Local SEO, what is it?
Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – is a set of techniques which allow a site to position itself on particular keywords. It’s absolutely vital if you want to be visible on search engines.
Local referencing, then, can be considered as a branch of SEO, but on a local level.
It enables you to position your company on searches that are specific to your geographical location. It’s also beneficial because it’s relatively easy to rank highly and to do so fairly quickly.
In order to do this, Google offers every company – as long as it has a physical address – the possibility to create its own Google My Business page.
Once your page has been created and approved, your company will show up directly in the search engine results pages (SERPs) like this:
And like this on Google Maps:
If you don’t yet have a Google My Business profile, we’ve put a link at the bottom of this article which will take you to the sign-up page*.
Google will judge the quality of your pages according to three factors:
Relevance
Relevance establishes the extent to which a business page corresponds to the search made by the user.
Distance
As the name suggests, distance corresponds to the distance between the establishments that appear in the results and the place indicated in the search.
Importance
This corresponds to an establishment’s level of popularity. Some places have more importance in the real world than on the internet, and the search results take this into account in order to determine the local classification.
Tips for a successful optimisation
To give yourself the best chance, it’s important to:
- Link your Google My Business page to your website by providing the link to your website
- Add your opening hours and update them when necessary
- Be as precise as possible when selecting the main category of your establishment and, if you can, add secondary categories (those which are most relevant for your business)
- Add a phone number so people can contact you
- Ask your clients (or partners) to leave reviews for your business
- Reply to the reviews you receive, whether good or bad!
- Add photos regularly
Tips !
1. To track the traffic which comes from Google My Business, insert a tracked link here:
This will enable you to:
- 2. Photos
These are the dimensions and recommendations for Google:
- Format: JPG or PNG
- Size: between 10 KB and 5 MB
- Minimum resolution: 720 x 720 pixels
- Quality: the photo must be in focus and well lit. It should not have been modified using Photoshop, nor by way of excessive use of filters. The image must represent reality.
- 3. No over-optimisation in your title!
It may be tempting to optimise your title by adding the name of the city or a keyword relating to your activity, but don’t do it – Google forbid it.
If your company is located in Geneva, it’s useless to put [Company name + Geneva] as the company title. Not only is it useless, because Google has already localised you as a company in Geneva, but it’s also strictly prohibited and can lead to your page being removed.
- 4. Share updates!
For several months now, Google My Business has been offering the possibility to post updates on your profile.
To add an article, it’s simple: click on the “posts” tab on your profile:
You can add an article, or a link to a specific page with a dedicated Call to Action. The posts will appear at the bottom of your profile, like this:
It’s still difficult to comment on their importance for SEO, but we recommend that you incorporate them for two reasons:
- It proves to users that your company is living and active, with new content posted regularly
- It constitutes an extra source of traffic for the link in question
Be aware that, for the moment at least, these posts are ephemeral and disappear after 7 days.
Over to you!
Local SEO forms an important part of the search engine optimisation of your website.
Optimising your profile on Google My Business is completely free and can bring excellent results for your company on a local level, so there’s no reason not to do it!
So it’s over to you – you have all the cards needed to play!
Links and resources
