your business sells men’s clothing- now each week your business may publish a blog post, that’s to say a blog post which states items of clothing that are in fashion, for example, one week the business may write a blog post which states what the businesses best selling winter jackets are.
Now, the author of the work may include an internal backlink then to the page on the website that sells that winter jacket. This can help to improve the businesses sales, as someone may then purchase the jacket after reading the blog post, but also it will help Googlebot to crawl and index the website.
Now, you might be thinking, well how would internal backlinks, with anchor text such as “winter jackets” help Googlebot to crawl and index more pages on the company’s website.
Well, that’s because Googlebot follows backlinks, so if you publish a blog post that has say 10 links to various winter jackets that your business sells, then Googlebot can then crawl and index those jackets, and if a page has not been indexed, it will then be indexed, and therefore will show in Google’s results.
NAP
If your business here in Cardiff wants to improve its local SEO, then the business must have NAP information written on its website.
You may now be thinking, well what does NAP even mean?
Well, NAP simply means name of the business, the businesses addresses and the businesses phone number.
Now if the NAP information was added to the footer of the website, plus also the NAP information was written on the contact us page, and the NAP information could be crawled and indexed by Googlebot, then this can help to improve your businesses local seo.
We would recommend that your business uses a local phone number, as opposed to using a mobile number. If you are looking to improve your local SEO in Cardiff, we would recommend you use a local number, for example a number starting with 029 21 or 029 20.
We would then start to build business citations for our customers, we would recommend that the business builds business citations in a white hat way. The business citations must all match, the information must match with your website, that’s to say all of the NAP information must be kept consistent.
Bounce rate
If your business has a high bounce rate, and you can check this using Google Analytics, then we would recommend that your web designer and your marketing agency aim to reduce the businesses bounce rate.
We would recommend that the business tries to keep its bounce rate as low as possible, for those that do not know what bounce rate means, it simply means the percentage of visitors to a website that leave without visiting more than one page.
Now if your selling thousands of different products, and someone lands on a section of your company’s website that sells coffee machines, well, if they don’t look at more than one coffee machine, then it might be due to the design of the website, and the SEO could need improving also.
As that shopper may land on another website, see a coffee machine, then start looking at say 20 more coffee machines before they make a purchase, so if a website is loosing customers, that’s because they are bouncing off the website before making a purchase, then the business and its marketing agency should make some improvements to the businesses seo and also the design of the website may also need improving.
For example, the web designer may add a feature which simply states, if you like this coffee machine, well why not check-out these other coffee machines as well?
This means that the business should be aiming to reduce its bounce rate.
That’s to say the business is aiming
Schema mark-up
Your agency should add schema mark-up to your company’s website, most agencies use schema to mark-up the businesses NAP information, NAP simply stands for name of the business, the companies address and the company phone number.
You may well be thinking, well how will schema help my business to improve its SEO?
Well, if you mark the NAP information using schema, this will tell Googlebot that this is your businesses NAP information, and this help your company’s NAP information to standout.
This is important, as on some homepages for example there will be a lot of text, and a lot of coding using HTML and CSS, so you would be helping Googlebot out, that’s by clearly highlighting that this is the businesses NAP information.
And if you were to ask any digital marketing agency how important NAP is, they are likely to say very important.
NAP information is so important, because it states where the business is based, and without it, the businesses SEO is likely to be ineffective, that’s because Googlebot will not know where the business is located, so cannot show it in the local business results.
So, for example, let’s say that your business sells take-away pizza’s, and let’s say the web designer has placed the company’s address in a map, that’s a picture that’s on the contact us page of your website.
Googlebot may well find it difficult to crawl and index the businesses NAP information, which means that when someone looks for a local pizza take-away shop in say Cardiff, your website may never appear.
Then compare this to another business, this business has the company’s name, address and phone number written in the footer of the website, this can be indexed, as the text is written in plain text.
Then the business has also added the company’s NAP information to the businesses contact us page, and the web designers have added Schema mark-up, and also the company has placed its address on the homepage.
This means that Googlebot knows the company’s NAP information, so this business is much more likely to rank higher than the business that has not got NAP information correctly written on its website in order for it to improve its SEO.
Blog posts
In order to improve a businesses seo, the business should add quality content marketing to its website on a regular basis. So for example, if you own a law practice, the business may ask its solicitors to write a blog post every week, this will improve the businesses seo, if the work is high quality.
Use a local phone number
We would recommend that the business uses a local phone number for its company’s NAP information.
So for example, if you run a business in Cardiff, we would recommend that you use a 029 21 or a 029 20 phone number, rather than using a mobile number.
We always recommend to businesses that they use a local phone number, as some digital marketing agencies believe that this is an SEO ranking factor, meaning that if you use a local phone number, then this can help to improve your businesses local seo.
However, the local phone number must match the city or the town where you want to improve your businesses seo, so for example, if you were wanting to improve your local seo in Cardiff, you would need an 029 21 or an 029 20 number.
