Dominating Search In Local Marketplace -15 SEO Tips

How To Dominate The Local Search Marketplace

I’ve been teaching about SEO for quite some time now. And I’ve seen a lot of different methods come and go. Dominating Search In Local Marketplace

…..SEO: 15 Tips For Dominating Search In Local Marketplace ……

However, when you don’t understand the fundamentals, along with Google’s many rules, any strategy that you try to fire at Google could end up backfiring. That’s why it’s critical to get a lay of the land, so to speak.

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Before you can dominate, you need to ensure that you address some of the important aspects that will either take trust away from your listing, or extend it towards it. Trust you ask? Yes.

At the end of the day, if Google doesn’t trust you, you can forget about ranking for a term like Miami SEO, which is highly competitive, by the way. Or any other competitive term for that matter.

Long Tail Versus Short-Tail Keywords

But before I dive into all of that, let’s discuss how the length of a keyword affects the buyer’s intentions. In fact, the longer the keyword, the more buyer intention you’ll find pre-baked into a specific search.

While searching for a local SEO firm might go against the rule to a certain extent, there is far less buyer intention in short-tail keywords like Chicago SEO or Los Angeles SEO.

Short-tail keywords are harder to rank for. They’re often parts of informational searches as opposed to transnational ones.

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Informational searches like “blue flowers” or “black cars” or “green houses” are purely informational. If I search Miami Weather, or Miami Beaches, I’m often looking for information.

I want to either know the weather or about the beaches in that city.

…..SEO: 15 Tips For Dominating Search In Local Marketplace ……

However, there are cases where this doesn’t hold true. If I search for “Used Cars Seattle,” although it’s a short-tail keyword, there is buyer intention there.

Likely, the person searching for this is somewhere at the beginning of the buyer’s cycle. However, when the keyword gets longer, they’re further and further along and far more ready to buy.

If that same person searched for “Used Late-Model BMWs For Sale In Seattle” they are way further along in the buying cycle. They have a particular intention in mind.

Similar to that aspect, if someone were to search for “Best SEO Companies In Miami With The Best Reviews” a person is likely further along in the buying cycle than just searching for “Miami SEO.” Can you see the difference here?

Leveraging Trust To  Dominating Search In Local Marketplace

Once you’ve understood about the buyer’s intention, it’s important to look at a number of factors, both on-page and off-page.

When we talk about on-page optimization, we’re simply referring to anything we can do to optimize the site that occurs on the specific website or page itself.

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Off-page optimization is everything to do with optimization that occurs away from the page, such as link building and content marketing.

While Google has plenty of rules, in total, there are 17 very important factors that will allow you to dominate your local search results.

Whether you’re optimizing for an SEO company in Miami or you’re a lawyer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, these elements are going to impact your ability to appear relevantly on Google’s SERPs. And, at the end of the day, that’s the goal, isn’t it?

[On-Site Optimization Factors]

1. Article length

There are loads of elements that make good content into great content. One of those factors is the length of the article.

Why does length matter? Because, shorter articles are thin and easy to read, and don’t often provide much value.

Plus, they can’t be engaged with as much. Think about how long it takes to read a 700-word article versus a 3,000-word article.

Studies have indicated that longer articles (i.e. over 2,000 words) rank higher on Google’s SERPs and they’re shared more often.

That’s usually because these types of content pieces (as long as they don’t ramble on for the sake of rambling) over deliver a massive value punch and absolutely compel readers to share them.

2. Primary image

The primary image is crucial to the overall piece of content. Regardless of what the content is about, ensure that you name the image something relevant to the primary keyword.

So, if you’re doing an SEO article for the city of Miami or Los Angeles or somewhere else for that matter, name the image accordingly.

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You don’t have to use an exact match for the name; it can be an LSI variation of it.

The other thing to consider with the image is the ALT tag. Although Google is working on neural networks that can easily identify images and learn, it’s far from being able to quickly decipher what any image is about.

Although it’s close out on the horizon, it can’t necessarily do that today. So you have to help it along with an alternative tag that helps to identify what the image is about.

Also, make sure that you have rights to use it and that it’s a high-quality image, but that it’s also losslessly compressed for size.

