Local search engine optimization SEO.

It refers to the relevance between the search query and Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business). If a business matches accurately what a person is looking for, Google will prioritize it and rank it higher.

This is a reason why your Business Profile needs to be complete, accurate, and detailed. This helps Google match your profile with relevant search queries easily and quickly. Incomplete Business Profiles are hard to match with search queries due to missing details, and this negatively impacts local search ranking.

Distance or proximity refers to the distance of the business from the location term used in the search query. Businesses that are close to the location mentioned in the search query will get preference and will rank higher as a potential customer is more likely to visit nearby businesses.

Google determines location based on the location of the searcher or location term used in the search query.

An accurate and complete business address in your profile will help you rank for the right and appropriate search queries and you will have a better chance of customers visiting your business.

Prominence refers to the popularity of a business. Prominent businesses and places get more visibility in local searches too. Google determines business popularity based on multiple factors such as links, directories, reviews, number of positive reviews, and search engine ranking of your business website.

All these factors help Google understand how well-known your business is. Prominent local sites will have higher visibility in local search results.

We already discussed the importance of the name, address, and phone number of your business. It should be clearly mentioned on your website.

Yes, NAP presence on your website is an on-page SEO factor and Google considers NAP for local search queries.

This means Google might show your website in search results to local searchers based on NAP only even if you don’t have any specific content targeting that keyword. However, your NAP should be consistent and match the NAP on Google My Business and everywhere else.

It doesn’t just need to be consistent, but it must be written correctly. Here is how to write NAP in the right format to make it understandable and readable for search engine crawlers and people:

Where to write NAP on your website?

You should write the name, address, and phone number of your business on all these places on your website:

• Header and footer
• Contact us page
• About us page
• Service area page.

Here is an example:

The business name, address, and phone number are clearly mentioned in the footer in the correct format. It isn’t just visible to the website visitors, but search engine crawlers can see it too on all the web pages throughout the website.

It is an HTML tag that summarizes the content and purpose of a webpage. It tells search engines what a page is about, and this helps in indexing and ranking.

The meta description is visible on the search results page, so it is read by your target audience too. Here is an example of a meta description:

Google might not show your version of the meta description rather they pull any piece of content on your webpage and use it as a meta description. This is done to make your website relevant to the search query.

But this doesn’t mean you should stop writing meta descriptions. Even if you have pages without meta descriptions, they will still rank for relevant search terms. But this puts a lot of burden on Google because it now has to scan the entire webpage to match it with search queries.

When you have a meta description, it makes things easy for search engine spiders. It gets easier for crawlers to better understand your page, its content, and its relevance. The decision to use your meta description in search results still resides with Google.

You must do your job of writing compelling meta descriptions and let Google do its job in showing the best piece of content (meta data or otherwise) to its users.

Follow these guidelines to write the best meta descriptions to improve local SEO:

• Your meta description should be between 150-160 characters. There is limited space for meta description so keep it short and nice
• Use your primary local keyword in the meta description
• It should be relevant and consistent with the web page content
• Make it descriptive and a summary of your web page
• Add a powerful CTA in the meta description to persuade readers to click and visit your website
• Avoid keyword stuffing
• If you can’t decide what to write, skip it.

Image alt text is the tag for alternative text to describe an image. It is the text that is used instead of an image when the image fails to load. This text is also read by screen readers and other devices where images can’t be seen or in case of accessibility issues.

The purpose of the alternate text is twofold:

1. To help search engines understand what an image is about so it can be ranked appropriately in image search
2. To help users understand an image when the image fails to load or isn’t viewable.

Image alt text plays a critical role in local SEO where a lot of people search for product images. You must use appropriate alt tags for all the images on your website.

Here is what John Mueller from Google said about alt texts:

Here is how alt text is used instead of an image:

And here is how screen readers use alt tags:

You can see that image alt texts are associated with UX. Follow these guidelines to write the best image alternative texts for local SEO:

• Write descriptive alt texts that explain the image content
• Explain the picture and its content
• Be concise and accurate
• Add local keyword naturally if it fits
• Avoid stuffing keywords
• You can skip alt text for abstract images that are hard to explain.

Internal linking is a crucial on-page optimization technique. It connects pages on your website with each other.

Internal links help with all the following:

• Help users navigate and move around your website easily
• Distribute link juice among different pages on your website
• Help search engine crawlers understand your website and crawl it completely
• Avoid orphan web pages
• Create website structure and hierarchy
• Target relevant keywords and improve search engine ranking.

Here is an example of how internal links help improve the authority of new web pages:

You can link high authority pages on your website to new pages to pass link juice. This is a great way to improve the crawling and ranking of new content.

This helps avoid creating orphan pages that are never seen by search engines and are, therefore, never crawled, indexed, and ranked:

Here is how you should be creating internal links to improve on-page optimization for your local business website:

• Create meaningful internal links to relevant pages on your website
• Use relevant anchor texts. This is where you can use local keywords to boost rankings
• Link new web pages from old and authority web pages with lots of links
• Avoid linking to too many web pages from a single page
• Make sure all the pages on your website are linked accurately and there are no orphan pages.

Here is a quick overview of the best practices for on-page local SEO:

• Write high quality content and promote it religiously
• Target the right local keywords with a focus on long-tail keywords
• Add NAP throughout your website, especially the header and footer
• Keep NAP consistent
• Use HTML tags for your benefit
• Keep URL structure simple and user-friendly
• Don’t hesitate to use lots of internal links for local SEO.