If I told you that local business owners in Australian cities like Sydney, Perth and Hobart need local SEO, your response would probably be one of these two:
A: “Oh really, Sherlock? I had no idea! What’s next, you think that I need customers to sell my products to? WOW! What a revolutionary idea!”
B: “Local what now?”
Both are valid responses depending on your point of view. If you’ve already realised the importance of local SEO for your business and therefore, your answer to my rhetorical statement was A, you are probably looking for ways to improve upon your local SEO (because you clicked on this blog). On the other hand, if your response was B, you might want to keep reading. You might learn a thing or two about promoting your business in the online space. If you have no idea what SEO is, give this one a read.
But at the end of the day, the initial statement always rings true. The act of optimising local SEO in order to garner a larger following of readers or customers for your website/social media page is as important as it’s ever been. These are 7 tips to help you accomplish that (as the title suggests, the blog’s about Hobart. But it is mostly applicable to other Aussie cities).
1. Know The Hobart Market
In order to understand the market in Hobart, you need to be more familiar with its customer base and growing businesses. While you need to do your own field research on what might work and what might not when starting a business in Hobart, it wouldn’t hurt to learn a few things from this blog.
More than 200 thousand people live in Hobart, and a lot of them are young people who moved there to study. Since young people are more adept at navigating the online space, you can use that to your own advantage. These university students are in dire need of room and board and jobs and basically anything that will help them sustain life. You can use that to your advantage, too.
Other than that, if you are looking for specifics, field research done by professionals will help you more. Just make sure you know your customers and their needs before doing anything.
2. Optimise Your Google My Business Account
This one deserves its own blog post (well, every subheading in this blog does), but I am going to mention a couple of important notes on how you should improve your Google My Business account. But first off, what even is Google My Business?
Google My Business is the most famous platform for business owners to claim ownership of their Business Profile. It has a variety of features that will help you optimise your profile. But a lot of people don’t fully take advantage of that. Experts at SEO agency Hobart have provided a few tips on how you can improve your Google My Business account:
- There is no such thing as too much information. It’s not just about NAP. Always keep in mind that completing every section of your Business Profile is essential. The smallest bits of information can and will make you look more professional and your profile more complete.
- Remember to specify the business type in the category and sub-category sections.
- Respond to the reviews. If you don’t get as many reviews, encourage your customers to write them for you in exchange for store coupons and such.
- Engage with your readers and customers. Ask for feedback, answer messages, thank those who say good things about you, etc.
3. Region-Specific Keywords
Since local SEO mostly revolves around local search (duh), you might want to start researching keywords that only the people in Hobart and Tasmania use in their Google searches.
By getting familiar with using keyword research tools like ahrefs, you can identify the strength, volume, popularity and effectiveness of the right keywords. The techniques used for finding the best regional keywords vary in complexity and difficulty. Some could be as simple as typing in the Google search bar and looking at the results. In this way, you can easily identify the most searched phrases similar to your initial input. Let’s say you own a law firm in Hobart and are looking to improve your website’s local SEO. You decide to search “Hobart law firm” or “Hobart law”. The results shown are the most frequently searched keywords related to your initial search, which means you probably don’t stand a chance if you start using them. It’s ok to use them on your website, just don’t expect to be the first result on SERPs (it’s ok, it takes time to improve SEO).
On the other hand, there are many ways to find regional keywords that are not as simple. Using keyword research tools is a deep subject for which we might not have time. Therefore, do your own research on the matter.
4. Local Link Building
Backlinking is one of the most important pillars of SEO. But since we are talking about local SEO, let’s focus on local link building. For those unfamiliar with SEO, backlinking is the process of linking back from one website to another (like the links I used on this blog). While getting backlinks by itself can and will increase your website’s Google rankings, getting local backlinks has the potential to do the same while simultaneously increasing your local traffic. For example, that law firm in Hobart we mentioned earlier has a higher chance of getting traffic if it gets a backlink from a website with more Hobart-based readers. But how can one get local backlinks? what is the difference between a local backlink and a normal one?
One of the most important aspects of link building is scouting good websites. If your goal is to build five links every month, it must be a top priority to contact local and quality websites. Moreover, local citations can achieve the same goal but with different means. These are basically online mentions of your business name, address, contact information, location etc. They can be very helpful if you are looking to get direct traffic. Lastly, you can focus on social media to build a better platform. That always helps. Local networking is key for local link building.
5. Website Optimisation
This one is a given, probably. I mean, whatever the case may be, website optimisation is always a must if you aim to accomplish anything with your online presence. In order to win the local SEO game and beat your rivals who might have a store two blocks away from you, your website must be optimised on several fronts, starting with web design.
Compelling web design is the most important aspect of good website building (in my humble opinion, of course) since it’s the first thing the user sees and interacts with and it also entails UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). This topic goes very deep, so just have this in mind when optimising your website: Always hire a good web designer. You won’t regret it!
Other than web design, there’s coding, content, navigability and of course, SEO. Website optimisation might not directly influence your local SEO, but it definitely helps it in the long run.
Conclusion
I hope this small guide has helped your Hobart business in some capacity. But don’t forget that you can’t take anyone’s words for granted. Always do your own research before starting something big. That’s it then, good luck on your SEO journey!
Author Bio :
My name is Jacob Braun, a writer and a fan of most things online. I write about web design and development, digital and traditional marketing, small businesses, social media-related subjects and most things revolving around the entertainment industry.
Review 5 Essential Factors to Improve Your Local SEO Ranking in Hobart.