For medium and small businesses, it may seem a daunting task to take on large corporations when it comes to SEO. But with the increase in local-based searches, the search engines’ algorithms have adjusted to provide the best results. Here’s how to take advantage of local SEO.

• Verify your Google My Business page.
  The verification process is pretty painless, and it gives you ultimate control of information being fed directly to Google. Anyone can submit edits to Google on business pages – including your competitors. When you verify your pages, the edits have to be approved by YOU before they publish to the internet. Conversely, edits to unverified pages just need to be approved by Google. If your page is unverified and someone marks your business as closed, if Google decides to publish that, your business will show as closed to anyone who searches for your business or your services. Is not verifying you page really worth that risk?
• Make sure your physical address is on your website, preferably in the header and/or footer.
  When searches include a neighborhood name, a zip code, or the phrase “near me”, the search engines do their best to find results that actually fit that parameter. As a result, having your physical address on your site provides indexable data to make your site match appropriately. Without that information on your site, you are probably missing out on showing to potential customers.
•  Include your neighborhood name or locale in your title tags, meta descriptions, image alt data, and on-page copy.
  The principle behind this is the same as including your physical address on your site. Having this data included in indexable areas that show to searchers and site visitors similarly increases the likelihood that your site will show in the search results, will garner a click-through, and convert into a lead and/or customer.

Does this sound like too much to take on all on your own? We get it. Trust your SEO to Asterisk Creative today.