3. Focused keyword density 

One critical factor at play here is the article’s keyword. However, not just the exact-match keyword.

If you try to stuff the keyword or the content sounds unnatural by any means, you can kiss your chances of ranking goodbye.

It has to be natural and organic, while also incorporating something called LSI keywords.

This has to be done strategically, but also not look forced. And, it’s important that the content be obviously about a particular keyword and not to veer off topic too much.

A good rule of thumb is to include your keyword in the first and last 100 words of the article, and also to ensure that it appears enough times throughout the piece.

4. Article title …..SEO: 15 Tips For Dominating Search In Local Marketplace

The article title is important for your ability to rank. Have the keyword appear in the title, and try to make it appear closer to the beginning of the title if at all possible.

However, these days, thanks to Google’s Hummingbird engine, that’s not as important since it can determine, semantically, how relevant the title is, with acute effectiveness, to the particular search in question.

The title is important because it’s not just about the keyword itself, but also about the click-through rate.

If a title is more appealing than another listing that appears above yours, but yours gets clicked on more, Google might deem your listing to have more relevancy, thus moving it up over time.

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Here are some points your titles should follow when possible:

• Uses lists when possible: Top 10 SEO Companies In Miami 
• Poses questions: Think You Have What It Takes To Make Money Online? 
• Leverages the concept of controversy: This Is The Biggest Reason Why Most People Fail To Achieve Their Goals
• Incorporates lessons: 12 Invaluable Lessons Learned Trying To Build My Own Smartphone App
• Compares Ideas Or Times: U.S. Versus Europe: Comparing Quality Of Life In The Regions Top Cities

5. Mobile friendliness

Google is placing a fair amount of weight on the mobile friendliness of a page. Be sure to make your website responsive in its design.

While this is confusing for most, lots of themes have mobile friendliness pre-baked into their designs. This is an important element to address.

Consider this. Mobile searches are far outpacing desktop searches. The entire world is moving to mobile and Google is now placing hefty weight on a mobile-first indexing system.

If your page isn’t mobile friendly, you’re sincerely doing yourself a disservice. Handle that immediately if you intend to rank for difficult keywords.

6. Underlying quality

If you’re looking for any chance to rank, the quality has to be good. No. Scratch that. I mean, really, really good. Don’t try to do the least amount of work for the greatest return.

It just won’t work. Instead, think about doing the most amount of work for the least initial return. Really spend time with the underlying quality of a piece because that’s where all the ranking signals come from.

This isn’t just about spell check; this is also about grammar. And just how much value the article delivers. Value breeds trust.

And trust is at the heart of relevancy. So, if you want to dominate your local search results, then add tons and tons of value. And do it all the time. Consistently.

7. Easily sharable …..SEO: 15 Tips For Dominating Search In Local Marketplace ……

Content that’s shared more often often, appears higher in organic search results. That’s the plain and simple fact.

Do your part to allow easy sharing of your content by installing the proper plugin or coding the page so that it’s easy to do. People want to share content that they find enticing, but you have to facilitate the ease of doing that.

If it’s the difference between copying and pasting a URL or not, it might make a world of difference to your overall rankings by getting it shared more often.

There are plenty of plugins out there that you can use with WordPress to allow easy sharing of your content. Do your due diligence and find the best one to use.

8. URL structure

The URL structure is critical to your ability to rank. Be sure to use canonical URLs. In WordPress, this simply involves activating the permalinks > post-name option.

That way, your title is translated into an appealing keyword that’s easy to read and relates back to the URL of the page.

The best part? When you focus on optimizing your content’s title, the URL is optimized passively. It simply hyphenates the title into something that’s easily digestible and visible on search engines like Google.

9. Linking structure

Most people engage in something called link-sculpting, becoming overtly concerned about do-follow and no-follow links.

When you link out to sources for information, don’t sculpt those links. Keep it natural. Don’t worry about leaking link juice, it won’t make a massive amount of difference in the long run.

What’s more important is to link to external and relevant sources. However, the internal linking structure counts too.

Be sure to link around to relevant pieces of information on the site as well as directly through the piece. People like to follow the links around and this is simply a good practice to follow.

