For effective local Tulsa SEO, for instance – you also need some new weapons in your arsenal. These include (but are certainly not limited to) optimizing for mobile searches, NAP consistency, reviews, and Google My Business.
1. The Essential Old Tactics that Still Work
“SEO [search engine optimization] is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines.” (Moz,”The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” )
“Organic (non-paid) search engine results” – that’s what you want. Done right, local organic SEO can have a snowball effect, gaining size and momentum as it rolls along, providing an outstanding ROI in terms of time, effort and, money invested. And some of the old tools still work as well as they ever did.
Keyword Selection and Density – Keywords, as you probably know, are the words or phrases people type into (most often) Google’s search box to find what they’re looking for. Conventional wisdom holds that you need to find and deploy keywords with a high local search volume and low competition.
But local SEO demands keywords that are much more focused and aimed at a specific area, town, or neighborhood. For Local Tulsa SEO, for example, you would look at keywords like “best affordable Tulsa orthodontist,” rather than the more generic “best affordable dentist.”
And, now, you need to be careful about how many times you use a keyword in a piece of content, ensuring you keep it at or slightly below the optimal threshold level. Keyword density is a percentage arrived at by dividing the number of times a keyword appears in the content by the total word count. A good keyword density is now somewhere around 1.5%.
Target Audience Rules – Simply put, audience trumps almost everything else. And that means that as necessary as keyword research is and as valuable as quality tools are, you still need to keep in mind what your target audience of real people would use when doing a local business search. What would actual people type into the search box to find a local solution to their problem?
Crucial Meta Data – These things still matter, so you need to make sure you get them right. Titles, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and alt text for images are still crucial for effective SEO. The space is limited and precious, so it takes a special kind of talent for brevity in copywriting.
2. The New Elements You Must Emphasize for Local Tulsa SEO Success
First, here are a few startling statistics:
• “96% of PC owners conduct local searches”
• “46% of all Google searches are local”
• “64% of local customers use search engines and directories as their main way to find local business”
• “50% of local mobile searches look for business information”
• “A whopping 78% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase” (BrightLocal, “About Local SEO – All you need to know to get started & improve your SEO“)
Mobile – Did you notice those last two items about the importance of mobile searches? An absolutely key element, then, for local Tulsa SEO is having a mobile-friendly website. Otherwise, your search-engine rankings will suffer markedly when potential customers conduct local mobile searches.
NAP – NAP is just an acronym formed form name, address, and phone number. It’s nothing fancy really, but it’s more important than ever because of Google’s huge emphasis on serving up results for location-based searches, often utilizing online directories to give those results.
This information, obviously, must appear in your website. But it must be text, not an image, because Google can’t “read” images. You can also incorporate it into the code with certain platforms.
To further boost local rankings, you need to get your NAP information on as many other sites and directories with a local emphasis as possible. These would include (among many other possibilities) LinkedIn, Manta, Yelp, YellowPages, Merchant Circle, and Citysearch.com.
Reviews – Online reviews from customers are important: 84% of people say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And when people conduct local online searches, your reviews come up in the results. To begin, the best to places to focus your efforts on getting reviews are your business’s Facebook page and your Google My Business page where reviews can influence rankings.
Google My Business – This is another directory, actually, but it’s a huge one. It’s also free, and it offer outstanding ranking and exposure opportunities if optimized correctly with a well crafted description and other judiciously deployed information about your business. Another plus is the fairly rigorous verification process to ensure that yours is a legitimate business and that you are in fact the owner.
3. The Last Critical Element for Busy Business Owners
This is simply to call on the knowledge and expertise of a local Tulsa SEO specialists. Even if you do have the knowledge, you’re likely too busy with your business to bother with SEO stuff on your site. Your job is running your business.
But you do need to be careful. Anyone can hang out a shingle and set up in business as an SEO/SEM expert. So you have to look at the results. At Redhead Labs, we have successfully developed and optimized over 1,200+ ecommerce stores/sites. To discover more about how we can help your online business presence with SEO in Tulsa, give us a call at 918-932-2882 or contact us online.