Local SEO Checklist for 2021 - How We Do Local SEO for Indian Businesses

Start executing your local SEO strategy by creating a Google My Business (GMB) account.

A well-optimized Google My Business profile can have a big impact on your local SEO. It helps Google understand where your business is located while also ranking well on Google on its own.

Google My Business can also be used as a social media page for your company. Updates, promotions, offers, events, news, and brief educational articles can all be posted. These postings can help you rank higher in Google Search, and the most recent ones will appear when someone visits your Google Maps profile.

Definitely customer review influences the ranking, better the review more likely to rank higher.

This doesn’t mean that you should try to hack the process though - don’t ask for reviews in return for discounts or coupons, and do not setup review station at your store. Google can penalise for this.

Instead, following are the best ideas to achieve reviews

Kindly remind your customers to leave reviews: When interacting with customers at your location, ask them if they enjoyed your service, and if so, let them know that you’d really appreciate a Google review.
Short URL for review: Create a link or even QR code (place it around your location) that makes customer's task easy.
Offer amazing customer service: This goes without saying, but having excellent customer service is the best way to get reviews.
Message customers to leave review(via email or SMS): Send text messages or emails to your customers once they visit your store, or show them in-app notifications if you have a mobile app. For example, if you have an app for a fitness club, you may set it up so that fitness-club-goers are prompted to submit a review when they leave.
Quick responses to review: Customers like it when the owner of the firm responds to their feedback. A simple thank you note can go a long way toward showing your concern for your customers. Yes, both positive and negative reviews should be responded to.

Citations are any mentions of your NAP (name, email, and phone information) found in business directories, websites, and social media (such as Yellow Pages, Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook, and Instagram). They further help Google validate the address you’ve listed in your GMB profile.

Citations can have a strong impact on Google Ranking. And because they often include a link to your website. Here’s what you need to do to build citations the right way:

Perform citation audit: to see if there’s any duplicate, outdated, or incorrect citations. Moz has a useful tool called Moz Local, which you can use to perform an audit. You can also check out big aggregator sites where most smaller local directories get their citations from. Once you have a list of sites where you already have a citation, you can start building more.
Build manual citation: there are so many local directories that you can manually submit you business information. Here is the best list to start with. 
Keep citation updated: every important changes that making on your business. 

While social media does not have a direct impact on your search ranking, it does help to increase your online visibility. Create and maintain profiles on a variety of social media platforms. Due to the popularity of social media platforms, these profiles can also serve as (very) credible NAP citations.

You business at least should have profile in following social platforms:

      Facebook 

   Instagram

   LinkedIn 

   Twitter

Let's move on to local SEO for your website. The first step is to do keyword research for local SEO.

However, keyword research differs from that of global SEO because you primarily aim to rank for service keywords rather than other categories. 

You’d want to rank for keywords like: [service type] + [location], like “SEO agency in Bangalore” as opposed to educational keywords like “how to do SEO”.

Follow are the best methods to do keyword research for local SEO:

Find best keywords: Start by focusing on common keywords that you'd like to rank for. If you're a cafe in Bangalore, for example, you'd want to rank for terms like "cafes in Bangalore," "cafe for couples in Bangalore," and "pet friendly cafe in Bangalore" Then, using Ahrefs, identify new keywords that are related to these.
Competitor analysis: use to Semrush find out which keywords your local competitors are ranking for and add new ones to your list.
Don't focus on global keywords: It's tempting to try to rank for general keywords such as "best SEO agency" or "SEO agency" Don't bother attempting to rank for global keywords; they're much more difficult to rank for. To be honest, they're also useless for a local business: 99.99 percent of people searching for "SEO agency" aren't looking for a Bangalore SEO agency.

Once you’re done collecting your keywords, it’s time to optimize your website according to SEO best practices:

 Title tag: inlude the main keyword in the title HTML tag of the page.
Meta description: create a short yet attractive meta description for every pages of website, that also includes main keyword
H2 headings: mention the main keyword and variations of it in H2 headings.
Alt attributes for images:  include main keywords in alt attributes of some of images (should be relevant)

Short URL: use short URL slug on pages - for example, if you’re a graphic designer, you can use URL slugs like "business.com/graphic-designer/" instead "business.com/best-graphic-designer-in-mumbai/".
Proper internal linking between  pages: Wherever possible, the most of your web pages should link to one other. When search engines crawl your site, this helps them find all of your pages. Google won't be able to notice certain of your pages if there aren't any links to them. Interlinking also aids in ranking, as pages with higher value are ranked higher. When other pages link to a page, it adds value to it.

