30 Aug Best Practices for On-Site SEO to Dominate Local Search Results

Many businesses and business owners are frantically searching for ways to boost traffic through their ventures, especially within their locale. On-site SEO ensures the quality and consistency of your website’s content and is a significant factor in improving search rankings and boosting traffic to your local business.

A study shows that 76% of people that use their smartphone to search for service end up visiting that business within a day. With that said, here are three best practices for on-site SEO that will help you dominate local search results.

Put Out High-Quality Content

Nothing is as essential to a page’s ranking as its content. Content is crucial to the judgment of the user and search engine. Content should be engaging, fact-based, and informative. They should be free from grammatical errors and contain specific keywords and phrases related to the query you are seeking to answer. To achieve better traffic, the marketing manager should buy backlinks.

One of the most critical factors of high-quality content is the title and title tags. Unlike the famous saying, users judge the book by its cover, and your cover, in this case, is your page title.

The title must also contain keywords to rank on the search engine. However, do not overdo it. Limit the title to 60 characters, and do not overuse the keyword as it may offset the search engine algorithm.

Adjust Content to Match Search Querier’s Intent

Knowledge about keywords and their role in SEOs is not enough to improve your search ranking. Instead, to achieve incredible local results, you must apply your knowledge of keywords to match the search query’s intent.

Google and other search engines understand the user’s intent and needs, so content that ranks highly on SERPs must pass their litmus test to match the user’s intent. For instance, a user search on ‘how to make guacamole’ would trigger effects related to recipes, not guacamole vendors. The results will be entirely different if the user searches for ‘where to buy guacamole.’

When a user searches, they begin on one stage of their journey. A user’s journey is the process it takes for them to purchase a product. The three stages are awareness, consideration, and decision. Your content should represent a stage in this journey.

User’s in the awareness stage will attract results like blog posts and videos. Those in the consideration stage will receive suggested content on guides and case studies. And user’s in the decision stage will look for contact pages, pricing pages, and product demos.

Asides from a user’s journey, there is search intent. A user’s search intent indicates the reason for their search, and the search engine suggests results based on that indication. When writing or amending content, it is essential to put yourself in the user’s shoes and find out the purpose behind the question. To do this, researching user search tendencies and the keywords they use is vital.

There are four types of search intent – informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional. Informational search intent covers specific information that the user is sourcing for. An example is a user search on ‘what day is it?’

Commercial covers specific products with no immediate intent to purchase, while transactional covers the same but to buy the good or service. Navigational search intent pertains to specific websites and apps.

Optimize Images

Images are also a critical part of user experience and content quality. A study done by Moz shows that 27.9% of search queries bring up images on Google.

Spending considerable time selecting the right images can help boost your product, posts, and overall site. It’s also essential to choose a suitable format for your images. For instance, JPEGs are smaller and better in quality, while PNG files, though larger, are much better for images with text.

Finally, adding alt texts lets search engines and their algorithms understand your images. An alt text or alternative text describes the nature of the image you upload. The text should be concise and contain the primary keyword. As a conclusion, to effectively implement these SEO strategies and more, consider partnering with an SEO Agency.