It’s exciting to share with you about what SEO is and what it isn’t. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I’ve been doing SEO for over 10+ years and I’ve worked exclusively with small business owners who’ve owned single locations as well as multi-locations.
When it comes to nationwide multi-location, the strategy is always going to be the same but at a much higher scale and that’s the fun part. Right now, I get to share that excitement with you and I look forward to letting you know what’s working in local SEO in 2024 and what you should be looking out for.
What’s working for Local SEO:
Images
Images on your Google Business Profile. They tell the biggest story to your customers. After reviews, they want to see what you look like, what your customers look like. They want to look at you and say yeah, I can trust that guy. your prospects want to see themselves in your pictures and you have them sold. Constantly upload and share. Images speak a thousand words and this is literally true about your brand and who you are online.
Reviews
Reviews are the number one factor when it comes to conversions and local SEO period. if you want to succeed in 2024 you better start focusing on your reviews because public trust is at an all-time low, reviews reinforce the trust and value of a business. Businesses need to understand that even if they are paying for advertising or marketing when the consumer is at their consideration and decision stages, reviews are the most important factor that they look at almost each and every time.
As a business owner, you should realize that you’re spending more than you should on advertising and marketing because of a bad reputation. A bad reputation equals more ad spend and a higher cost of acquisition.
Review Responses
Review responses are a tie for second place between images. The reason why this is important is that people who do read reviews, which is 92% of the people who read reviews also read the responses of business owners. Consumers today are highly intelligent and can make a decision in a shorter amount of time as long as all the right components are there for consideration. Review responses help motivate people to trust you.
Accurate business information
This goes without saying, just make sure business listings are consistent across multiple listings. The secret to really outshining the local competition is getting hyper-local links from establishments such as the real chambers of commerce, donating to landmark sites in exchange for online recognition, and other hyper-local activities, like sport groups, auto clubs, etc. As a business owner, you need to give back to the local community if that’s who you serve. This not only builds trust and credibility but also gets solidifies your rankings in hyper-competitive local industries.
Website Optimization
It really pays to have an authoritative website. In any industry, it pays off to create a well thought out and designed website architecture, and remain consistent throughout the life of that site. It’s a breathing entity in digital space.
On-page SEO
This comes standard with good SEO. It’s not just making sure that the header tags are accurate and reflect the page structure of a webpage but it’s critical that it provides value. Google is smart enough to decipher your locality in 2024. It knows you’re going to try to game their system, but don’t make the mistake of even slightly over-optimizing, it’s the art of being in SEO, is to because to understand that the value provided in the content should not be ruined with keywords you’re trying to game for, RankBrain is smarter than that.
Google posting over time can help with rankings, but at the end of the day, they establish brand awareness and reinforce the values of your business in
Who am I?
I’m Mahyar Goodarzi, co-founder of Digitalift and a Search Engine Optimization specialist of over 10+ years and counting. I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses from e-commerce to lead gen to and my favorite local businesses.
I’ve worked with some great companies over the years and I have a lot of great accomplishments that I love to look back at. I’ve had the pleasure of working in-house and for agencies. I helped build a successful agency from the ground up and increased their review by 78% in 4 years. I’m here to share with you the honest truth of what’s really working for long-term SEO success with measurable results.
Right now, my biggest takeaway for you is this – there’s nothing more that’s going to matter to your business than reviews.