Create a Contact Page
If you have a local brand, you must have a dedicated contact page, as people now want detailed information about your brand, including your contact details.
On your contact page, you should display:
1, Your name
2. Phone
3. Email
4.Your business’s full address
Your name phone and address details together are also commonly referred to as NAP data, though your email isn’t. We will explain NAP data and why it’s so crucial to local search in more detail shortly. Make sure your website contact details are clearly displayed, current, and accurate, so people can get in touch with you without any issues
Make your phone numbers clickable
As over 30% of all local searches are done via mobiles, it’s important to be as accessible as possible to searchers who want to connect with your brand. An easy way of doing this is to make your phone numbers clickable for mobile versions of your website. This saves people having to take the extra step of copying your number and switching apps when they want to call you. The searcher will then get an automatic prompt when they click on the link, that will ask them if they’d like to place a call. Make sure you make your phone numbers clickable via text links and not graphics as Google needs to be able to crawl the data. You also should display your phone number at the head of every page of your website, as mobile devices are now the primary means by which users conduct local searches.
Add a location Map to your site
As 86% of local searches look up a business’s location using Google Maps, it makes sense to add a map with your location to your website. That way, people can immediately see where you are located, without having to leave your site to look you up. Embedding a Google Map on your About or Contact Page gives you a two for one, as you can show your website visitors where to find you AND let Google knows where you are located, which will help with your local search score. To embed your Google Map, just search for your business location on Google Maps, then click on the dropdown menu at the top corner of the screen and select embed. You’ll get an embed code which you can copy and paste into your site’s html to display your location on your website.
Incorporate Schema
Schema.org was created to provide a common language between websites and search engines like Google and Bing. It helps search engines understand what your website is about, so they can rank its relevancy when returning results for local search. If you add the most relevant Schema mark-up for your local business, to your website, you’ll be letting google know you are a local business and not a big global brand. Including Schema markers can help you confirm the nature of your business as well as its location to Google, and this may give a slight boost to your position in local search. To add Schema to your website quickly, you can make use of the many free online Schema tools that take the information you enter and generate html code. You can then copy and paste this code to the html section of your website. Google’s Structured Data Helper and Data Highlighter, will let you easily add in Schema mark up data to your website, or you can use the free JSON generator offered by the Schema App.
Once you’ve added in your Schema information, you can also use Google’s Data Helper tool to test how it displays. Google’s Add structured data tool helps you add any type of structured data to a html website. The structured data you generate using the tool will be eligible to appear as a graphical search result, which can help you reach many more people. If you have a local restaurant or are a local food producer for example, you could use the Add Structured Data Tool to turn your recipes or meal ideas into rich results. Don’t forget to test your data in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool after you enter it, to check there are no errors.
Keywords
Make sure your location keyword appears high up on every page, ideally in your headline. Optimise your homepage’s title tag, ensuring it includes your location and 2 or 3 high performing keywords that are niche relevant. Don’t forget your metadata, as this helps you boost your clickthrough rate. Never overstuff your meta description with keywords though, instead make it catchy and short, and include one mention of your location. When you sit down to write your meta description, imagine you’re giving an elevator pitch to someone, to convince them to visit your website or give your company a try. You can check out Google Ads in your local niche to get good examples of short persuasive copy that will work, including keywords. If you decide to use one, don’t copy word for word, instead rewrite them so they are totally unique.
Ensure your website is mobile optimised
Did you know 9 out of 10 smartphone users perform local searches while they are out and about? If you have a local business, it’s important to make sure your website displays and navigates well on mobile devices, as many people will look up your information while they are on the move. If you’re building your website yourself, free tools like WordPress or Wix make it easy to get a sleek looking mobile optimised website, though you still need to check how your chosen template performs on smartphones and tablets. If someone else is building your website, let them know that it’s critical your site functions well on mobile devices, as if it doesn’t, people will lose patience fast, and you’ll lose custom.
Check for errors
As with any SEO strategy, to score highly with Local SEO, you need to make sure your website is online and error free. Consider improving your internal linking structure to make it easy for people to navigate to what they need and check your website and pages to make sure they’re online and don’t have any bugs. You can use free tools like Screaming Frog to check your website’s images, links, scripts, and apps, to see if you have any missing H1 or meta tags, or 404 errors.