What is Hyperlocal SEO and Why Should I Be Doing it Right Now?
We’ve told you before some of the best ways to do local SEO. If you have a business that benefits from local searches, then you probably already know how important it is to optimize your website’s content for local searches. As the technology gets better, as we rely more and more on mobile devices, and as Google’s big, bountiful algorithm gets smarter, we can really hone in on our absolute number one best possible customers with the newest craze sweeping the nation: hyperlocal SEO.
Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Hyperlocal results have been around for a few years, but with Google’s increasingly targeted search capabilities, we can get extremely specific about where our audience lives, works, drives, shops, and basically anything else they do that has a geolocational footprint.
Sure, Near Me is Cool, But What About “Extremely Near Me?”
If you spend any time looking at your analytics (and please say you do), you’ve seen a meteoric rise in the volume of searches that include the phrase “near me.” This is great news if you have a business that relies on a local footprint. Even the pressures of COVID-19 haven’t slowed the growth of local business listing opportunities. Well, maybe it slowed it down a little. The point is, the sooner you start implementing these strategies, the better positioned you’ll be when people start more freely moving around again.
Set Up Your Google My Business Profile
You probably already have this well in hand, but just in case you don’t, or just in case you’re new to local SEO, you should definitely 1) activate your Google My Business account and 2) claim your business. If it’s already owned by somebody else, let’s hope they work for you, or you have access to the email listed on the GMB page. If it’s already owned and you don’t have access, well, that’s a whole post by itself.
Make sure your business information is correct, up to date, reliable—all that stuff. After all, there’s not much point in trying to get people to visit your website for local service if they don’t know you’re just down the street from their dentist’s office (or whatever).
Optimize Those Hyperlocal Keywords
It’s not enough just to include the location of your business. Why not talk about your neighborhood, or mention the streets nearby, or identify some cool landmarks near you that might help searchers hone in on your home base. Hyperlocal is all about specifics, but you might have to get a little fuzzy, too, when it comes to where you’re hyperlocated.
Add Those Schema Markups
Dust off that copy of HTML For Dummies and roll up your sleeves. It’s time to add that delicious markup code to your <head> tags! You know what schema are, right? They’re little snippets of code that give Google some rich data to display on the SERP where your business appears. Google loves schema, and it will even recognize some cool restaurant-specific features like hours of operation, and some menu features you need your future diners to know about.
If you’d like even more help getting to the bottom of getting to the top of Google’s search result pages, get in touch with us today.
