Ways to Optimise Your Website for Local SEO: A Quick Guide for Northampton Business Owners

Do you want to attract more local customers to your Northampton business? Do you serve multiple locations across Northamptonshire? If you answer “Yes” to any of these questions, then you should optimise your website for local SEO. 

With 46% of searches having local intent, local search engine optimisation is essential to your success. It helps improve the online visibility of local businesses, particularly those with physical locations. By optimising your website for local search engines, you can better position your products or services to local customers who might be looking for them. This enables you to attract more web and foot traffic for your business, helping you generate more sales and bigger profits. 

Making Your Website More Local Search Engine Friendly

Besides claiming your Google My Business (GMB) listing, there are many ways to optimise your Northampton website for local search engines. Here are a few of them. 

1. List your site on other online directories

Having a GMB listing is crucial to your marketing strategy as it is the modern-day equivalent of being on the yellow pages. However, having a GMB page isn’t enough to get those local SEO juices flowing into your site. You have to maximise the amount of exposure it is receiving every day. 

This is why you should list your website on other online directories, such as: 

• Yelp
• FourSquare
• Bing Places
• Hot Frog
• Best of the Web

Besides these national and global directories, it is also a great idea to look for online business listings specific to Northamptonshire. This will help you send more local traffic to your site. 

2. Ensure that your NAP information is consistent

Ensure that your name and place (NAP) information is correct and consistent throughout your business listings. Google is more likely to trust you if your listings have the right information about your business. Otherwise, the search giant would think that your business is not legitimate and would stop displaying your GMB listing as a result. 

Also, keeping your NAP information accurate and consistent would ensure that your prospects would find you. This also gives your credibility a boost. 

3. Use Local keywords

To make the most of local SEO, you should add geotags to your focus keywords. Then, use them throughout your website, listings, and web content. This will make it easier for potential customers looking for relevant local businesses to find you online. 

However, don’t just settle for popular local keywords. It would be best if you use the long-tail variations of your target search terms. For example, if you’re a catering company in Northampton, you should look for different variations of the keywords “Northampton caterer” or “Northampton catering service. 

4. Conduct a Local SEO audit

You might be tempted to start with the optimisation process once you research the local keywords you want to target. However, you might want to perform a local SEO audit first. This will help you determine where your website is currently at, allowing you to create more effective strategies and get better results when you optimise your website for local SEO. 

To analysis the status of your Northampton website, you may conduct the following: 

a. Google My Business audit – helps you determine how your GMB listing appears on search results and how accurate the information listed there. 

b. Google Search Console audit – verifies if Google can crawl and index your site. 

c. Citation audit – ensures that your business directory citations are correct and accurate. 

d. Onsite SEO audit – verifies if your website has all the onsite SEO elements needed to rank well. 

e. Website audit – determines your website’s existing performance. 

5. Optimise for mobile devices

Optimising your site for mobile devices is crucial to your overall SEO strategy. However, it’s particularly vital for local SEO. Why, you ask? Research showed that 30% of mobile searches are related to locations. This means a significant number of potential customers who found you online via local search are on mobile. 

To make your site mobile-friendly, ensure that it is rendered well on any device, regardless of screen size. Eliminate any potential navigation issues to prevent visitors from leaving your website and going to your competitors. Also, it’s an excellent idea to optimise your site for voice searches since mobile voice searches tend to have more local intent than textual searches. 

Make Your Website More Local SEO-Friendly

Local SEO is not just for attracting web traffic. It can also help you generate more visits to your physical location. This is why if you want to have more customers, which could lead to more sales and bigger profits, you should start making your Northampton website more local SEO-friendly. Follow the tips above to get started. 

If you don’t have the time to optimise your site for local search engines, we at Springhill Marketing are happy to assist you. Our highly experienced SEO team will do the tasks mentioned above and more to ensure that you’ll get a significant advantage over the competition. Please talk to us today and let us create a local SEO strategy tailored for you.