Let’s face it, you need your growing small business to be on the internet, but you might not need to digitally market yourself on the international market. The good news is that Google and other powerful search engines have evolved to make it easier than ever for businesses like yours to rank highly in local searches.

Though there’s a methodology to attaining and maintaining a strong local ranking, without your site getting buried under international powerhouse sites and paid ranking ads. This is where Wandering Eye brings local SEO strategies into sharp focus.

Local SEO is a strategic process used to maximize a website’s visibility on local searches. It tends to be the preferred SEO strategy for small to modest-sized businesses that draw their customers from the surrounding communities or regions. When done correctly local SEO practices help small businesses rank well, without getting buried by larger international players.

Local SEO strategy focuses directly on boosting your brand’s search rankings when users are looking for one of your products and services that are “Near Me.” Google’s local SEO algorithm can help boost your brand exposure beyond the simple confines of your storefront or brick-and-mortar physical location.

It expands your visibility and reaches, without tossing you out into the international scene where the big sharks feed. Though local SEO strategies aren’t just for small business retailers. It can be a great benefit to a wide range of sectors, including the service industry.

Several things can be done to optimize your local SEO ranking. This includes attacking your search engine optimization efforts on multiple fronts such as:

Of course, focusing on improving your ranking via local SEO practices also means strategically positioning yourself against your competition. We turn an analytical eye on all your local competitors to find out what they do best, what’s helping them rank strongly, and use that data to position you to take advantage.

We also look at the things that are hampering their SEO and position your digital marketing schema to avoid them. All along streamlining the back end of your site’s local SEO outrank to give you a nuanced advantage.

One of the best ways to ensure your website ranks well on organic local searches is to set up your Google Business Profile in detail. This means optimizing all relevant information and presenting yourself in a light that Google considers favorable.

While this sounds easy to do on paper and is relatively easy to get started on your own, optimizing your Google Business Profile for the best local search rankings, takes a discerning Wandering Eye. We leave no stone unturned while filling out critical information while optimizing your Google Business Profile in extreme detail.

Google’s algorithm isn’t quite as self-aware as Skynet yet, but it’s getting close. It doesn’t just crawl your website pages ticking off boxes and assigning you brownie points for effort. It is looking for signs that you are an authentic authority in your industry with the dedication of the Terminator spotting Sarah Connor in a crowded shopping mall.

One essential way to convince Google’s algorithm that you are an authority worthy of high ranking is to have your pages backlinked and connected to citations. The backlinks need to be quality links and not just random links to any old source.

Ideally, you want quality links that come from high domain authority websites that are already trusted by users and Google’s unstoppable algorithm. This will go a long way to help bots crawl your pages, to index them with confidence. It also helps users see the destination website as a trustworthy source of information.

Citations are a little more amorphous as they come in many forms. This includes business directories, social networks, and much other information about local businesses. So, it does require a thorough approach to display your citations and trust badges in a way that makes it easy for search engine crawlers and algorithms to index them.

A lot of website optimization requires going over each page of your site with a fine-toothed comb to mind the technical components of local SEO. These are little things like optimizing site navigation for easy crawling, making sure backlinks connect to sites with strong domain authority, and the user experience is robust on every page.