Local SEO - Three Secrets to SEO Success

Local SEO is SEO for a business that can only service a particular geographical area. This means that there is no point in targeting a huge keyword, or even a city wide keyword, in many cases, local or very small business SEO is about targeting a few very small keywords, very very well.

1. Mobile Local Services – The Kings and Queens of Local SEO

The biggest player in the Local SEO scene is the local tradesman.  Builders, plumbers, roofers, handymen, electricians…also beauticians, hairdressers, cake decorators, accountants and mower men… mobile local service people. Local services generally have a preferred area that they work in.  This area gives them the greatest profit for the smallest travel times.  If you're a local service owner and have been working in your local area for any period of time, you'll know just how far you need to travel to find enough clients to grow your business. 

This is your geographical target.

2. Main Page Keyword Selection

Unlike most businesses, your keyword research is going to be simple.  If you're a builder in the city of Wagga Wagga, Australia, then your keywords are going to be Builder Wagga Wagga, Builders Wagga Wagga, Wagga Wagga builders, Wagga Wagga builder – and maybe a few variations with office building, home building and the like.  Fine, go ahead and optimize your money making pages for those keywords. Chances are you'll get somewhere on page one for those.

3. Micro SEO

Now your main pages are all about Wagga Wagga builders, it's time to get a bit tricky.  Make a list of all the suburbs in your geographical target area.  Add any nearby population hubs, shopping centres, well known commercial or industrial estates – anywhere that your potential customers may "guess" you could be located.  From your home page (or site map) create a page of links.  Create a list of links using  your main keyword and the suburb name.  So for example:

Builders East Wagga Wagga

Builders Smith Town

Builders Jones Industrial Estate

Builders Main Road

Builders South Wagga Wagga

These links will all follow to a child page optimized for those terms and filled with an urgent call to action, booking information and some unique content about your services in that area.  In each of these child pages, cross link back to your money pages and to other nearby geographical locations.  Be sure to optimize the meta tag data too.

Once finished, simply resubmit your site map or request a crawl from your links page here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

These low search, no competition keywords will have a small but steady steam of leads pouring in.  Meanwhile, your money pages will grow to bring in bigger jobs.  All of which makes for a solid growth strategy for your local business SEO.

About The Author

Dana Flannery is a small and regional business SEO consultant at Talk About Creative, Brisbane, Australia. She specializes in SEO strategies with no monthly fees.