1) Don’t Abuse Directories
Directories have always been the go-to link building strategy for what concerns local SEO. In fact, the NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) was the main resource for Google in order to verify the company’s information. In 2019, directories are more likely to not have the same impact they had in the past, given the fact that the NAP verification for what concerns both the crawling and the indexing part, from Google’s perspective, is done by combining multiple sources mentions (social bookmarks, structured data, citations) with structured data and GMB (GoogleMyBusiness).
2) Use Structured Data
Schema.org is an open source markup community where you can find markups coded in both JSON-LD and Microdata. These markups are a numerical and coding version of the content which is on your page. In order to optimise your local SEO campaign, especially if your business has a lot of local reviews, it’s important to utilise both the Organization one (with a specific geotag attribute) and the SameAs attribute. The first markup simply puts your NAP verification into the code, improving the crawling and indexing time, since it will basically instantly tell Googlebot what your business’ details are. Structured data doesn’t necessarily require a high-level coding knowledge since there are multiple tools and apps available for CMS like WordPress and Shopify. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t install a schema markup on your site in 2019, especially if you’re trying to optimise your portal for a certain area!
3) Keyword Research
When it comes to content, keyword research is the bread and butter of the whole matter. In fact, picking a particular keyword could be a major win or a significant loss. Of course, when it comes to local SEO, the research should be done within the area of choice. For example: if we’re trying to optimise a restaurant menu who only serves tacos in Leeds, our keyword research should always include the localised term (in this case, Leeds) because there is no point in optimising a page or a website for a worldwide keyword with insanely big search volumes.4) Pure Citation
Link building has evolved and has become incredibly important for what concerns local SEO. As said above, everything (as long as it’s related to your site’s topic) is helpful, ranging from social bookmarks to directories and guest blogs. This is really important from a mobile point of view since it has recently been proven that citations are heavily helping the mobile traffic on a website. Many Android app development companies discovered how the mobile version of Googlebot acknowledges citations flow for localised listings, and are working on Python coded tools which automatically place your site/product on a lot of portals, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on.
