How to Reach Customers Near You with Good Local SEO

How to Reach Customers Near You with Good Local SEO

Local SEO can help nearby customers find your business online, whether they’re using their smartphone, their laptop, or smart speaker. But what does a good local SEO strategy involve?

Here are four great tips from our Orange County SEO agency to help you get started.

Target Local Keywords

Focus on local keywords for effective local SEO. For example, if you’re targeting parents and caregivers looking for kids’ clothes near you, one location-specific keyword might be “child’s clothing store in Orange County”.

When creating your content marketing strategy, focus on local events, community news, and any other topics likely to appeal to nearby customers. This ensures you can pepper plenty of local keywords throughout your site organically.

Take Advantage of Your Google Business Profile Listing

Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business) is a free tool that can help your company be more visible on SERPs. Use it to set up a distinctive local profile for your business, featuring key information, images, videos, and reviews. To avoid missed opportunities, update your Google Business Profile whenever your contact details change.

It’s crucial that you claim your Google Business Profile as soon as possible (if you haven’t already), or someone else could. Fortunately, you can reclaim it if that happens, so don’t worry!

Welcome Customer Feedback and Reviews

Feedback and reviews can make a big impact on your local visibility. Positive feedback alongside your results on SERPs will give you more credibility, which is vital for small enterprises.

Almost 70% of online shoppers read 1 to 6 customer reviews before they decide whether to buy something or not. If you have a selection of varied, honest, but ultimately encouraging reviews to your name, a large number of potential customers are likely to check them before they do business with you.

Ask customers to review your products and services after each transaction. Make the process as quick and simple as possible to reduce the risk of people giving up.

Optimize Your Website for Voice Searches

Voice search plays an important part in local SEO. Imagine a potential new customer asking their virtual assistant “where’s the best pizza place near me?” while walking within two minutes of your new Italian restaurant.

If your site is optimized well for local SEO, you have an invaluable opportunity to bring someone new into your venue, impress them, and convert them into a repeat customer.

Here are a few tips for voice search optimization:

  • Use conversational keywords (“where’s the nearest towing company in Orange County?”).
  • Include clear but detailed answers to common questions in your content (e.g. in an FAQ).
  • Design pages for easy use on mobile devices (critical for good local SEO).

Start Reaching Local Customers with Our Orange County SEO Agency Now

Our Orange County SEO agency is ready to help you boost your visibility and reach more local customers with a bespoke SEO strategy.

To find out exactly what we can do for you, get in touch today!

 

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What 2024 SEO Trends Do You Need to Know About?

What 2024 SEO Trends Do You Need to Know About?

A new year brings new changes to the world of SEO. And staying up to date with the latest shifts, whatever they are, is crucial to maintain or improve your SEO performance.

To help you do that, our Orange County SEO agency will look at 5 of the top SEO trends for 2024 below.

Mobile-Friendly Websites are Critical

According to Pew, more than 83% of people use their mobile devices to access the internet in the U.S., and this is the only way 15% of Americans can go online.

Consumers’ increasing reliance on smartphones and tablets for browsing the web means that optimizing websites for mobile devices has never been more important. Creating responsive sites is vital to ensure that they’re properly formatted and usable on any screen, so a mobile-first approach will continue to be a priority in 2024.

Optimizing Websites for Voice Search

Voice search has grown and grown in recent years with the rise of virtual assistants and smart speakers. And that looks set to continue in 2024, as voice search optimization remains an important element of SEO.

Using long-tail keywords that are more natural and conversational is vital to match the way people speak when performing voice searches (such as “Chinese restaurants near me”). Creating an FAQ section on your site is a simple and effective way to cater to voice queries.

Video Content Will Stay Prevalent

Videos commonly appear in search results, covering everything from tutorials to news reports. Businesses will keep using video content to boost SEO rankings in 2024, which is a great way to build brand awareness and engage potential customers.

Companies can use videos to showcase their new products in a dynamic way, show how their services work, and generate wider interest.

The Persistent Power of Analytics

Businesses can learn a lot from analyzing the wealth of data generated through digital marketing, and analytics will remain a valuable aspect of SEO in 2024.

Google Analytics, for example, offers a comprehensive insight into website performance, visibility, and more. You can use this data to learn more about your site and what changes you need to make to improve your SEO performance.

Personalization of Search Results

In 2024, personalization looks likely to become more commonplace as AI helps search engines improve the relevance of results.

Personalization is key for delivering the most relevant search results based on a user’s online activity. That reduces the amount of irrelevant content, products, and services presented to users, and offers a more satisfying experience overall.

Want to Improve Your SEO Performance?

If you want to take your SEO ranking higher in 2024 and beyond, working with a professional team of SEO experts is the simplest, most effective solution.

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you improve your rankings and reach the right customers. Contact us today to get started!

 

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Mobile SEO Tips: How to Help Your Website Rank Better

Mobile SEO Tips: How to Help Your Website Rank Better

While online, consumers all over the world spend more than half of their time browsing websites on a mobile device. But users may not be able to find your website in the first place if it’s not optimized for mobile. And that can have a serious impact on your rankings.

What can you do about that? Our Orange County SEO agency shares a few ideas to inspire you below.

Responsive Design is a Must

Mobile devices generate more than 60% of organic search engine traffic, so customers should be able to visit your site and enjoy a user-friendly experience on any device. Otherwise, you risk losing them: one survey found that 60% of consumers abandon transactions because of a poor user experience.

That’s why using responsive web design is a must for every mobile SEO strategy. Images, text, and other key page elements will be scaled to the appropriate dimensions for the user’s screen.

