Boosting Local Organic Traffic: All you need to know

If you operate solely in one specific area, then local SEO is your best friend. If you optimise correctly for your local area, then you can boost organic traffic that is relevant to your business, rather than casting a huge net that might attract unsuitable leads. 

Creating a reliable, sustainable flow of organic traffic is something that many B2B businesses struggle with. However, if you’ve effectively optimised your website for the areas that you want to target, then you can easily boost your company profile and start bringing in more leads from search engines. 

ere are some quick tips on improving your local SEO and boosting traffic to your site: 

Google My Business

A Google My Business account is vital if you want your website to gain any traction in the local area. This is the tool that shows different businesses in Maps, and also is responsible for the info box that you see in the SERPs, with details like opening hours, phone number, photos, and more. For your Google My Business listing to be active, you need to verify your address, so the search engine knows that you are actually located where you claim to be. 

This doesn’t just help boost your rankings for the area you’re located in, but actually increases visibility by adding a Maps listing with your business details. The Maps section is often the first thing that searchers see, so getting a high rank is important. If you have several different locations, then you can set these up within your Google My Business listing, but you should refrain from creating fake listings to target different areas - this can result in the listing being removed altogether if it is suspected to be fraudulent! 

Optimise your content and metadata 

This is a big one - if you’re trying to target a specific location, make sure to reference it  in both your copy and your metadata, like titles and descriptions. This helps optimise for specific location-based searches, and ensures that your business is more closely aligned with the area in terms of the search engines.  

You can write content about the local area, and how you fit into it, as well as add your location to  page titles, h1s and meta descriptions. Searchers that are looking for a company in their area will be much more likely to click if they see a familiar location, so make sure it’s included early in the text! 

Location pages 

One way to target multiple locations is to include ‘location pages’ - these are separate pages on your website that each target a different area. It’s tempting to use the same content and just change the area, but this is not a good idea. You can run into issues with duplicate content, which could result in your rankings suffering. Your best bet is to create original, unique content for each page, and tailor it to the area that you are targeting. To avoid cluttering your site, it’s best to focus on just a few areas - hundreds of location pages is overkill, and your copy might be suffering by the end of it. 

Directories

Local directories are also a great way to situate your business in the area. Not only does it  help build backlinks, which are an essential part of your SEO strategy, but it also connects your business to the areas you work in. This kind of link works to boost your local organic traffic, rather than function as  an ordinary backlinking strategy. Directory links tend to have less authority than ‘earned’ links, and will offer little SEO value if used in this way. But if you are using online directories that tie you to the local area, this is a great way to get a location-based boost. 

Guest Blogging 

A great strategy for boosting your online presence is to seek out guest blogging opportunities - it can help grow your audience, raise your profile, and build high quality backlinks to your site. When used as part of a local SEO strategy, you can identify guest blogging opportunities with local publications, send out press releases, and even collaborate with other businesses to raise your profile. Links from trustworthy, relevant local sources will help your company attract more leads in the local area. 

Optimising your website for the local area can seem like a tricky task, but if you follow the above tips, you can start to raise your business profile in the areas that you want to target. However, a local strategy will only get you so far. In addition to the above tips, it’s important to make sure that your website is optimised for your chosen industry, keywords, and ideal customers so it is found on Google. Not sure on how to get your site found? We’ve created an ultimate guide to SEO to get you started - download it free below!