10. Sources cited

Be sure to cite any sources in your content, especially if you make claims about studies or factual data. People often want to trace the source or origin of your data, so citing sources is simply a good habit to have.

Plus, it helps to empower the overall relational linking that occurs on the internet, allowing Google to track and trace back important sources of information.

Studies are also a great way to add value to an article. When you place statistics that can relevantly backup a claim or an argument, you’re actually helping to solidify whatever claims you’re making.

11. User experience and security

Two things that are very important to Google today are the user’s overall experience and the security of the site.

Make sure your site is secured with an SSL and ensure that you don’t bog the page down with ads above the fold or make a poor user experience in some other fashion.

Google’s Panda algorithm adjustment and the HTTPS adjustment both play a part here. Don’t ignore these items.

These are easily addressable on your own. Take the time to research and implement the proper methods to adhere to both of these requirements if you want to rank for difficult keywords.

12. Page speed

How quickly (or slowly) does your page load. Do you have a CDN installed such as Amazon’s AWS? Do you have caching installed like W3 Total Cache?

How much front-loading have you done on your code that might bog it down? While all of these are technical factors that might seem confusing at best, they’re important to say the least.

Not only is it important that your page loads quickly in your country, but also around the world. That’s why CDNs are critical.

You must have a CDN that’s serving up your documents quickly. This also relates to the origins of Google’s AMP, which, by the way, you should also be paying homage to.

[Off-Site Optimization Factors]

13. Authority of backlinks

How much authority do the backlinks have? Are you going out there and creating backlink on authority sites or are you just buying up links from some service? Remember, it’s all about quality here. Not quantity.

As soon as Google changes the rules, those that focused on quality, even if they seem like a legitimate link-buying service, those people will suffer.

Built content on sites like Quora, LinkeIn, Medium, YouTube, Scribd, SlideShare, and others. But, also, when you write great content, you naturally invite linking.

This is much easier to do than try to scramble and create hundreds of links on your own. Instead, do great work and people will naturally link to you.

14. External content quality metric

What’s the quality of the external content?

If you’re doing content marketing, which you should absolutely be, how much time and effort are you putting in the content away from your site or page?

Make sure that it’s equally as good as your primary anchor content, without duplicating it.

Reach unique insights and ensure that you vary your linking back to your anchor pages. Don’t always link back with the exact-match keyword.

That will look too much like link-sculpting. Make it look organic and generic at times and be sure to use LSI keywords when you do it.

15. Social media activity

What’s the social sharing history of your content? How many social links are coming in? What’s the authority of the people sharing your content?

Are people heavily engaging in it? While this isn’t an enormous weight in the algorithm, it does count for something so be sure to keep it in your mind.

Further, ensure that you share the content yourself after you’ve created it. And, be sure it’s shared on whatever company page you’ve created. But don’t try to spam it everywhere. That won’t help you at all.

16. Trusted reviews…..SEO: 15 Tips For Dominating Search In Local Marketplace ……

Is your business trusted? Are there poor reviews on sites like Yelp and Angie’s List? Are people complaining about it on the internet?

Or, are there trusted, authentic, reviews? This is an important point. Google has been known to discount links within context.

For example, if there’s a very bad review of your business from an authority site, and there’s a link in there, it will not help you out.

Google understands context. And it will begin to understand it better and faster as machine learning progresses.

You have to set a solid foundation now, especially considering the fact that neural networks are going to get better and better at spotting people who are trying to game the system.

Remember, an artificially-intelligent system will be much smarter than a human, thus far more able to understand who should be more trusted, and thus, more relevant.

17. IP diversification and velocity of inbound links

Google wants to see global authority. Not just links coming back from the same sites. When there’s global IP diversity, it knows that the underlying content is good.

Thus, it’s more relevant. So, focus on that content and you’ll solicit a diverse set of linking. Google is also concerned about link velocity.

How fast or slow are the links coming in? Are they speeding up from week to week or slowing down? This is all tracked and recorded.

There’s a lot of information to digest here. Again, as long as the underlying content is good, you can easily rank for terms like Miami SEO without breaking your back.

You’ll naturally solicit great links and they’ll keep coming in, speeding up, even, as time goes on. But not if you have poor content.