Optimizing your website for search engine success is a journey of long-term investment and patience, as it could take weeks to months for your website to be fully optimized for great search rankings. While you are plugging away to make sure your website is optimized as much as can be, you want to make sure you monitor your results locally. Now depending on the type of industry you are in, you may be asking yourself if local optimization is necessary. For the most part, it is extremely helpful to incorporate local SEO into your overall optimization strategy because that is how most people search anyway. In addition, with the rise in mobile device use, search engines pick up the location pings of your mobile devices to give you the best results depending on your device’s location. To help get started with building out your local pages, here is a four-step guide on determining how to create your local pages for optimal success.
Keyword Research
Just like with any search engine optimization, the first thing you will want to do is do some keyword research to see what your target audience is searching for when it comes to your industry. Then you can apply these keywords to the services you want to be found for. Making use of Google’s Keyword Planner is a great tool to find high volume keywords that are being searched. Another tool to use is Keywords Everywhere, which is a Google Chrome extension that helps you see what search terms are being performed that are relevant to a search you enter into Google.
Categorize Keywords & Log Their Volumes
Once you have a solid group of keywords you will want to categorize them into different versions. You will want to have three versions such as implicit, explicit, near me and record the different volumes. This way you can see which version of a keyword search will give you the highest chance of clicks and traffic. The first category, implicit, will be broad searches such as “SEO jobs.” If you search for that term you will probably see many local-oriented results as that term calls for the search engine to pull in local listings that have the best-optimized sites related to your search that is in the vicinity of where you are searching. The second category is explicit local terms which is where you can be more specific on locations you want to show for. Explicit terms include “SEO jobs in Boston,” “SEO jobs in Quincy,” etc. This is where you can create local pages for specific towns and areas that surround where your business actually is. The last category is “near me” searches and this category all depends on the type of business you are in. Some near me searches are not as accurate but search engines use the location ping of your mobile device or IP address to pull in the proper results for the search you are looking for.
Examine SERPs To See Where Local Pages Rank
Once you have your keywords and categories figured out, test each term to see what types of results show up to see if local businesses or local pages have a majority hold on the first page of results. To determine whether or not you are looking at a local page or a local business, try looking at the URL of the listings. If you see a location in the domain and URL then you know you have a local business. If the location is mentioned in the URL but not the domain, indeed.com/seo-jobs-boston, then you have a local page.
Compare Results & Determine What Is Best For You
After examining different results from the different categories. Compare what kind of results show for each term you are interested in optimizing for and make your decision on what will give you the best chance for clicks. For the most part, explicit terms are going to give you the highest result as most people perform searches in the form of “SEO jobs in [location].” With knowing this, creating local pages for these explicit search terms is a great way to optimize for local search while also improving your websites overall optimization.