4 Effective Ways to Increase Your Local Business Sites Search Rankings

In this post I will outline 4 easy to implement, but highly effective ways to increase your Website or Blogs LOCAL search rankings in Google and other major search engines.

So Let's Get Started!

1. Use the Correct Keywords

Using the correct "Keywords" will GREATLY improve your sites local search rankings (as well as international)

What are Keywords?

Keywords (also known as Keyphrases) are basically the search terms people would type into Google and other search engines to find the information they are looking for.

Example:
If someone was looking for say "Cooking Tutorials" on Google, they might type one of the following search queries"

• "Cooking Tutorials"
• "Cooking Tutorials for Beginners"
• "How to Cook for Beginners"

Each one of these search queries would be classed as a Keyword/Keyphrase.

If you are wanting your website to rank for a certain Keyword or phrase, just be sure to include it a few times through out your article/site.

How to Find The Right Keywords

There are a lot of different ways to come up with Keyword ideas, but here are two of my favourite! (see the post by Neil Patel below as well).

Google Keyword Planner:

The free Keyword Planner tool by Google will allow you to see how many people each month are searching for particular keywords and will also give you other ideas too.

I don't think I have ever met anyone that is successful online that doesn't use Google Keyword Planner ... and all you need is a Gmail account to get started!

UberSuggest:

This is another great free tool to help with your keyword research efforts. Basically you type in a word or phrase and it will give you tons of Keywords you might have never though of.

2. Make Sure You Website is "Responsive"

What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive Website is one that is "Mobile Friendly", which basically means that your website is going to look great on both a desktop computer/laptop or a mobile phone/tablet.

What Difference Does it Make?

Well here are just a few:

• More people in the world own smartphones than toothbrushes.
• 4 out of 5 consumers shop on smartphones.
• 45% of users ages 18-29 use their smartphones every day.
• 1 in 3 kids in the UNKNOWN owns their own tablet.

So if there are that many people on the internet on their phones and tablets, it definitely makes sense to have a Responsive Site.

Google are actually introducing this as one of their ranking factors in 2015, so if your site isn't Responsive you might start losing your position in the searches to your competitors!

3. Build an Email list

Why Build an Email list?

Building a list of email subscribers great for driving previous customers and visitors to your new products and posts.

This then increases traffic to your site and also the chance of repeat purchases from customers, or purchases from people who were screptical of buying from you the first time.

How to get people Signing up?

Here are three simple (but very effective) ways I have used in the past to get people to gladly subscribe to my email lists:

1. Free Informative Guides (like this one):

These can be given away in return for the persons email address. Just create some high quality content that can be given away (like an eBook or short video series) and make sure it is related to what you normally do ... Relevance is KEY!

2. Run A Competition:

You could consider giving away one of your products or services as part of a prize draw and people would enter by joining your email list.

3. Literally Just Ask:

You might be surprised how well this workds!

If you have a blog on your website (which you probably should by the way!), you can add something at the end of each post suggesting to people that if they sign up to your email list they can expect more content like stuff they just finished reading.

If you don't have a blog (or even if you do), I strongly suggest putting an optin form in the sidebar or footer of your website along with a few words explaining why someone would benefit from signing up to your list.

How much does it cost?

It will cost you absolutely nothing to get started thanks to the amazing people over at Mail Chimp who offer you a free (entrepreneur) account!

If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. No expiring trial, contract, or credit card required - Cited from: MailChimp

not bad at all, right?

4. Use Consistent "NAP Citations"

What are NAP Citations?

Well, first of all I will explain that "NAP" stands for "Name Address Phone Number" and then a "Citation" is literally just an instance of it showing up online. Here is an example of a "NAP Citation" for a made-up business: Business Name, 11 Made-up Street, Belfast, BT205BS (020) 90 450-369

What do we mean by "Consistent NAP Citations"?

Well basically Google and other search engines are now actually able to keep track of all instances of the same "NAP Citations" that show up online and use this as a sort of gauge to tell them how popular a certain site is.

So as a general rule of thumb, the more reputable places you can get your NAP Citations to appear on, the better!

Places like YELL, YELP, 192 ect are great sites for this.

Worth Noting:

NAP Ciatations do not need to contain a link back to your site, having it appear in plain text is fine. (don't woory, the search engines will find them!)