As Google gives preference to mobile-friendly sites that provide a positive user experience, responsive web design can help boost your SEO ranking.

Maximize Page Load Times

Page speed is critical. If your pages take longer than three seconds to load, you risk losing visitors and their business. Google also considers page speed a major aspect of quality websites and a positive user experience. If your pages take too long to load on mobile devices, it’s time to fix that.

You can increase page speed by:

  • Compressing images
  • Reducing redirects
  • Caching pages
  • Decreasing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code

These are just a few ideas to help you get started. Keep making improvements until you get load times down to three seconds or less.

Target Local Customers

“Near me” searches have increased dramatically in the past decade, as smartphones and smart speakers allow consumers to find local providers with minimal effort.

More than 75% of people visit a brick-and-mortar location within 24 hours of running a local search on their mobile device, and almost 30% of those searches lead to a purchase.

Optimizing your site for local searches can increase your visibility on mobile. Create content with a local focus, set up a Google Business Profile, and enable customers to review your services. All this can make your site easier to find for local searches.

Create Mobile-Friendly Content

All content on your site should be easy to read and view on a mobile device. It also needs to keep visitors engaged enough to stay on your site and explore.

Try these tips:

  • Keep paragraphs concise to help visitors skim text
  • Embrace white space for easy readability
  • Use brief, punchy headlines
  • Break up text with videos and images (compressed, of course!)

Mobile-friendly content is essential for a great user experience, so optimize yours to boost your ranking.

Need a little help to take your rankings higher? Leave it to our Orange County SEO agency!

We’ll create a bespoke SEO strategy to increase your visibility and deliver a stronger user experience. Get in touch now to learn more!

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Why We Do Link Building The Hard Way

link buildingLink building is an essential aspect of search marketing, but it can be a daunting area for businesses unfamiliar with the process.

Once upon a time, companies looking for short-term gains would pay for links as and when they could. However, Google’s regulations and penalties are tougher today, and so the risks of lazily buying links outweigh the potential benefits.

While simply paying a website to host a link to yours seems like a time-saver, any company looking to make a lasting, fair impact in the online marketplace must practice manual link-building instead of paying for placements. Here are the reasons why.

Donning Your White Hat

You may have heard of white-hat and black-hat strategies. The former are those SEO tactics that aim to bring real value to users, engaging your audience and boosting traffic through fair means. The latter, on the other hand, are focused more on gaining higher rankings through underhand methods.

Using black-hat tactics can see you penalized, which may affect your reputation. You will also need to invest time and effort to correct your mistakes, costing you resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

Building Ethical Links

You can create ethical links through the following techniques:

  • Publish regular posts with internal links (as often as you can, with high-value content)
  • Reciprocal linking (provided these are relevant and not excessive)
  • Writing guest posts for blogs and sites relevant to your industry (these must be high-value and not feature excessive links)
  • Create testimonials for manufacturers of products or service-providers you use

These are just a few ideas, but they can all play a big part in driving traffic to your website. If you can create valuable content, such as in your own blog or guest posts, you’ll build your brand’s visibility and credibility.

On the other hand, creating badly-written content which serves as thinly-veiled link generators for your site can have a negative impact on your brand in the long-term.

Take the time to build informative, entertaining content with natural links, and you will gradually create a stronger online presence.

One Link can be Stronger than the Other

Getting a link from a website with no authority and no relevance to your business or niche is not a terrific way to build visibility. All links are not alike.

The trick is to nurture relationships with websites that are relevant to your brand and are viewed as a trusted domain. Getting links from high-authority sites is an endorsement of your own site, whereas those from questionable domains can raise eyebrows.

Seek out websites covering topics related to your business or industry, prioritizing the biggest influencers, and reach out. If you can start placing guest posts at popular domains, you can drive real traffic your way over time.

Branching Out

Other options for manual link-building include:

  • infographics that people will want to share
  • lists
  • case studies
  • white papers
  • reports on your own studies

At Nett Solutions, our expert Orange County digital marketing team can help you build links that really matter. Give us a call to learn more!

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Eight Things To Do Today To Get All Your Locations Noticed In Search

Local-SEO-Tips---Whitepaper

As a local Search Engine Marketing Company, we deal with a variety of companies headquartered in Orange County, but have 20, 50 or even hundreds of locations nationwide. It is not small feat to get the local SEO in order for all of these locations.

Distinguishing each of your shops from corporate headquarters or a parent company website can be important or even vital, depending on what services are offered at each location.

We put together these eight vital steps, whether you’re in one, ten or twenty locations. A full sixty percent of the searches made – in your town too – result in a transaction. The market for local and mobile search is, frankly, too big to ignore and an ever-increasing local and mobile search audience is there. The question is can they find you?

Click here to download the Free Whitepaper

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QUICK TIP #5 – Social Media

Social media is a great way to keep your customers engaged.  It can also be a great way for you to build up a following and up-sell your products or services. Customers today want to feel a connection with the companies they do business with.  Social media creates this connected community.
 

QUICK TIPS:

  • Don’t Just Talk About YOU!

Your customers or audience will swiftly tune you out if you just talk just about yourself. Post interesting content from other relevant sources.  Make sure your ideal customers will find this content valuable.

  • Be Patient

Social media marketing results do not happen overnight.  It takes persistent and consistent effort to produce successful results.

 

More on Social Media:

Start creating relationships with the customers you do business with.  Try using this weekly social media To-Do List from Hubspot.com to help you get started.

http://blog.hubspot.com/weekly-social-media-list-under-100-words-sr

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