How Philadelphia Businesses Can Best Use Local SEO Tactics

For a local business, a local strategy is the best solution to problems such as generating better leads and getting more customers. Local search engine optimization (SEO) tactics have many crucial benefits that Philadelphia businesses need, such as a cost-effective strategy with a significant return on investment (ROI).

Here are seven ways Philadelphia SEO company experts recommend you apply local SEO:

1. Rank higher with local SEO keywords.
2. Expand reach through business profiles.
3. Gain social proof with positive reviews.
4. Boost traffic with high-quality local content.
5. Deliver good UX with responsive design.
6. Know your customers’ pain points better.
7. Build your local business firmly on trust.

There’s a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

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7 Ways Philadelphia Businesses Gain from Using Local SEO

Local businesses have the best chance of success when they begin marketing efforts within their locale. When they tap into their local community for lead generation, they see better returns on the time and money they invest. Going local first also shapes branding, which is vital.

In other words, local SEO should be at the top of your small business's SEO checklist. You should also include other types of SEO, but the vital parts (e.g., on-page SEO) have local versions that achieve the same goals. Here are seven critical local SEO strategies you need now:

     1. Rank Higher With Local SEO Keywords

Keywords are important in SEO because they determine whether your content reaches potential customers. Using local keywords boosts the chance that your content matches a person’s search terms and appears in their search results. Geotargeted keywords such as “Germantown bookstore” narrow the scope of competition, which gives you a greater chance at ranking high on the first page of the search engine results for someone who is nearby and likely to visit.

     2. Expand Reach Through Business Profiles

The best SEO tactics do not often come cheap, but a Google My Business (GMB) profile is a bargain. This free-to-use service gets you listed at the busiest search provider across all its related local business search services, including Google Maps.

A GMB profile allows you to conveniently share business information with customers all in one place. At minimum a GMB profile includes your business’s name, address, and phone number but should also include your website URL, operating hours, and pictures. Make sure this information is regularly updated to match the contact information and hours listed on your website and remains consistent with the information in any other online directories.

     3. Gain Social Proof With Positive Reviews

A good reputation is valuable for any business and its ability to succeed, but it plays an even bigger role in how a local business operates. Popularity and reach are not easy to build when starting a small business. Customer reviews are one way that a thorough local SEO strategy resolves that issue.

Many people look at online reviews at sites such as Yelp before deciding whether to visit a business, so be sure to monitor your reviews regularly. Encourage satisfied customers to leave a positive review, and engage publicly and promptly with negative reviews to resolve problems. Conversely, get mentions in the local press to reach parts of your target market that are long-term neighborhood loyalists–at no cost to you.

     4. Boost Traffic With High-Quality Local Content

Content has long been a staple in digital marketing and is only becoming increasingly important as search engine algorithms evolve to better serve users. Even with artificial intelligence (AI) in the picture, content is still important.

Any Philadelphia SEO company can tell you that a content strategy is crucial to local SEO. Creating high-quality local content is not just an excuse to rank for your chosen keyword. Every piece you publish is a chance to share useful knowledge and show how your business fits into the community and its needs.

     5. Deliver Good UX With Responsive Design

Mobile search is slowly becoming the most prominent search method, with over half of all online traffic now coming from mobile devices. Many customers may never see the desktop version of your site at all, so responsive website design is a must to provide a good user experience (UX) for everyone. At the same time as you are making it easy for mobile users to smoothly access all features of your site, you can also go one better and make it easy for disabled customers to access your site as well.  For example, optimize for deaf users by including captions for all videos, and for users with low or no vision by including alt-text descriptions for all images. 

     6. Know Your Customers’ Pain Points Better

Each customer has their own unique problems or pain points that a business like yours needs to solve. Learning about these issues is critical to good local SEO because it gives you the right idea of what products or services are most beneficial for you to provide for your local target market.

The problems of local customers come from a range of factors, such as those that are unique to the area and other concerns they might have. Knowing what problems you want to solve or can solve is fundamental to improving your SEO. For instance, it allows you to write better-targeted local content and keep it sounding fresh.

     7. Firmly Build Your Local Business on Trust

One of the best features of local SEO is building strong and lasting relationships with customers through a mix of high-quality service and a sincere desire to help. When you use these as your guiding principles, you can slowly but surely build your brand’s reputation and differentiate it from competitors.

Earn your target market’s trust by creating a brand they can rely on for solutions. That starts with knowing your brand’s ideal customers and the problems they want to solve. You must also keep your efforts and messages consistent to build a strong foundation of trust.

Summing Up

A Philadelphia business has many options for local SEO tactics, each providing a unique benefit. For instance, making your website more mobile-friendly improves how it performs in local searches. But beating the algorithms to get to the top of search results is tricky. Hiring a Philadelphia SEO company is the best way to take full advantage of the range of local SEO tactics. 

Need help crafting a local SEO strategy for your Philadelphia business? Contact Digital Authority Partners to learn how we can help.