Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about how to optimize your website to rank better for a local audience in your local market.
The statistics supporting the importance of Local SEO are extremely compelling refer to website Social Media Today.
- 46% of all searches on Google are seeking local information whereas 97% of search engine users searched online to find a local business.
- 86% of consumers rely on the internet to find a local business and almost a third (29%) search for local businesses at least one a week.
- 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business for something nearby result in a purchase within 10 km.
With this article we look at the highest value activities which can help your business rank well locally in Google and Bing search:
What is local SEO?
If you have a local business, like a shop, store, boutique, hotel, restaurant or have people visiting your office or place frequently, optimizing your website is also about making sure people are able to find you in real life. But even if you’re not actively getting visitors in your building, but are targeting an audience that is located in the same geographical area as you are, you need to optimize for that area. This is what we call “Local SEO”
1 – Online Business Listings
Claiming the top online listings should be your first action, the most important being on GMB Pages (Google My Business) or Bing will help you reach and engage with local customers across google search and maps, and closely followed by Facebook Business Pages, then all other relevant industry-specific profiles, whether that be like Foursquare, Yelp, Cambodia Yellow Page, Agoda, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Airbnb, OpenTable…
2 – Local Keyword Research
You first need to know which search queries are helping people find your local business. Optimizing your website will be a much easier task once you know the keywords you’re ranking for. You can then focus your efforts on other relevant keywords.
As you go about your local keyword research, you can use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Keyword Keg, Neilpatel, etc. to source search volume data for your location.
3 – Use Keywords in Your Website Content
When adding keywords to a website’s content, write for the user first and the algorithm second. There are 4 key components on a page where a keyword position can have an impact on rankings the most:
- Title
- Meta Description
- Meta Keywords
- H1, H2, H3,…
4 – Have consistent NAP details
NAP stands for (Name, Address, Phone Number). NAP is critical for businesses wishing to rank well in the local organic search results because search engines like Google take the data into account when determining which companies to show for geo-targeted searches. You should also include these details placed in strategic locations on your website (footer, contact us page, etc).
5 – Building Up Customer Reviews Online
Customer like to read of other’s experiences with a business, so positive online reviews. Authentic customer reviews will boost your sales, especially in trusted sites such as Google Maps, Trip Advisor, or OTAs Website. Google recognizes this so good online reviews can also boost your local search rankings.

6 – Website Speed Optimization
The website speed makes the first impression of your business. It’s essential to understand that you won’t get a second chance when it comes to user experience. Low website speed is one of the most frustrating things that will turn people off about your resource.
There are several performance evaluation tools that are worth trying for free:
- Google Pagespeed Insights is a free tool from Google
- Pingdom is also a great tool for website speed testing with a number of useful features.
- YSlow also provides recommendations on how to improve the performance of the page
- Performance Budget Calculator is a free tool that helps figure out what type of content you can use to keep your site running optimally.
7 – Mobile Responsive Design
Website responsiveness is also a great way to refine the content on your site, making sure that people using a mobile device are only seeing the most essential information.

With the Google algorithm update, a responsive web design increases visibility on search engines—because it is mobile-friendly. A site with an effective mobile experience will show up in search results above one without.
- Increase reach to customers and clients on smaller devices (tablets & smartphones)
- A consistent experience that can increase lead generation, sales and conversions
- Analytics, tracking, and reporting can all be in one place
- Time and cost on-site content management is decreased
Stay ahead of the competition
8 – Optimizing images for search engines
Image SEO refers to the optimization of graphics on a website to make the page more appealing to search engine crawlers. Image SEO provides additional information about a graphic to search engines, which helps them understand the content and can lead to a boost in search rankings and visibility. It also can lead to an image appearing in Google’s image search. Heavy images can make your site slow-to-load.
Follow these steps to learn how to add SEO-friendly images to your site.
- Finding the right image for your post or page
- Use high-quality images with small size
- Choose the best file type
- Use appropriate image file sizes
- Add and optimize the image alt tag
- Add the target keyword to the image title
- Add the target keyword to the image file name
- Add image-structured data
You can use a varied number of tools available online to compress your images like adobe photoshop, jpegmini or imageoptim can makes your website images load faster.
9 – Link Building
If you have a website and want traffic from search, you need to consistently secure good links from relevant websites. That means link building.
10 – On-Site Optimisation
On-Page SEO (also called On-Site SEO) is the process of optimizing each and every web page of your site in order to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
On-Page SEO has to do with both technical SEO (titles, descriptions, URLs) and the content of your web pages.
The ultimate goal with on-page SEO, is to speak the ‘search engines language’ and help crawlers understand the meaning and context of your pages.
Conclusion:
Localized SEO is an important factor that needs to be part of marketing if you have customers looking for a local service. If your business does not appear in searches by local consumers, then you are missing out on sales. Take the time to develop your local SEO, and your digital footprint will be significantly stronger.