- Neglecting customer reviews
- Targeting broad keywords
- Lacking directory profiles
- Keyword stuffing
- Not submitting business info to Google My Business Listing
- Not implementing technical SEO
- Having duplicate listings
- Inconsistent business name, address, phone number, and website URL data
- Not optimizing blog content
- Not including backlinks
- Not mobile user-friendly
- Not acknowledging negative reviews
- Images not optimized
- Low quality website content
- Absence of contact information on the website
It’s easy to drive traffic and leads to a local business with local SEO when done right. Watch out for these common local SEO mistakes and learn to fix them.
Local businesses rely on local SEO to lead organic traffic to their website. However, optimizing local searches might prove to be difficult. Even an SEO expert makes mistakes as they go.
That being said, don’t make the same mistakes others did by learning how to avoid them.
Here are 15 of the most common local SEO mistakes and some tips on how you can fix them:
1. Neglecting customer reviews
While it may seem of less importance, gathering positive customer reviews will actually help your business rank better in local searches. They help build trust and credibility for your potential customers.
How to fix it:
Encourage your current and past clients to leave reviews for your website and social media profiles. This will tell Google that your business can be trusted with the reviews as proof.
2. Targeting broad keywords
Targeting broad, unspecific keywords is like shooting arrows in the wrong direction. If you want to rank for a certain keyword, make sure it’s to that local area.
How to fix it:
Identify geo-specific and service-specific keywords that are likely to attract your target audience. For example, instead of optimizing for keywords like [laundry service], go for [wash and dry service in New York].
3. Lacking directory profiles
Not a lot of business owners know this but directories like Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, and Yellow Pages are a big help in ranking businesses in the local search. This gives you more chances of being found by potential customers.
How to fix it:
List your business in multiple directories to help drive more traffic to your website. As mentioned, submit your business information in local business listings to increase your website’s visibility. Remember to keep your NAPW consistent in all listings.
4. Keyword stuffing
Overdoing the use of keywords kills content. Keyword stuffing means exactly how it sounds – stuffing a lot of keywords across your website; repeating the same keywords within a single sentence or paragraph. This will seem spammy to Google and other search engines.
How to fix it:
Place keywords as naturally as possible across your site. Not only in blog posts but also in your meta tags. As much as possible use only 1 to 2 main keywords in the blog post and use related keywords. Make sure it doesn’t sound forced but has a natural flow.
5. Not submitting business info to Google My Business Listing
Listing your business in Google My Business can help you rank in Google Maps. This will help your potential customers find you in local searches.
How to fix it:
Go to Google My Business and submit your information. Other than your NAPW, include your business hours, categories, customer reviews, photos, and more. Completing and optimizing your Google My Business profile gives you a better chance of getting local traffic using Google.
6. Not implementing technical SEO
Technical SEO makes sure that your website is user-friendly and free from any technical issues. This will help search engines understand and rank your website easily.
How to fix it:
Do a technical audit of your website to discover any technical issues that need to be fixed. This includes missing HTTPS, poor site security, duplicate content, and many more. Once your website is technically sound, it can rank well in local searches.
7. Having duplicate listings
Having duplicate listings can confuse Google and can affect your ranking. This happens when you don’t track the directories you submitted your business information into. You tend to create a new listing even though you’ve already one listed.
How to fix it:
Include doing a clean-up in your local SEO strategy. Take time to check all your listings and make sure there’s no duplication. While you’re at it, make sure your NAPW is updated. Having a single accurate listing for your business on any given platform increases your chance of having a better rank.
8. Inconsistent business name, address, phone number, and website URL data
Changing your phone number, moving locations, or changing your website URL can hurt your local ranking. Even the tiniest of inconsistent details can contribute to your website’s bigger demise.
How to fix it:
Make sure that you have the same name, address, phone number, and website (NAPW) in all your online listings. You can easily update this information in a lot of directories, including Google My Business.
9. Not optimizing blog content
Blogs help pull up the ranks of websites in search engines. Just make sure they’re optimized with the right keywords.
How to fix it:
Do keyword search and find geo-specific keywords that fit your content. Make sure the title tag, content, links, and images are optimized.
10. Not including backlinks
Building strong backlinks is important in SEO. Optimizing your website and listing your business in directories alone can’t ensure a high rank in search engines.
How to fix it:
Create a link-building strategy to help increase the authority of your website. Using geo-specific content can help naturally attract backlinks.
11. Not mobile user-friendly
A lot of users search on their mobile phones compared to desktop computers. Most websites are optimized for desktop users but not for mobile users.
How to fix it:
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. This allows the users to stay more on your site and explore your services. Work with an SEO expert or web developer in order to achieve this.
12. Not acknowledging negative reviews
Getting reviews can help build your business’ credibility, but getting bad ones may hurt it instead. Ignoring negative reviews instead of fixing them will hurt your business’ reputation.
How to fix it:
Respond to negative customer reviews in a professional way. You may still be able to save the situation if you respond and try to fix the situation and make it up to the customer. This will show your potential customers that you care about them and their customer experience.
13. Images not optimized
It may not seem much but optimizing the alt text of the images used in your website can add to the overall wellbeing of your site. Having the right alt text can help you gain traffic from Image search and rich search results.
How to fix it:
Audit your image files by crawling your site. You can use tools such as Screaming Frog to discover optimization issues. This may include missing alt text, large file size, or perhaps poor URL structure.
14. Low quality website content
Google can’t be tricked. Simply scattering keywords throughout your website won’t help you rank. Valuable content is key!
How to fix it:
Create consistent, valuable, accurate, relevant, and keyword-focused content for your website. This means the content you have in all your pages, from the home page to blogs.
15. Absence of contact information on the website
Having a user-friendly website would be in vain if you’re missing the most important information – your contact info. Potential clients would have no way of reaching you and availing your service if you don’t provide the contact number and email of your business.
How to fix it:
One of the basic pages that your website must have is a Contact Us page. Make sure you include accurate and updated information that can help potential clients reach out to you should they have any queries. Include an embedded Google map and make sure that it matches the address across all your other directory listings.
Now that you know these common local SEO mistakes, go ahead and check your website if you’re currently experiencing some of these. If you are, don’t worry. You can learn how to fix all these yourself with all the resources available on the internet.
However, if you have no time on your hands, you can totally hire an SEO expert to help you address all these issues.
Contact us now and we’ll do a free website audit for you right away!
Bea Manzano
Bea have always been passionate about writing even at a young age. What started out as a hobby soon became her career. She has written blogs and articles for different industries such as Real Estate, Lumber Companies, Home Decors, Cat Hotels, Travel Industry, and many more. When she's not writing, you can find her either at home watching her favorite TV series while sipping milk tea or outdoors going on roadtrips with her family.