Can the site be indexed?
This is a crucial point, there’s no point in trying to improve the businesses onsite seo unless that work can be indexed by Googlebot and Google’s algorithm.
So what do we mean by this?
Well, sometimes when a web design company is building a website, they will add code so that the website cannot be indexed (no-index), or on some CMS settings, such as on WordPress, you can sometimes switch on an option which allows the “no-index” tab to be switched on, this means that the website will not show in Google’s results.
Now obviously this is not what is wanted if your trying to improve your SEO!
Sometimes the no-index option is used because the company is redesigning their website, so they don’t want the site indexed until its finished, but obviously if its left on by mistake, when the business is trying to improve its local seo, then this will mean that the business will not appear in the SERP’s.
So one of the first tasks your agency must do is to make sure that your website can be indexed, and that all no-index tabs are switched off.
Content marketing
Well written
Your website should have content marketing which is well written.
So for example, lets say that your business sells bathroom items, such as toilets, baths and shower enclosures.
The content marketing should be well written, and what do we mean by well-written?
· No duplication
· Written by an expert
· Should include onsite SEO
· Must be white hat
Remove duplication
The marketing agency should remove any duplicated content marketing, often a business will have duplicated text if it sells products.
For example, a business may sell a brand of furniture, and the business may copy and paste the description for the furniture from the furniture makers website, however this will cause duplication issues.
Our agency recommends that all duplicated content marketing is removed from the website, that’s because if a website has duplicated text then this could cause a penalty. For example, it could cause a Google Panda penalty.
Google Analytics, time on site, bounce rate and pages that may need to be redesigned
Often an agency would work with a web designer, that’s so that the web designers can make improvements to the website, sometimes using what is called “A/B” or “split testing”- this way the agency can make improvements to the businesses website in order to reduce the company’s bounce rate.
Most agencies, including ours use Google Analytics to make sure that we are reducing the businesses bounce rate, plus also increasing how long shoppers are spending on the company’s website.
Offsite SEO
Now that we’ve covered onsite seo, its now time to switch to offsite seo, in this section we will be talking about business citations, NAP information, building high quality backlinks, plus also how a business should follow white hat seo.
What are Backlinks?
If you were to ask a digital marketing agency what they think is the most important ranking factor, and do keep in mind that there are over 200, most businesses would say that backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors.
This means that many marketing agencies think that Google’s algorithm deems backlinks as the most important ranking factor.
Yet, with that said, some businesses may believe that all backlinks are worth the same, when they are not.
Some backlinks will be high-quality, which will help to improve a businesses seo, however some will be low-quality and could damage a business’s seo.
So, when a business builds backlinks, the backlinks must be high-quality and built in a white hat way.
If the backlinks are not built in a white hat way and the backlinks are low-quality then the business could incur a link penalty. An example of a link penalty would be a Google Penguin penalty, this could mean that the website drops in terms of where it ranks, or the website could be removed from Google.
Some businesses falsely believe that they can recover from a penalty in a matter of day’s or weeks, however this is often not the case, if a business was to incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty, then this can mean that the website drops in terms of where the company ranks, plus it may take a very long time for the business to recover as well.
Build white hat backlinks
We would strongly recommend that a business only obtains high-quality backlinks, and we recommend that a business earns links, and never buys backlinks. If a business was to buy backlinks, then the business may incur a link penalty.
Now why’s this important in terms of SEO?
How can they help to improve your businesses SEO?
Often the businesses which rank at the top of Google will have good quality backlinks. If the business operates in a highly competitive business sector, let’s say for example that the business sells electrical items, such as fridge / freezers, then the business that’s ranked at the very top of Google’s results will often have hundreds if not thousands of good quality backlinks.
If a business has say thousands of good quality backlinks, then this can help to improve the businesses local SEO.
The reason for this is if the business has thousands of good quality backlinks, then these backlinks will pass link equity. Google’s algorithm will notice that the business has high-quality links, and will often move the business up the ranks.
However, if the business was to have low-quality links, then the business will move down the ranks.
Why your business only requires high-quality backlinks?
So many businesses make the mistake that if they have more backlinks, that this will help to improve the company’s SEO.
However, with that said, what it all boils down to the quality of the backlinks, that’s to say its about having a high number of high-quality backlinks.
If the business was to obtain low-quality backlinks, then this will mean that the businesses rankings will fall.
So its not about how many backlinks your website has, its about the quality of those backlinks.
What is the Google Penguin penalty?
Many businesses have obtained a Google Penguin penalty, which has meant that many businesses have seen their website removed from Google.
Its worth remembering that sometimes it can take a very long time for a business to recover from a penalty.
What do-follow backlinks mean?
Do-follow backlinks will pass link-equity, this means that if a high-quality website, such as The Guardian newspaper was to link to a website, this would be a high-quality link.
However, as most digital marketing agencies will tell you, most businesses should have a good mix of no-follow and do-follow backlinks.
What do no-follow backlinks mean?
