28 Mar Local SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making (Part Three)
Local SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making (Part Three)
NOT TRACKING SITE TRAFFIC AND FLOW WITH ANALYTICS
Contrary to the article title, you probably know you’re not tracking your website. The real question here is; why not? Google Analytics is free and very detailed. Head over to the site and set up your account. Install the tracking code on your site and voila, you are now tracking your site. Learning how to read the data can be a bit more complex though; this Google analytics guide should help.
NOT INCLUDING CONTACT INFORMATION ON ALL PAGES
Many websites only have contact information on the contact page. If you want people to call or message you, make it easy for them. Including your local address and phone number on each page of your site will help with lead generation and provide better local rankings. Remember to have your NAP data appear the same as it does in local directories and citations.
FAILING TO OPTIMIZE NAVIGATION
People expect your website to be easily navigated and search engines reward it. If you do not have a clear hierarchy on your website; how will Google know what is most important on your site? If users can’t find out what services you offer, they are going to leave and look elsewhere. This is going to increase your bounce rate, lower conversions, and let Google know your site is not the best result when people quickly return to the search results and visit another site.
DITCHING TRADITION LINK BUILDING
Inbound links were found to be the fourth most important factor in local rankings in a 2013 study published on Moz. Inbound links will help you drive your domain authority higher and will help you rank for keyword variations as well. Several link building methods exist but here are 17 creative link building strategies to get you started.
NOT BEING MOBILE READY
Holy cow! This is 2014 and there is no reason to not be mobile ready. Over 50 percent of searches are done from mobile devices. If your site is not compatible, you can kiss traffic and rankings goodbye. If you are on a tight budget, you can switch to a CMS like WordPress and make use of a cheap mobile-ready template.
NEGLECTING SOCIAL MEDIA
This one is probably the most heavily debated topics in SEO at the moment. Some SEOs say social media does not have a major influence on SEO and others believe it is indispensable. I believe that getting social shares (please share this post by the way!) is beneficial on many levels. Aside from direct impact of social shares, you are also able to get your content in front of more people who may want to link to it. Even if you do not have social profiles for your business, you need to include social sharing buttons.
NOT USING VIDEOS FOR LOCAL SEO
There are several search terms that trigger videos above fold. Simply upload your video to YouTube and include your keyword in the title. Build some links to the video page and voila, express ticket to the front page of Google. You may also get traffic from YouTube directly since it is the second largest search engine. Here is an example of videos appearing for localized terms that did not trigger local results. If local results were triggered, you would see videos in the first-third or fifth result or lower.