Optimizing a website for local search objectives is a great way to revise your SEO techniques.The rationale behind stems from the obvious fact that competition is weaker andthe main scope is narrower ?? think about all the times in which you have toadmit that competition became fierce in the SEO business.
Here is adetailed checklist of aspects you should carefully look at when approaching andimplementing your local SEO strategy.
Write down your goal(s). This will set up the main reason why you're dealing with local SEO.
Brainstorm search phrases related to your client's business. Think clearly about what words people would possibly type into the search engine.
Do some research on your selected keywords. Best way to do it is by using wordtracker.com. Record the best keywords and?
Analyse the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for those specific keywords. The main objective is to see who is ranking for those keywords.
Once you've done this, it is time to create the competitor list and study how they obtained those rankings ? above all, investigate competitor's links.
Sign up with Google analytics and let it run. Usually, two weeks are enough for Analytics to gather all the relevant data.
Look through your HTML code and optimise the SEO related tags. E.g. Keywords in title tag ? unique for each page; keywords in H1 on each page; keywords in text; keywords in alt tags and filenames; URL architecture;
Add company address and phone number on every page. This data are fundamental for local SEO.
Add a robots.txt. This help you specify the pages that search engines should crawl.
Add the web site to the main search engine's local directories ? e.g. google local, yahoo local and live local. Have a look also at industry specific directories.
Get links! Prepare carefully and implement you link building strategy.
Track the progress of your SERPs and maintain a spreadsheet of your rankings.
Theabove-mentioned aspects are fundamental when implementing SEO for local smallbusiness web sites. Check them all!
