Hey, Houston, TX, 2015 is finally here! As with anything else, there are new trends in both on-site and off-site local SEO for the new year. This post covers the on-site trends, the things you do directly to your website to be better found by the search engines for your local customers.
Trend 1: Make your website mobile friendly.
This may be the year, according to some experts, that local searches on mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – overtakes local searches on desktops and laptops. Perhaps, but whatever the outcome, local mobile search is important and growing. Your website must be mobile friendly, meaning responsive – looking good on any device displaying your website.
Not sure if your site is mobile friendly? No problem, Google has this handy tool to check it out.
If your site is not optimized for mobile, fill out the contact form to your right. We can fix that. All of our sites look great on any mobile device.
Image from Pixabay
Trend 2: Go old school.
This may read like a list old SEO basics, but a lot of websites harm their marketing efforts on any number of these.
- Spamming keywords. You may load up a page with lots of searchable terms, but it annoys Google (and probably Bing). Don’t do it. Google in particular is good at dropping your website right to the bottom of the search list. Is that long list of keywords really help inform your customers? No. Delete the spam stuff and put in content your readers will find relevant and useful.
- No home page content. For some reason, a home page with a slider and few images in trendy. Both your readers and the search engines need to know what your site is about. Add some content useful to both the bots and the readers. Both will reward you for it.
- Little content on important pages. Your content is supposed to solve a reader’s questions. It’s how you gain trust and authority. Both the readers and bots like good information, the relevant and useful kind. Give it to them. They will both thank you.
- Bad title tags. A good title tag summarizes the page. It’s not a place to load up on keywords. You only have 500 px, about 55 characters, of text to work with here. Anything more gets lopped off. Put the primary keyword at the beginning and add either your business name or city and state.
Trend 3: Really get local.
This list is easy to do. Make sure let both the bots and readers know you are in their city. The more local, the better. Include your city and state if it fits in
- The title tag.
- The h1 headings.
- In the content.
- In alt tags in images.
- In the URL (if you changing current URL to do this, make sure you also put put in a 301 redirect on the old page. That redirects the bots and people to the new page.
If you need help with improving your websites local SEO, fill out the contact form on the right or call us. We’d would enjoy talking to you.