Local SEO for eCommerce Website – Here’s How to do it

The internet has provided countless possibilities and opportunities to us and has changed the way we look at everything. It is equally important for businesses as it has led to their increased reach and reception. It is imperative for all kinds of businesses, including local businesses, to have an online presence as it is one of the cost-effective ways to reach out to your customer base. This is where the significance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO comes into the picture that helps you to boost your online visibility with increased revenue growth.

These are the basic steps you need to take for optimizing your local eCommerce business for search queries made by your target audience:

Create Your Google My Business Profile

As a first step, it is essential that you set up Google My Business profile for your local business. In this way, you would be visible to your prospected customers in the Google search results and maps. Once you create your profile, make sure you fill all the details related to your business and its services. You need to choose the most relevant business category for your business. For example, if you own a restaurant in an area, then choose the restaurant as your business category and not a hotel, which many business owners choose by mistake.

Add as much as information you can provide about your online business while creating this profile. You can add your operating hours, services, images, address, website URL, and many more details.

Be careful to define your location properly and provide your name, address, and phone number accurately. This way Google would be able to recognize your listing for the queries relevant to your services and service area. Also, make sure that your website is linked to your Google local profile page.

Build Local Citations/Backlinks/Mentions

There are some more factors that determine how the search engines will rank your website for the searches relevant to your business. The number of high-quality backlinks a website has is a good factor that helps in gaining high rankings. Usually, for a local eCommerce store, the source of backlinks include local business groups, customer’s websites/blogs, friend’s website/blog, news websites, review websites, etc.

One of the things to remember is that it’s not only about getting hyperlinks from other domains as backlinks, even if other relevant websites in your niche talk about your business, that would also be counted as a good ranking signal by the search engines.

Improve Your Website’s On-Page SEO

It is also important that you optimize your website’s content to cater to your customer’s queries. In case you have multiple locations, you need to include them all in your online store.

One of the best ways to improve your business website’s relevance to the customer’s queries is to have your main keywords in the most vital part of the website, like URLs, Heading, Title, meta description, content, etc.

Another important thing to keep in mind is to make use of structured data, as having properly formatted content on your website will help search engines better understand your content, that might help you with ranking boost.

Getting Online Reviews or Feedback from Your Customers

A good way to add to the reputation of your local eCommerce business is to have reviews from your current buyers on your online store and Google local page. This is no hidden truth that as an online buyer, we depend a lot on the reviews shared by other people for a business and its services. This feedback, reviews, and ratings play a major role in helping new visitors to make a purchasing decision. At the same time, positive reviews help you improve your website’s CTR (click through rate) which is again a positive signal considered by search engines to boost rankings of a website.

Improve the Website’s Content as per Your Local Audience

As a local eCommerce business, most probably your target audience would be from the same area your business is located in. You need to create content keeping your locality in mind. For example, when giving directions on your website to visit your store offline, make sure you include popular landmarks in your content, this helps search engines better understand your location. Another way is to add details of the local events on your website that are relevant to your niche industry. Having information on your web store that is relevant to your local audience keep them engaged with your eStore.

Take Help from Local Influencers

If you have online influencers in your area who are relevant to your niche industry, ask them to share their reviews about your business with their audience. That way, you would be able to reach more eyeballs and may catch up with new customers based on the recommendation made by the online influencers.