When it comes to local SEO, it’s more important than ever that you optimize your on-site and off-site SEO strategies for clients and customers searching for your local business.
Local competition is hotter than ever, and if you’re not on top of your rankings, you can bet your competitors are.
Here are five local SEO tactics you can use to help your business rank higher for local search terms.
Title and description tags are HTML elements that you can customize to reflect the content of your web pages. The text of your title and description tags is displayed in search results.
Think of this text as a “mini-ad” that you need to craft carefully.
Your title and description are your one shot at grabbing a searcher’s attention and getting them to click on your links to go to your website – so put careful thought into what you put in these areas on your web pages.
If your title and description tags are missing or Google thinks they’re not good enough, Google often makes something up or “rewrites” them.
Both should describe the contents of the page and should include keywords so they stand out on the search result pages.
The generally acceptable length for title tags is approximately 50 to 60 characters, and description tags can be approximately 160 to 200 characters. Take advantage of this space and use it wisely.
If you’re not sure how your title and meta description tags will look or how many characters you can get away with, try using an emulator like Yoast’s SEO Plugin for WordPress, where you can see what your title and description will look like on both a mobile device and desktop:
Writing titles and descriptions is considered an art in the SEO world.
In a sea of competing search results, if this text isn’t unique, compelling and descriptive, your click-through rate will suffer (which can hurt your rankings).
Additionally, extra words or characters could cut off your text with ellipses (…).
Now, this may not be a true tragedy. Some SEOs even encourage you to go over the recommended max character count. But I think this looks unprofessional, especially when it appears in the middle of a sentence, cutting off your thoughts mid-sentence.
The lesson? This space is precious, and every character counts. Here are some tips:
- Never waste space on page names or words that don’t provide helpful information to the searcher about what your web page – or business – is about.
- If you want to stand out to local customers, include the name of the city your business is in and/or the area your business serves (e.g., “Serving Iowa City and Cedar Rapids”).
- Focus on using one targeted keyword and carefully place that keyword as close to the beginning of the tag as possible.
Remember, if your business shows up in the search results, you have one shot at getting that person to click on your link.
Don’t blow it by wasting characters that