No-follow backlinks do not pass link equity, however as we mentioned earlier some agencies will want to earn no-follow backlinks as a business should have a mix of do-follow and also no-follow backlinks.
And what do we mean by earnt?
Backlinks should be earnt, our agency never recommends that a business buys backlinks, as this often results in the company incurring a link penalty.
What is much better is if the company earns backlinks, and what do we mean by that?
Well lets say that your business sells luxury cleaning products for sports cars, now if you were to hire the wrong SEO agency, then they may recommend that “sports car cleaning products”- is written across meta titles, meta descriptions and the content marketing, which would be the wrong way to implement seo if the company was to mention these phrases too much, as it could be considered to be “keyword stuffing”.
So what a good agency, like our company would recommend instead is that your website offers high-quality advice to your customers.
And what do we mean by high-quality advice?
Well, we simply mean adding content marketing which your customers will find useful, for example you may write the following blog posts:
· How to remove paint chips from your paint
· How to wax your car ready for winter
· How to remove light dents from a door panel
Now these are questions that people who own sports cars might what to find answers to, and also people who own sports cars may link to this work, which means that the business could obtain more backlinks.
If the backlinks were of good quality, then this could help to improve the businesses seo. However, the backlinks will have been earnt, and what we mean by that is the people and businesses who have linked to the website selling car waxes and cleaning products will have done so because they have noted that the cleaning product website offers good advice, so they have decided to link to the site, that’s to say they haven’t been paid.
So, our agency believes that backlinks should be earnt and not bought, if backlinks were bought then the business may incur a link penalty. An example of a link penalty would be a Penguin penalty.
We think links should be earnt, and to earn backlinks your business must offer quality advice to your businesses customers.
Why is my SEO agency stating that they need to disavow backlinks?
A business will sometimes need to disavow its backlinks, that’s if the business has accumulated low-quality backlinks.
However, we would only recommend that a white hat agency, which is a reputable marketing agency that knows what it is doing when it comes to disavowing the company’s backlinks completes this task. We say only a reputable business should disavow the backlinks simply because if the company disavows the wrong links, that’s to say some of the good quality links as well, then the business may take longer to recover from a link penalty.
A white hat marketing agency should therefore write a detailed plan of how they are going to remove the low-quality links, leave the good quality links, then have a marketing strategy for how they are going to replace the disavowed low quality links, with good quality backlinks, to improve the company’s seo.
What is Google Analytics?
If your business is going to improve its organic or local seo, then your company is going to want to know by how much the company’s seo has improved. A business can you Google Analytics, which is free and will offer your business a lot of useful information, such as your company’s bounce rate, how many organic visitors your website has obtained, also which pages, such as the company’s homepage how many organic visitors that page is getting.
What is Google My Business?
If your company here in Cardiff wants to improve its local seo, then the business will need a Google My Business account. This is very simple to set-up, you just need to enter your businesses NAP information, plus a business description and also a link to your homepage.
If your business has not got the time to set up an account, then you may wish to ask your digital marketing agency to do this for you.
Below we will mention the information that should be added, and why its important to make sure you add as much detail as you can to your businesses Google My Business account.
Add a backlink
You should add a backlink to your homepage of your website, some businesses will add a backlink to a main page on their website, such as the contact us page, yet we always recommend that your business instead adds the link to your company’s homepage.
Add company logo
You should add your company’s logo, if you haven’t got a copy of your company logo then your marketing agency should be able to send you a copy of your company’s logo.
Add opening hours
You should add your company’s opening hours, and change these if your company changes its opening hours.
Add a business description
You should add a detailed business description, we would not recommend that you copy and paste from your website, instead you should write a business description which is unique, and not copied from your main website.
Make sure that the NAP information is correct
You should make sure that the NAP information added you website is correct, and that it matches your businesses citations.
Technical SEO
It’s really important to get the technical SEO right, for example making sure that your website can be indexed.
Design
It is really important to get design of your website right, if the design is not as good as it could be, then your business may incur a high bounce rate.
Duplicated content marketing
If the text has been copied from another website, then this can cause duplication problems, which could cause a Google penalty.
Content thin
If a website’s “content thin”, meaning that each page only has a few lines of text, then this could adversely affect your businesses search engine optimisation (SEO). It’s important that your marketing company adds detailed product descriptions and also add good quality content marketing in order to improve your businesses seo.
Reduce your companies bounce rate
Your business should work hard to reduce its bounce rate.
Poor website design
Poor website design could lead to a high bounce rate.
AMP and Speed
It’s important that your businesses website loads quickly on a smart phone, if the shopper was made to wait only a few seconds more then this could increase the businesses bounce rate.
Indexation
It’s important that your website can be indexed, so that it can be displayed in Google’s results.
Mobile friendly
It’s important to make sure that the mobile version of your companies website works correctly.
How we can help:
We are a white hat agency based in the city of Cardiff, if your business needs a new website or help to improve your businesses organic SEO or local SEO then why not give us a ring today?
