How to Dominate Local SEO Search Rankings?

Posted by kanika ahuja on September 13th, 2018

5 things you need to do to dominate local search in 2018.

1. Claim Your Listing

2. Citation Creations

3. Secure Reviews

4. Use Schema Markups

5. Optimize Meta Data

Fortunately, it is much easier to secure top positions in organic search with local projects compared to national or global counterparts.

Let’s take a deep dive into what you need to do.

Claim Your Listing:

It just makes sense and yet there are so many businesses that fail to do this.

Go here: https://www.google.com/business/

Enter your business address to start the postcard verification process which typically takes about 2 weeks. And make sure you’ve done your absolute best to provide crystal clear details at every level including:

1. Solid Description
2. Categories
3. Business Hours
4. Contact Details
5. Types of Payments Accepted

Next up?

Citation Creations:

It’s a tossup between this and point 3, but we must choose one.

Here are 3 directories you want to be sure to include your venture in.

1. Yelp

2. Merchant Circle

3. Citysearch

They are the tip of the iceberg, but very important ones to get started.

What’s a Citation?

It’s your companies NAP which is identified by your business name, phone number, and address. I like to refer to it as your Website’s dog tags of Web identity.

Liked I said, the directories identified above are just the start. There are tons more to consider, especially the local ones.

Fiverr provides some amazingly affordable gigs for setting up your business citations. You can do these activities yourself or outsource it to someone that knows how to get the job done. I recommend taking the outsource route so that you can focus on other important activities.

Secure Reviews:

People trust online reviews to the same level as they do in-person recommendations. Not taking time to secure these reviews will put you at a clear disadvantage compared to your competitors.

Here are 4 tools to consider using in order to gain high quality targeted reviews for your business.

Get Five Stars
Reputation Loop
Vendasta
Trust Pilot

HOT TIP: Be sure to respond to reviews when you receive them. Google loves to see businesses that engage with customers, even though the huge majority fail to do it.

Use Schema Markups:

Now that you have the off-page factors moving forward, it is time to focus on your on-page requirements with setup of Schema being one of the critical factors for you to take care of.

Many businesses think that this means creating schema code related to their NAP and including it on every page. The good news is that they are not wrong.

Use Google Structured Data Testing Tool or Data Highlighter to make this a reality for your site.

However, don’t stop there.

When you create new content make sure to markup items like:

Products available for purchase.
Collected reviews.
Services offered.

The more time and attention that you take with these type of items, the greater time and attention Google will take with you.

Optimize Meta Data:

Our last point involves optimizing meta data, but what is that?

It is details that do not appear on Google that relate to the keyword phrase targeted, description offered and title delivered.

But wait, does Google still care about it?

I don’t recommend taking a great deal of time with the keyword phrase part or even entering the targeted phrase into the title and description areas.

Instead, you’re looking for ways to catch your reader’s attention and have an extremely limited amount of characters to do that within.

Title: 70 characters
Description: 160 characters
If someone is using Google to find a Best Digital Marketing Institute in Delhi there is a good chance that they Googled something like “digital marketing institute” and are now looking at the results.

Question:

Does it make sense to include the words “internet marketing course in delhi” in your title and description details?

Not exactly.

Your viewer should already know those details. Instead, focus on high profile ingredients that set you apart and above your competitors.

Google has indicated that meta data is no longer a ranking factor. However, they have also made it clear that CTR (click through rate) is something that they pay attention to.

The more people that access your results from the search engines the higher your placement possibilities on their search engine becomes, though this is certainly not the only factor involved. So, you want to creatively invite those viewing everyone’s listing to pay attention to yours.

Conclusion:

Yes, there are other ways in which you can build a strong foundation in local search. However, if you concentrate on these 5 factors, you will find that in most cases you are head and shoulders above your competitors in your area.