Proven SEO Strategies for Local, Small Businesses Across the U.S.

How To Improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on Your Website

A lot of local, small businesses across the U.S. have been hiring us for SEO improvements and updates. No matter where you are located, our proven strategy for SEO success can land your website in the top of the local search results for target keywords.

On the other hand, there are some who tell us during a consultation that SEO is not important to them. Whether you know it or not, SEO is extremely important to any small, local business. Learning SEO best strategies can be done with research online if you have the time to learn and implement these strategies on your own. If you are too busy, you can hire our team of knowledgeable SEO experts to review your current website and implement a proven SEO strategy that will not only drive your website to the top of the local search engine for your targeted keywords, but will also drive more leads through your website.

This is the strategy that we implement on all of our SEO projects. We are sharing this with you because we are all about helping you do these things on your own if that’s what’s best for your small business. However, if you would benefit from hiring someone else to handle your website SEO, then reach out to us today and we will be glad to schedule a free consultation.

Identify Keywords to Track and Target

It’s hard to rank high in Google when you have large, chain companies competing against you. As a small, local business, it’s important to narrow down your target and focus on long-tail keywords that you can get ahead of your competitors, locally. Instead of focusing on broad terms such as “pressure washing,” you want to focus on a specific product or service, like “paver sealing company near me.” By identifying these keywords in the first steps of your SEO strategy, you will be able to build extremely focused content that will help you rank higher, faster in the search engine.

Set Up Google My Business, Google Analytics and Search Console

A Google Business Listing has become one of the most important aspects of SEO. It’s not enough to just know you have a listing out there, you need to own it, manage it and post regularly on it. Promote it for good reviews and take advantage of all of its features. Google will reward you, and users will be more interested in your company.

It’s also important to take advantage of Google’s other free products such as Analytics and Search Console to track important Website & SEO information, such as the number of daily users, the user journey, best performing web pages, and more.

Create Backlinks

Claiming and creating listings, or profiles, on relative websites can be huge for letting Google know you’re legit. If you add a link to your website to 15 listings, you will be ahead of most of the competition in backlinks. You can also use your keyword list to create focused content on each of these websites, which will also help you improve your ranking. Backlinks with relative content are a big deciding factor in Google’s algorithm, the more the better, always.

This includes social media websites as well. You don’t necessarily want to have inactive social media accounts, so don’t go crazy, but if you are able to be active or hire someone to manage your social media accounts, then make sure they are up to date with a link back to your website, and create posts that link to your website regularly. If you hire Broadstreet for monthly social media support, we will do this for you.

Create Keyword Rich Content on the Website

Using your keyword list, you can create content on the website that is extremely focused and will help you rank. If you create a page on your website with 3 sentences that uses the keyword (product or service) one time, it will not benefit your website much at all (depending on the competition level). However, if you have that keyword in mind, such as “Roofing Contractor in NC” you can then add it to the page title, the subheader, the main content in different paragraphs, the meta tag info, the url, and more. All of this will help Google see what this page is about, and rank it higher than others for this search term.

Creating Keyword rich content is all about following Google’s best practices. As your local Google Partner, we are always up to date on Google’s best practices.

Increase the Number of Internal Links

While creating your keyword rich content, be sure to include links to other pages on your website where you can. If you talk about roof repair on your services page, include a link to your roof repair page. If you say “Contact Us” then link it to your contact page. 3-5 of these on each page, and you’ll be set.

Include Contact Info On All Pages

To rank high locally, including an address on every page of your website will help Google know who you are local to. We like to do this by putting your address or service areas in the footer. It also can help you rank higher on Google maps and Google Business Listings if you include an embedded map on the contact page showing your address or service areas.

Including contact information on all pages is a huge factor for increasing your leads as well. Having a simple phone number at the top of the website, a call now button on mobile and a contact form at the bottom of every page can have a great impact on your number of leads through the website.

Set Up Keyword Position Tracking

We use SemRush to track all of our SEO information for our clients. The main tool we appreciate in our SEO strategy is the position tracking tool. We use this to track all of the keywords we created in our Keyword List (step 1 of our proven SEO Strategy). We then are able to see how much we improve in ranking (or decline in ranking) for our targeted keywords, in our targeted location (zip code, county, state, etc). We can do an in-depth competitor analysis to see how we rank among the competition, and create ideas for new content to continuously improve our rankings.

Create a Monthly Plan To Post

To rank at the top of the search engine consistently, Google needs to know you are relevant. An old, stale website with content that hasn’t been updated in 5 years will not rank as high as a website with updated content.

It’s important to set up a monthly plan in order to maintain a regular schedule of new content for your website. It’s also important to include creating new content and new posts on social media and your Google Business Listing.

Get In Touch With Broadstreet Consulting

This SEO strategy has proven to bring multiple local businesses up to the number 1 position locally for their targeted keywords over and over again. We will continue to implement these strategies on each of our clients, and encourage you to invest the time or money to get this implemented on your website.

Having a website shouldn’t be about just having people learning more about your business, it should be about growing your business and increasing leads. If it’s doing this, it’s worth the investment.

If you don’t have time to do your own SEO and digital marketing, contact us today for a free consultation. We will look over your website together and discuss your goals before creating a proposal for your website’s SEO enhancements.