WordPress is considered one of the best SEO-friendly content management systems. It is very flexible, has an unbeatable price tag, low entry barrier, and rich functionality. These features make it the most popular web CMS. Even a newbie can implement simple optimization techniques easily. This is good for small businesses. As they are on low-budget and still want to improve their rankings in local search.
In this blog, you can see a local SEO guide for WordPress to boost local search rankings. There are seven SEO practices. It will help you boost and improve your WordPress website rankings in local search.
Best 7 Local SEO Guide Best Practices
Content optimization
One of the most important assets of your website is content. Before you think of content optimization, think about something valuable for your audience. First, find out about the audience’s problems and then think about how your products can solve their problems. Now you can come up with solutions in various content formats. These formats can include infographics, blog posts, and videos.
Once your content is ready, the next step is on-page optimization. For doing such basic tools like Yoast SEO plugin can be used. Generally, you don’t need different factors for each landing page. This job will be done by Yoast SEO. Every page has a color-coded score. This will help you in tracking your on-page optimization. It points outs:
- Areas for improvement
- Factors like keyword occurrences and word count
Link Profile Review
When it comes to local organic ranking, the most important thing for ranking signal is the link. Many things are correlated to your local ranking. These include:
- link anchor text optimization,
- quality of backlinks, and
- various domains linked to your website.
If you go for organic linking, you should know that it will take time to cultivate.
Following are some steps that help you in organic linking:
- Focusing on quality over quantity
C-blocks, IPs, and many domains linked to your website are an essential part. But if you get one top-notch backlink from a good source, it is the best. It is more worthy than any other low-quality and irrelevant dozens of links. You can remove low-quality links using line tracking software. - Find & Fix Broken Links
Identify broken links using a plugin like Broken Link Checker. It helps in checking broken links checks posts and pages. - Anchor Text optimization
Include your city’s name in local search for optimizing anchor text. Do not over-optimize. Find out what is acceptable in your niche. Conduct some competitor analysis and then do anchor text optimization. - Identifying Potential Link Building Opportunities
To identify potential link-building opportunities, use a competitive analysis tool.
Speed up Your Website
You have to speed up in the SEO world. Your website’s speed is one of the most vital technical ranking factors on Google. If you want to beat up your competitors, then be fast. Some of the techniques to do so are:
- Compressing Large Images
Your website’s speed is slowed down mainly because of large image files. You can use a plugin such as WP Smush to solve this problem. It helps in optimizing your images and compressing images. - Clean up Your WordPress Theme
Another way to increase your website speed is to clean up your WordPress theme. Unnecessary and outdated elements on the page should be eliminated. For instance, Javascript, functions, unnecessary, etc., should be removed. Additionally, you should also delete old themes. Your site can be infiltrated with these by hackers. - Caching Plugin for reducing server load
The server load is significantly reduced due to the caching plugins. They create HTML versions of dynamic pages. There are several options you can consider:- Paid options like WP Rocket
- Free options like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
- Do not use too many plugins
A plugin can be used for any function. But, you have to look for a plugin that adds real value to your website. If you use a lot of plugins, that will slow down your website. You can also invest in website auditing software. It will make your life a lot easier. With the help of this software, an on-page speed factors analysis is done. It uses quality products. This will help you in speeding up your website.
Mobile optimization
Many people like everything to be available on the tip of their hands. Due to this, mobile usage is increasing. It leads potential customers looking for local businesses through mobile. You must know that Google indexes mobile sites compared to their desktop counterparts. So, you should know that mobile optimization is one of the most important factors in the Local SEO Guide. To improve your mobile site, you need to focus on image compressions and on-page speed. There are some tricks and tips mentioned below:
Use a Responsive Theme: It is another very important aspect. You should make a responsive WordPress theme. Your mobile device should fit all your content.
Design Specifically for Mobile Visitors: You should create custom experiences. Also, detect various devices on the server level. you should use the built-in wp_is_mobile() function for your mobile visitors.
Launch a Mobile App: As per a study by eMarketer, 88% of people spend their time on media apps. To engage mobile users with their favorite brands, apps are used.
Creating Accelerated Mobile Pages: These are specially designed fast pages for mobile. You should know that accelerated mobile pages are the default plugin in a WordPress website. You can easily create AMP for mobile devices. When users search from a mobile device, they are listed on top of the SERPs.
Integrating Google My Business In WordPress website
There are a number of factors related to local rankings. Google My Business has a package of all of them. Signals like: impact the position of SERPs
- Business categories and description
- User reviews
- Physical proximity
Once you have claimed your Google My Business, you need to add your WordPress site to it. Other essential information like a description of your business and hours of operation should also be added. The next step is to look for widgets and plugins. They will help you in transferring important ranking signals. For instance, customer reviews, business maps, and photos are some ranking signals. These will be transferred to your website from your Google My Business page.
Additionally, you can also install a plugin. It should add reviews to your WordPress website from your GMB page. The best example of such plugins is the Google Places Reviews plugin. This will prove to be very useful in increasing consumer trust in your business.
Lastly, take the help of widgets or plugins. You should try to add an intractable business map to your WordPress website. It will help your customer find you. One such example is Google Maps Builder.
Add Structured Information to Your pages
Ever ask yourself why some nearby business listings appear to be rich. It includes reviews, star rankings, and robust explanations – while other people fall flat? The distinct difference is organized data. Using extensions like Schema, a person can feed your company’s search engine extra information. This will provide your customers with more detail when they find you within SERPs. It includes information such as hours of the procedure, price range, and physical location. Remember that while descriptions do not inherently improve your web ranking. If you include more information, it will inspire higher click-through rates. CTR makes the difference ranking upon Google and other research engines.
Include Location Keywords into your URLs
Generally talking, URL structure plays a small part in your page’s ability to position. For local research, it is best to include keywords in your URL. It will help boost the user encounter. This is specifically true if a person has many pages. These pages are to target various places. It also would like to assure your clients that they’re in the best place. Earlier versions of WordPress didn’t give a person a lot of flexibility when this came to your URLs. However, the latest versions of WordPress default to “pretty permalinks.” It includes the date and title of your articles. You can modify your URL settings within your WordPress Administrative panel. For this visit Options > Permalinks. From there, you may click Custom Composition to add a new location to the clinching page URLs.
Conclusion
Do you want to boost your rankings on the search engines? If yes, follow this Local Search Engine Optimization guide. It will help you to not only increase your rankings but also helps in improving your business. Apart from the guide mentioned above, some more improvements can be made. For example, you can also try to optimize your website’s structure, generate XML sitemaps, manually create robot .txt files, and more.
