Local businesses are eager to get in front of new customers and grow their customer base, but many of them don’t realize how small details in their local SEO are costing them thousands of dollars each month. Even worse, they often spend money on services or products that don’t deliver any benefit at all! In this article, we’re going to review the four biggest local SEO mistakes that are costing local businesses thousands of dollars every month and reveal what you can do instead to achieve better rankings and more leads.
1) Not Optimizing for Google My Business
According to Impressive Digital – Top E-Commerce SEO Agency, for many small businesses, Google My Business is their most important platform for attracting new customers. Yet, many businesses don’t take the time to optimize their profile properly. This can lead to a drop in search rankings and missed out on potential customers. There are certain keywords that you want to use when building your business’ profile that will differentiate it from competitors. Use these words throughout your profile, but also be sure not to overuse them so they become irrelevant.
Videos are a great way to show off what your business has to offer and give potential customers an idea of the atmosphere of your store or office space.
2) Not Optimizing Keywords
There are a few mistakes that online businesses make when it comes to Local SEO. One mistake that many business owners don’t realize they’re making is not optimizing their key words. Keywords are the words used in the text of your website, and they need to be focused on what your product or service is offering. If you aren’t including keywords in your content, then there’s no way for search engines to know what you offer and where to find you.
Another mistake many businesses make when it comes to local seo is neglecting citations. Citations are backlinks that point back to your website from third party sites like blogs, news sites, and industry-specific websites or directories.
3) Not Optimizing Website Content
A lot of people think that writing content for the homepage is all they need to do in order to rank well on Google. Unfortunately, this is not true at all. The homepage, or any page for that matter, should be optimized with keywords and other information about the business. This means using keywords in the H1 tag, H2 tags and throughout the text so Google knows what your business is all about.
Also important is making sure there are no duplicate pages on your site with similar content but different titles. Not only does this confuse Google by giving it multiple versions of a single page, but it also means you’re wasting valuable space by duplicating content when you can use that space for other content like calls to action or blog posts.
4) Not Optimizing for Mobile
Not optimizing for mobile is one of the most common mistakes that online businesses are making. In fact, a recent study found that 47% of all website visitors will use a mobile device to complete their purchase. And if you’re not optimizing your site for mobiles, you could be missing out on a lot of revenue.
But how can you tell if your site is optimized for mobiles? A responsive design Does your site adjust and reformat itself to fit whatever device it’s being viewed on? If not, then it’s time to make the switch. You’ll want to make sure that the layout has been updated with an eye towards visibility and readability.