Every SEO company should prioritize local SEO in 2024. San Jose startups often overdo SEO, which might hurt their marketing ROI. Start with a smaller lead generation focus.
Everyone wants to be on Google’s first page, yet most fail in the first year. Try ranking at the top on Google in San Jose. You don’t need New York clients if you’re in San Jose, and it’s simpler to get noticed locally than 3,000 miles away.
Local SEO is not as straightforward as SEO. It’s not simply keywords, as you’ll discover. This post has several ways to get started, so use them individually and then add the tools at the bottom to complete your local SEO profile.
You may only need to update your NAP or offer a prize to increase consumer reviews. In other cases, you must change your website’s copy and brand. Local SEO takes time, so use these tactics as needed.
Complete Google My Business Profile
Every company I work with that needs local SEO should use Google My Business first. Free, easy to set up, and utilize. It lets you contribute visual micro-content to Google search results and run free website “ads.”
Start posting after finishing your profile. I recommend posting as often as on other social media platforms. You may design a mini-sales funnel for free using this tool. Best of all, you do it on your phone.
The Insights tab is useful. You can see how many people call, click, and comment on your postings with Google My Business in one click. Create audience-specific content using these metrics.
Google My Business lets you operate Adwords and Analytics from its interface. Google My Business is a terrific way to rank locally and build your brand in Google’s mobile-first push.
Keep Your NAP Consistent
Constant Contact found that 49% of businesses never change their name, address, and phone number online. Easy to accomplish, yet often ignored.
Start with your industry’s primary databases and social media. It’s easy to make mistakes, so check Google’s first page for company directories for relevant keywords.
Local SEO on Google depends on reviews. Google promotes trusted and popular websites and businesses. Customer reviews are as valuable as a high SERP for local businesses.
Online reviews boost your Google ranking and community credibility. Businesses like restaurants, nightclubs, and doctors need 5 stars on Google and Yelp to attract customers.
I advise my clients to value reviews. To entice satisfied customers to post detailed reviews, free food, beverages, and kickbacks are often worth it. I chose a firm based primarily on reviews. The honest review someone I didn’t know left meant more to me than the website.
Tips for Local Content Marketing
Geo-focused content is needed for local SEO. Entering location keywords and hoping for the best is not enough. You should be in local business listings and have other local groups link to you, even if they’re not in your field. Backlinks are backlinks in local SEO; therefore, get them whenever possible.
SEO content for San Jose should include geo-focused keywords and other local areas and opportunities.
Imagine you have an email marketing platform for local fitness trainers. Write a case study about a pleased local client, including their location and contact information. Linking to them and having them link to you on their website creates a link circle that boosts local SEO.
To attract other organizations to link to you, be involved in the community and attend events that boost your company’s visibility. Fundraisers, golf trips, and philanthropic dinners help you build community recognition. Create event blogs on your website with the location, time, and contact information for others to join.
The event website should promote your business and link to your website. Trouble finding an event to attend? Find the right San Jose event on Eventbrite.com.
This next part will help you manage keywords.
Add geo-targeting keywords
Simply adding your business’s city can make you a local SEO superstar. This section provides everything you need to add location-based SEO phrases.
Search for industry-high-volume phrases. Compare volume to term + location. As an example, compare Productivity Tool San Jose to Productivity Tool.
Place your locations in your website’s header and footer. This displays it on all pages. Your NAP on your contact page is wonderful, but try adding it to your About page, blog posts, service pages, etc. Contact pages are fantastic places to embed Google Maps.
After designing your website for local SEO, write content with keywords and the location you want to showcase.
Create Local SEO Content
A website is worthless without strong content; if you want to rank locally, talk about local themes. Hubspot says: “When they published 11+ blog posts per month, they generated almost twice as many leads as companies that published 6–10 blog posts per month.”
Study Silicon Valley and connect to local events, businesses, clubs, charities, etc. Call them and tell them you are linked. If you link to them, they should link back. You can write on their blog if they don’t understand or can’t.
Startups should prioritize backlinks. Silicon Valley is extremely tech-filled, so finding organizations to partner with and work on marketing projects should be easy.
Local SEO material can be created by tying up local news with your organization. Participating in the San Jose community helps your organization develop original blogs, direct mail, and lead magnet content.
Your community’s name in article titles is another fantastic suggestion.
Create Localized Pages for Each Product, Service, and Location
Every website page allows you to show Google where you want it on SERPs. Your competitors may have everything on one page, which looks beautiful but is less powerful than having separate pages for each service.
It does two things:
Supports your ranking keywords.
It increases what your website can rank for.
After creating service pages for everything you do, add them to the top menu. Use drop-down boxes to link to each page.
Links and blogs should be on each page to support each keyword.
Use Local Business Schemas
You can use a local business schema on your website to tell search engines what kind of business you have. It’s easy to boost local SEO, and many of your competitors are doing it, so it may be necessary to stay competitive.
This requires coding knowledge, but Schema App can help. It puts everything up and lets you monitor your schema with analytics for $30 monthly for a single domain.
Web Venture‘s has a guide to coding your local company’s schema.
Test it with Google’s Structured Testing Tool after that to check accuracy.
SEO Title and Meta Description Optimization
Making your meta description point in the right direction is another easy local SEO hack. Watch the example below to improve local SEO. Keep your description within 155 characters and include your location and major keyword. I attempted to include the keyword twice and the location once.
An SEO title should include your location and state in 50–60 characters. You may want to narrow your location if your city is extremely inhabited. People search Gold Coast, Downtown, and Bridgeport in Chicago to find what they need.
An example of a successful local SEO title tag and meta description:
If your Local SEO is lacking, try a Yoast SEO Premium plugin. They explain everything you need to rank your website according to your choices.
Local Guest Blogs
Guest blogging for Forbes, Startup, and Entreprenuer.com is a terrific method to get noticed, but it’s difficult for beginners. Try local San Jose blogs first.
These blogs usually let you offer your skills but not sell your business. Since most tech blog readers are not buyers, this is better than writing a blog/ad. They want to learn. Sharing knowledge makes you an expert in their eyes.
Imagine being a permanent guest speaker at an industry event.
Contact these San Francisco Bay Area blogs to contribute: San Jose Blog, Siliconbeat.com, Mercury News, and SFGate.com.
Essential Local SEO Tools
The article’s tips will improve your local SEO approach, but they take time to master. For those who have already applied these methods and want more data, consider these tools to boost your local SEO and simplify your approach.
Screaming Frog
Want to know how Google scans your page before it does? You can with Screaming Frog. It’s one of the most advanced SEO spiders and website crawlers and will help you improve your ranking and onsite SEO. It supports PC, Mac, and Linux and offers a free trial. Click above to see if it’s right for your business.
SEM Rush
SEM Rush helps you learn practically everything about your and their websites to outperform your competitors. It’s an all-in-one solution that lets you customize your website for optimal outcomes.
Any professional SEO practitioner needs this for its clean user interface and abundance of data.
Beyond Keywords
To create the correct local SEO image, go beyond your brand’s keywords. Sometimes, a website redesign isn’t enough to succeed. The customer’s perception of your organization may be stale. You may require total branding, then.
If your organization fails to stand out among the San Jose and Bay Area competition, you should consider a bigger shift than ranking locally. Give your brand a new style, logo, and life by making every page stand out with more than a persuasive copy.
This brand auditor can help you decide if you need a brand consultant for a large shift like this.