Presence of following pages will help to rank better in Google  
 Services landing page: this is where the keyword research in step #7 comes in - you want to create a service page for each keyword you discovered. So to get back to the “cafe in Bangalore” example, you could make pages for: /pet-cafe-bangalore/, /couple-cafe-bangalore/, and so on.
Additionally, every service page should have a contact capture. This can be a simple “Contact Us” button, or a small contact form. If potential clients that land on your website can’t easily contact you.

Getting other websites to link to yours tells Google that your website is a reliable source, and Google will give your pages a higher ranking as a result. Here are a few pointers on how to get backlinks for local SEO

Find prospects from competitors: Use SEMrush to find websites that link to your competitors. Reach out to them and ask for them to link to you too.
Backlink from other local sources: collaborate with guest posts or request links from them For example, if you're a restaurant in Mumbai City, you can contact 1) food bloggers in the city or 2) activity reviewer blogs to discuss possible collaborations.
Guest post on popular websites: link to your website. E.g. local news website, firms in similar niches, etc.Additionally, every service page should have a contact capture. This can be a simple “Contact Us” button, or a small contact form. If potential clients that land on your website can’t easily contact you.

Google does mobile first indexing . So, if your website doesn’t run on Mobile, rankings will seriously be harmed. Google have their own tool to check mobile friendliness. 

Similarly, speed is a factor. If your website takes more than 20 seconds to load, most visitors will abandon it and go to your competitors.

Here are some tip to fix both issue:

Compress images: Smaller images load faster, especially on mobile devices. If your site is built on WordPress, you can compress your photos with the ShortPixel plugin. You may also have your photos “lazy load,” which means they will only load when the user scrolls down the page.
Compress HTML, CSS, and JS files: use Gzip so they can load faster
Remove unused code: browsers will take longer to load your website if it contains unneeded code. Remove any CSS and JS files that are no longer in use.
Optimize CSS delivery: instead of using inline CSS code (that is, code that is directly in your HTML code), mix it with an external stylesheet. Instead of including CSS code in your HTML code every time you wish to utilise it, you can reuse it from your external file.
Did none of that make any sense to you? We can help speed up your website for you! Get in touch here

#1. What is difference between SEO and Local SEO?

The goal of SEO and local SEO techniques differs significantly. Local SEO focuses on ranking your business in the local area where you operate, whereas national or international SEO seeks to rank your website on keywords on a national or international level.

With local SEO, you’d target keywords like “SEO agency in Mangalore,” “cafe in bangalore”, etc.
With global SEO, on the other hand, you target less location-specific keywords like “what’s local SEO,” “link building,” etc.
#2. How Do You Force Google to Display Business Results?
One of the most frustrating aspects of local SEO is the fact that Google does not always show business profile pages in the search results. So another FAQ is how do you force Google to show the map results instead of just listing webpages in the results?

Unfortunately, the answer is you can’t…

If you search a relevant keyword and Google is not listing the map with business profile pages, then there is no way to force Google to show your business page. Instead, you’ll need to optimize a page on your website using regular website SEO tactics.

For this reason, it’s important to always double-check the Google results page for your relevant search phrases before launching a local SEO campaign. If Google is not ranking Google My Business profile pages, then local SEO is not the best approach.

#3. What Types of Businesses Can Use Local SEO?
It should be obvious that local SEO is ineffective for 100% e-commerce businesses. Customers cannot visit the store because it does not have a physical location.

Consider how inconvenient it would be to see e-commerce shops featured while looking for a local coffee shop. You're looking for a place to get a cup of coffee, not an internet business where you can get coffee beans.

Local SEO is a good potential for every business that interacts in person with customers, clients, or patients, according to the basic rule of thumb. It's not a good fit if you never meet in person.

#4. How Do You Compete In Cities and Towns Outside Of Your Physical Location?
The location of your office or business is a significant factor in the ranking algorithm for local SEO. Consider this from the perspective of the person who is seeing.

When I'm looking for coffee on Mangalore, seeing businesses that are pretty far away doesn't help me. Google understands this, which is why the searcher's location vs. the business's real location is a major element in local SEO.

That means you'll rank higher in Google when potential customers search for your business near your location. The further distant a prospect searches, the less likely you are to appear on the first page of results.

It's not impossible to rank in cities other than your own (for example, you can create pages on your website for your target regions), but you should be aware that local SEO is a losing struggle. If all other factors are equal, the firm that is closest to the individual searching will most likely win.

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