Poor visibility means poor traffic, if no people visit your website, little to no sales will be made. New updates released by Google such as the Possum update makes it difficult for new businesses to rank high locally. This update allows businesses out of your local city territory to compete for local rankings as long as they offer services in that city.

Google's Possum update can even filter out business listings from local search results. Some local businesses may not appear on local search results until they comply with the set standards. Here are top 10 proven SEO strategies to rank high on the local search engines.

1: Update Your Business Information Regularly

Conduct a search yourself, type your keyword + location. Find the position where your business's website has ranked. If all information regarding your business is aggregated on one point, then even your clients get the same outcome when they search your keywords.

Some businesses may find discrepancies in their information on different local business directories, which will also result in discrepancies in your related search engine results. These discrepancies will not only confuse those searching online, but will result in decreased rankings, as Search Engines like Google require you to maintain accurate business information, especially when it comes to local businesses.

Google's recent modification of the ''local 7-pack" to ''local 3-pack" made things even harder. This means a few top positions are available on local search results pages. Multiple citations, niche-specific links, optimizing Google My Business profile and harnessing reviews from customers are some of the features needed to appear on the top positions.

2: Create and Claim Your Local Business Listings

On your Google My Business profile, you can create a business listing. This enables your customers to see your location, contacts, reviews and other vital information about your business. Over time, business listings may be further degraded by other sites, or people that create duplicate listings without your knowledge. Such duplicates could contain wrong information or incomplete information about your business, once again decreasing your search engine rankings.

By claiming the listings, you will be able to edit the information and correct any mistakes you identify. Every listing made should have a link that redirects people to your business website. Business information must be consistent on all your listings. You can use tools like Moz Local, whitespark Local Citation Finder, Buzzstream and Ahrefs to identify all unofficial business listings. Once you find them, you can quickly edit these listings to accurately reflect your business information. One of the most important tools to ranking high on local listings is Google's 'Google My Business'. Google enables you to edit information, add business links, contacts and address as well as other important information about your business.

Even though many people prefer creating listings on Google alone, it is also important to also create listings on Bing and Yahoo Local. Citations are important because they redirect visitors back to your website and add to your traffic. This automatically increases website rankings on search engines and builds quality back-links that are powerful to ranking highly.

3: Create a Buzz about Your Business

You already have a business location and a business website. People can find you if they want to. What is remaining is for you to give them a reason to find you. Create a business blog where you can be posting authoritative content about your business. You will enhance customer engagement and bring new ones through content shares.

Search engines value comprehensive, informative, and insightful content that will inform and convince clients. When search engines are indexing millions of websites, only content that is relevant to the audience wins top positions. Write niche specific content that also matches your locality and the people of that area. Content is your brand's online voice, it should showcase the relevance of your brand.

4: Research and Use the Best Keywords

Using proper keywords is the foundation of enhancing website visibility. Use proper keywords that target your local customer base. There are several keyword analysis tools such as keyword planner and SEMrush that can help you narrow down to the most specific and appropriate keywords.

Using plenty of keywords in an attempt to cover a broad spectrum of searches will not help. Search engines frown upon keyword stuffing and it can negatively affect your website ranking.

Google has come up with algorithms such as Hummingbird and Rank Brain to identify content with specific searched keywords. This means only content with quality keywords, written organically to provide value to those who view it will be surfaced on top of search engines.

5: Ensure Your Website is Accessible with All Devices

The ultimate aim of every digital marketer is to reach a wider market. You wouldn't be able to do that if your website is only reachable through desktops and computers.

Make sure your website is responsive and mobile friendly for use on all devices. A lot of people access websites using their portable internet enabled devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. This means if your website cannot be accessed using such devices, you will lose a lot of traffic. Without plenty of traffic, your rankings on search engines will continue to decrease to your competitors who invest time in developing SEO strategies and implement effective SEO tactics.

Remember, Google considers the website's mobile performance to determine rankings. If your website is not mobile friendly, it will lose ranking to those that are mobile friendly.

6: Gather Genuine Reviews on Your Site

Spamming reviews will cost your rankings on search engines. Engage yourself with customers and let them write reviews for your products or business. Customers can write reviews on Yelp and on your Google My Business profile.

Asking for reviews may appear a tedious and daunting task at first but the more positive reviews you acquire, the higher Google ranks your website. You don't have to ask for reviews yourself, you can use software tools like Bird Eye or Reviews that Matter.

These software tools ask your customers to take one minute of their time to leave a review. After some time, you will have plenty of reviews, and this can increase your search engines rankings and increase your trust factor with other potential clients. You can then make use of Bright Local to monitor your reviews and respond to negative reviews, or any other review monitoring services you may like.

7: Make Use of Social Media Platforms

Social media can boost your B2C marketing campaigns if well-utilized. Facebook alone has 2 billion active users on a daily basis. Create a business page and gather as many followers as you can. On your page, post relevant content that has links redirecting clients back to your website.

The more people click on those links, the more traffic you get. Your website rankings are is going to increase as well as your online visibility. As people share content on social media, you increase your brand awareness, which means new customers for your business.

On Facebook one tip is to create a business page, not a personal account. A personal account can only accommodate up to 5000 fans while a business page accepts a limitless number of people. The more followers you have, the more people will visit your website, and this increased traffic will again increase your search rankings.

8: Get Backlinks

Link building is a reliable way of generating traffic because whenever people click on these links, they are redirected back to your website. Link building displays authority and relevancy. Reach out to people who publish articles on authority sites or news sites. Remember not all links are relevant in generating traffic so you need to seek relevant links that will add value to your traffic.

Focus on getting do-follow links because they are ranked higher by Google as compared to No-follow links. Do-follow links indicate that your website is trusted by the business that has featured your link. Perform a local outreach if you can. You can use Google Webmaster Tools or Open SiteExplorer to see the sites that have featured your page links on their web pages.

9: Create a Mobile App

Using a mobile app is more convenient than using a website. Even though an app may not directly improve your website's SEO value, it will increase your brand awareness. Your authoritativeness will increase and people will trust you more compared to businesses without an app.

As you market your mobile app, people will visit your website to know more about your company, and the services provide. The two can benefit traffic generation, as each other since people can visit your site and know that you have an app or use your app and know you have a website.

10: Be Consistent on Your SEO Campaigns

SEO rules keep evolving and so should your SEO strategies and SEO tactics. Staying informed on the latest SEO guidelines will keep you ahead of most of the local competition. Track your keywords and observe their performance. Updates like Google Pigeon negatively impacted many reluctant webmasters who thought they had made it.

Such updates continue to be released not just by Google but also by other search engines. Update your content, learn the new search engine updates and do excellent keyword analysis to gain and hold top search rankings. The more you update your website with quality content, the more you increase your rankings on search engines, and provide value to those who view it.

Conclusion

Increasing local search rankings is not hard if you keep focusing on the ever-changing search engine rules and creating quality content that will keep you relevant and authoritative. First page search engine ranking won't happen overnight, however with persistence and dedication to constantly improving your SEO skills you will continue to improve your local search rankings. As you are focusing on evolving your SEO Strategies, don't forget to increase the quality of your services because that is what your consumers are looking for once they find you as a result of your first page search engine rankings!

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Here prpostin is helping the business to grow rapidly by targeting their customers through effective SEO approach. Probability for getting the desired result is at its optimum level through the right placement of your company website. Ultimately, you would have higher traffic to your site from targeted customers.