{"id":19176,"date":"2022-07-25T14:59:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-the-big-local-seo-checklist\/"},"modified":"2023-12-12T11:29:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T11:29:04","slug":"big-local-seo-checklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/content\/big-local-seo-checklist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Local SEO Checklist"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a business with any kind of local presence or operating in a specific geographical area, having an effective (and relevant) local SEO strategy can make a huge difference to attracting customers or clients.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It might be that you have a local audience in one location, have several branches in different parts of the country, or cover a specific region of the UK with your products or services. Targeting any kind of location with a carefully planned local SEO strategy<\/a> can boost brand awareness with potential customers living in the area, drive highly relevant organic traffic to your website and help drive footfall to physical stores or places of business.<\/p>\n

In this article, we\u2019ve pulled together a checklist to help you develop a strategy designed to effectively boost local SEO performance for your website.<\/p>\n

Optimise your Google Business Profile<\/h2>\n

Formerly called \u2018Google My Business\u2019, your organisation\u2019s listing is now named Google Business Profile, and you can have a separate listing for each location that your company has a physical address for. So, if you have a small business in one location, you can have a single profile that covers your regional area. If you have several branches, offices or stores, you can have a Google Business Profile for each that is targeted to searchers in that specific area.<\/p>\n

There are multiple ways to optimise your listing, so we\u2019ve developed a detailed guide to Google Business Profile for local SEO here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Develop a local keyword strategy<\/h2>\n

Incorporating local knowledge into your keyword strategy is a great way to add substance to your local SEO efforts. You could be forgiven for thinking that a local keyword strategy is simply adding the name of a town, city or region to your \u2018normal\u2019 keywords.<\/p>\n

However, simply leaving things there and not delving into search terms further could be a missed opportunity (and potentially get you into trouble). Aiming for the same highly competitive terms as your local competitors is also unlikely to bring results quickly. A different approach might be needed.<\/p>\n

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One of the great things about the UK is that despite being a comparatively small country, we have a wealth of different local terminology and colloquialisms, which can sometimes feed into your local keyword strategy, depending on their relevance to what you do.<\/p>\n

There might not be a huge number of average monthly searches for some of these terms that can be picked up by keyword research tools, but that doesn\u2019t mean that your potential customers won\u2019t be using them to find products or services online. Long-tail keywords might be more niche, but the people they do send to your website are usually much more likely to convert.<\/p>\n

Obviously, you\u2019ll want to focus on the keywords that have the best chance of sending someone relevant at the right point in their journey to your website, so simply Googling terms and seeing what the results are can be a good way to find out if there are related local questions you can answer on your website already with a \u2018People Also Ask\u2019 result or a featured snippet. This will look different for different businesses and industries, but understanding how your potential customers or clients search is always key to developing an effective local keyword strategy.<\/p>\n

You might also be interested in our guide to keyword research for ecommerce brands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On-page local optimisation<\/h2>\n

Local SEO for small businesses might mean that their entire website is focused on driving local traffic in one region, but for those who have a local aspect but a national audience too, or have several locations they are targeting, creating new location-specific pages for the website is often a good way to strengthen local SEO.<\/p>\n

Ensuring that these pages have all of the right elements to appeal and communicate to search engines as well as your target audience is essential and is a great way to incorporate the local keywords already identified.<\/p>\n

The areas to optimise with the location and\/or local search terms include:<\/p>\n