Five SEO Tips for Local Business Ranking

When it comes to SEO techniques for ranking a page, local business marketing has different rules comparing to those used by a large company (national/ multinational company). It is obvious that a big company’s site is more popular than a local one, but in the same way, a local business owner is not interested in attracting customers from a very long distance.

Every search engine has its own algorithm when it comes to page ranking. For example, Google picks websites for their value and popularity. Page ranking algorithm is continually changing. Search engines change the principles of how they rank pages to prevent any cheating attempt. Some websites that used tricks lost their first page ranking or worse, they were avoided on future search results. Restrictions can be applied to big companies sites, as well as small businesses’ websites. So, an important rule if you want your local business rank higher is not trying to fool search engines. If a SEO “specialist” is trying to do something in this way with your site, pass the offer and find someone else to do the job.

Some pages are very “lucky” to be in the first page results although they lack important information. Why is that? Sometimes, linking an average content site to a highly popular site will beat a valuable content site that isn’t linked to a popular site. Search engines believe that if the popular site is linked to a website (that we consider ordinary), that site must contain useful information for the reader if it matches the search keywords. So, it is important that your website is linked to other sites, and it is recommended to pick sites that have higher page rank in “the eyes” of search engines. I recommend you to link your site to your partners and of course – not competitors. Never link your site to link farms (sites used only for linking, with no valuable content and are considered spammers by search engines). This can be a cause for a diminished page rank or expulsion from the search results.

Web pages can be linked with external sites to get a better ranking.

You can be on the top of a keyword search but be of no help. Why? If nobody is searching for that particularly keyword then everything’s in vain. Take special care when choosing keywords.

Insert your keywords in your domain name (as much as possible), web page texts, tags. Use anchor texts to link web pages (internal pages) from your site.

I believe that you don’t want to annoy your readers or customers so, don’t insert out of the ordinary design that will not help them. If people come to your site to read information, all the flashes, animations, and other similar stuff will annoy most readers. Your website is not a video game. And this type of “heavy content” will make your site harder to index, losing a good ranking place. Simple design attracts readers.

Texts or articles should have at least 200 words and be rich in keywords (especially title, first and last paragraph). Quality content is very important for page ranking so, don’t write everything that comes to your mind, add valuable information for your readers. In time, good content can rank your site higher than any SEO technique.

By adding multimedia content (video, audio) you will increase the attractiveness of your site. This way the website is more personalized and more user-friendly. If you can, collect testimonials from customers. Don’t add fake testimonials. If you praise your services or products too much it will raise suspicions.

In the end, I will ask you to be patient. Local business ranking is not something that happens overnight. Usually, it takes several months to see the results. Most small business owners tend to be a little impatient because they’ve invested a sum of money and want to see fast results. Online marketing is a step by step process that has outstanding results if it is done properly.