Local search engine optimization is the need of the hour. The competition in the modern business environment is tough as there are thousands of businesses fighting for the top spot.
Local SEO gives local businesses a competitive edge over brands and multi-location operating businesses. The majority of the high-end brands and Fortune 500 companies do not conduct local search engine optimization. Even though these are the industry giants, there is a need to optimize their digital profiles in compliance with not only the international market standards but also with that of the local market.
When a recognized brand optimizes its website to gain local presence, they establish authority and gain considerable ranking in local search results. But the local search engine optimization is not as simple as it sounds!
Local SEO is quite a technical procedure and requires experience and expertise to ace. However, a professional local SEO agency tends to tackle every problem and find an effective, relevant solution for the problem.
The objective of this article is to address the most common problems that almost every business faces. In addition to this, the article elaborateson the possible effective solutions for such problems, so that you could up your site’s local SEO game.
There might be something wrong with your Website’s Content!
The most common misunderstanding abouta website’s content is that it should be good in terms of vocabulary only. Many business owners neglectthe optimization of content and just focus on the words.
Another brutal mistake is keyword stuffing. It is a practice that is strongly disregarded by the search engines. Then, there is also a problem with text ellipsis from meta titles. A local SEO agency has the solution to all these issues.
Solution:
You need to conduct the optimization of your website’s entire content to rank top among local search intent. The Google keyword planner helps you to pick relevant keywords for local intent.
The ideal keywords density is 2-4%. You must incorporate the relevant keywords accordingly. Moreover, the content of articles and blogs published on your site must seem natural to Google. The search engine immediately labels artificial content as spam.
Besides, the local SEO agency also optimizes the site’s URL, title tag, and meta description. To avoid ellipses, the pixel length of web page titles and meta descriptions is also optimized.
Pirated Content Issues:
Business owners need to steer clear of the pirated content at all costs as it exposes a website to risk.It negatively influences your site’s rankingandcouldalso lead it to Google’s penalty.It could also lose the opportunity to rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) altogether.
Solution:
The first thing to do is to find the pirated content on your website. This can be done using applications or some web-based tools such asSitelinerand CopyScape.
If you findany pirated content, this is what needs to be done;
Make new pages with a unique URL for all the locations of a business in case of multiple business locations.
Ifnumerous URLs haveidentical content, then the probability of link sharing,website blacklining, and parameter tracking issuesis high.
To get rid of these,you could use the Canonical tag. Any bot that comes upon this tag would get the link to the authentic resource. Every link of a pirated page will be treated asa link to the genuine page. Hence, you would never lose your SEO value from such links.
Inadequate Page Speed:
The slow speed,along with more than usual site loading time, is a huge drawback to your site’s local SEO. Both of these factors increase the bounce rate and significantly reduce traffic.
The slower the site’s loading speed, the lower the page rank. This is when you need to hire the services of a local SEO agency.
Solution:
Alocal SEO agency has smart solutions to resolve the page loading speed issues. These professionals makeuse of tools like Google’s PageSpeedInsightsand other audit tools to determine a site’s speed.
The process is then followed by fixing certain technicalities like optimizing all the images present on the web pages, fixing leverage browser caching, minimizing redirects,and improving server response timings. The site’s speed is tested at regular intervals.
Flaws in XML Sitemaps:
The objective of the XML sitemap is to alert Google about the business or topic of your website. But if there are faulty sitemaps,then false broadcast information will be sent to Google or other search engines about your website. This way, it becomes difficult for search engines to not only comprehend the site’s content, but alsoit’s context and hierarchy. Well, you don’t need to worry, your local SEO agency will tackle this too!
Solution:
Usually, the local SEO agency makes use of Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. The list of sitemaps is inserted into these tools, and you get the list of erroneous sitemaps.
Also, it must be ensured that the sitemap generation and submission plug-ins are working properly on your website. To deal with these aspects, the SEO agencies useproperly integratedSEO plug-ins.
Low-Quality Mobile Experience:
Ever since Googleintroduced a new ranking parameter,i.e., Mobile-first Index, things have gotten challenging for business owners.
The search engines now rank websites on the basis of their mobile versions, so mobile-friendlinesshas become the need of time asmany web users have shifted from desktop computers to their mobile devices now.
Mobile phone usage has reached an extensive peak. Statistically, inthe U.S alone, there are over 224 million smartphone users. In accordance with this figure, 40% of web visitors will obviously omit your website if it lacks mobile-friendliness.
Solution:
Immediately optimize your website for mobile devices.
Make sure that your sites load quickly (ideally within three seconds).
Make use of readable and bigger fonts.
Ensure intuitive User Interface (UI) for great User Experience (UX).
Don’t block images, JavaScript, and CSS, since Google’s search bots focus on these features to precisely categorize the content.
Test your site’s mobile-friendliness by any of the three mobile-readiness tools,i.e.,Google Page Insights,Pingdom, and GMetrix,and take necessary actions based on the tools’ insights, if required.
These are the most common issues business owners face with local SEO. While you can take care of these issues themselves, it is best to hire a local SEO agency that can efficiently help you cater to all these challenges!
