See What’s New in Local SEO and 7 Ways to Make it Better!

How to Optimize for Local SEO in 2015

By Google’s own admission, they make between 500-600 changes to the algorithm annually, so being aware of all of them and how they affect your site is a full time job. If you’re frustrated attempting to keep up with all the changes that transpire within the Google Local search space, you’re not alone!

If your head starts spinning at the mere mention of things like Pigeon, the Local Carousel, and MobileGeddon, then we have good news for you.

In order to keep things simple here, we’ve distilled our list of best Local SEO practices to a mere 7. Implement these as soon as you can for best results!

7 Best Practices for Local SEO

Don’t stop link building – But do it naturally! Be certain that you’re creating awesome content that is getting shared as widely as possible, and watch the links flow in. These are the best types of links you can acquire.

Be sure to GEO-target your pages – The Pigeon update was all about preferring local content over global when possible. Make it possible on your pages with local geo-modifiers.

Citations still matter – These days it’s about getting quality citations, and cleaning them up so as not to have duplicate entries and inconsistent data.

Solicit customer reviews – This is the highest form of social proof available, and studies are showing that the overwhelming majority (90%) consult product reviews before purchasing. Ask your present customers; they’ll usually be more than happy to comply.

Use Google My Business – Google’s local business tool suite is an incredible tool you’ll want to be fully invested in. There are so many ways this helps your business, but one of the main ones is being able to easily manage reviews.

Create and optimize local images – Use unique local images and make sure they are geo-tagged appropriately. This can help you in several ways, including Google Images, the 7 pack, Your Google My Business page and more.

Take advantage of social sharing – Make sure you have social media icons present on all your pages and content so as to provide your audience with the opportunity to share your content far and wide!

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