Welcome back, we've talked a lot about the local business search landscape, and discussed why it's important to set up a Google business page. But what can you do within your own site to improve local visibility? In this module we'll discuss how to optimize your website's content from a local search standpoint. Optimizing your website for local search is a little different than optimizing your website for general organic search, though there are a few similarities. We'll discuss why it's important to include location data on your pages. How to adjust your strategy if you have multiple locations or multiple services, and some other best practices for on-site local SEO. Because your website caters to a local audience, your website should have keywords and information related to the location you service. This includes information your audience may expect to find as well as information that helps reinforce the consistency of your business location. This would include general directions, information about the area, the city name, zip code and more. When optimizing a website for local SEO, the name, address, and phone number of the business are extremely important. You will often see this abbreviated as NAP. It's a good idea, to have your full address and phone number, somewhere on your site. We recommend putting this somewhere where it is easily repeated on each page. Good areas to include this in would be the header or the footer of a website as templates generally keep this content the same throughout the site. It's also helpful to include your city and state name throughout important on-page areas such as title tags, heading tags such as your h1, content, alt text for images and your URL. The URL isn't as important to add local information to but every little bit can help push your site up higher in rankings. Note that this doesn't need to be every URL for every page. For example, you may want to consider a how to find us page where you provide directions to your business and include your city and state in the URL. Perhaps your business has multiple locations. You may want an information page for each location with directions to your place of business. Also, consider how having your city name or service area in your domain name can help your business rank. This adds a keyword to your domain name and creates a natural keyword when people link back to your site. For example, if you are an attorney in San Francisco the domain, sanfranciscoattorney.com would help your site rank better for local queries. It's a good idea to provide local information like a page which provides directions to users. Many businesses include this in the form of a contact page with a map. If you choose to include a map, it is also important to include text on the page. Within this content, you may want to mention local information such as freeways the customer might take to arrive at your location, or other special landmarks. You can also include information like a certain neighborhood you might be located in, or other relevant information that will help search engines associate your business with a particular geographic area. These keywords will help search engines understand where your business is located which can help your site rank for relevant local queries. If you have more than one location It's a good idea to have a page dedicated to each location. This way depending on what the user's search query is Google can identify that your location and services may meet their needs. If you have a lot of locations, one idea is to have a general "our locations" page. Which features each location you have that then link to a more detailed page of directions and local information. If you have one location that services multiple areas, you can include the additional areas or cities you service in your contact page. But only mention them, there is no need to go into great detail. One idea is providing directions from some of the main cities directly outside of your target area. I would also suggest choosing a small selection, probably 3 to 5, of your closest cities. And including that list near your address in the footer of your site. For example, you might want to say, located in Davis California, also servicing Dixon, Woodland, Sacramento, and surrounding areas. If you offer multiple services, It's a good idea to devote a page to each of the services that you offer. This allows you to better optimize for core set of keywords related to your business and location. For example, if you are a Spa in Davis you might want to create a page for massages, a page for manicures, a page for facials and other related services. Your title tag can then include your service and location. This will help you rank for a variety of queries a user might be using such as massages in Davis or manicures in Davis. It's also a good idea to have a blog on your site, blogging on a consistent schedule keeps your content updated on a regular basis which helps boost freshness related signals in Google's algorithm. If your location is mentioned in your blog post, this can help boost your authority on a topic within your local area. An idea to naturally incorporate local keywords would be to encourage readers to comment. Maybe even share their hometown in these comments. Blogs are also great for assisting with the development and growth of your social media presence. You can share your content on popular social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Depending on the type of business you or your client has, you can also incorporate social platforms, like Instagram, or Periscope. Since social media can indirectly lead to better rankings. Getting a local audience engaged with you on social channels and sharing your content can only help. Not all of your posts need to relate to your location, but it is helpful if you can find a way to include location related information without sounding spammy. Don't forget that posting great local content and resources can help you earn links from other local sites and businesses. Brainstorm ways you can create great resources that everyone finds useful and will link to. Depending on your business type there are a lot of ideas. If you are a spa, for example, a resource featuring the best parks and secluded spots in your city to relax or meditate in, would be a great resource. Search Engine Land published a post with great ideas for local blogs. You can read that at the link provided in your course materials. Another helpful element to consider is using structured data to gain rich snippets in search results. Rich snippets can improve the way your search engine result displays in organic listings. Rich Snippets often provide additional information to the user such as review stars, this can catch the users eye and result in higher clicks through to your site. Review stars are common example of Rich Snippets. For example if I were to search for the Art of SEO one of the results I get is from O'Reilly. And includes review stars based on the reviews users have given this book on their website. Another example is found in real estate. If I were to perform a search for real estate, I would see a list of upcoming open houses in my area. This is accomplished through information imbedded into the html of a page. A website schema.org is a collection of vocabulary and structured data. If you are working with a small business owner, these sites are usually built on platforms like WordPress which contain plugins that make this process easy. For more detailed explanation of implementing structured data, I recommend visiting Moz's SEO Guide on structured data at the link provided. You can also visit schema.org to look at available formats. You should now have an understanding of the similarities and differences between local SEO and traditional SEO. You should also know how to optimize a website for a local search. Now let's move on to what you can do offsite to increase your presence for local searches.
