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What exactly is Local SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is an abbreviation for “search engine optimization.” Simply put, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your clinic’s website easy to find through Google and other search engines.
Depending on the objectives of a company, different approaches to SEO development are employed. Local SEO will be especially important for businesses that rely on foot traffic to generate revenue, such as medical and aesthetics clinics, fitness studios, spas, and other service providers, among others.
Building local SEO means that your company will appear in — you guessed it — local search results when people search for it. Furthermore, it means that new clients find you organically rather than having to go out and find them through paid advertising.
How Does Local SEO Work?
Suppose you work as an esthetician in the city of London. The goal of local SEO is for people to find your business as the first search result when they search for terms such as “facials London” or “facials in my neighborhood.” Alternatively, if you’re a massage therapist in Notting Hill, London, you’ll want to appear when people search for terms such as “Notting Hill massage,” “massage London,” “massage W11 London,” and other variations.
As you can see in each of these examples, the people who eventually book with you found you organically through local SEO, which is a huge boon for your business.
The Benefits of a Successful Local SEO Campaign
1. The website traffic is free
Paid Google ads and paid social media campaigns have a tendency to become very expensive very quickly. The same is true for sending out mailers or placing advertisements in local magazines. When you are the first listing to appear in Google search results as a result of local SEO, you pay nothing for those clicks and, ultimately, for the new client bookings that result from those clicks.
2. It helps to establish trust.
The majority of people are aware that when you search for a topic, Google recommends the most relevant businesses first. So, if Google believes you’re the best option, why shouldn’t the rest of the world agree?
3. It saves you time.
When you spend less time planning and managing marketing for your company, you have more time to spend with your clients.
How to Develop or Improve Your Clinic's Local SEO Strategy
The Quick Checklist consists of the following items:
- Make use of Google Business Profile (Formerly known as Google My Business) to get started. Be honest, true and consistent with the details you leave on this profile. Google has developed a whole support library team that can help create a good profile.
- Incorporate primary and secondary keywords into your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Direct sales keywords and other advice related keywords – use them all in appropriate pages on the website. If you can not execute this yourself, find a local SEO specialist that will help you with the content plan and keywords optimisation process.
- Take control of your Yelp business listing. Claim your listing, edit business details and make sure it is all the same details on all other places you promote your business online.
- Obtain coverage in your area. Learn what are the best places to be listed in your neighborhood. Get listed there!
- Connect all of your online profiles to one another. Especially the social media profiles, your website and any other place online, your business is listed. Anywhere possible, of course.
- Respond to reviews in a way that is search engine friendly (include keywords in your responses that describe you best).
- Examine your website through the eyes of a new client. Google wants the users – your clients to be happy with what they see on your website. That way Google will grant you their trust as well through increasing your Website Domain Authority (DA).You can use several free tools to track your current Domain Authority:
1. Make use of a Google Business Profile.
The rules of SEO are determined by Google, which includes who ranks highest for local SEO. Therefore, even if you don’t do anything else in this guide, make sure you do this: Maintain the accuracy, timeliness, and thoroughness of your Google business listing.
To accomplish this, go to Google Business Manager (Google My Business) and create a profile for your company (it’s completely free!).
As a result, Google recommends that you complete the following checklist:
- Complete the details of your company’s listing.
- Make certain that your business’s hours, location, and other pertinent information are (always!) up to date.
- React to each and every Google business review you receive. Customers believe that businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7 times more trustworthy than businesses that do not (76 percent versus 46 percent), according to Google.
2. Double-check that your site's search engine optimization is complete.
Regardless of whether you use Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, or another host, you’ll want to make sure that the SEO basics on your site are filled out and that the pages on your site are clearly organized.
When it comes to “optimizing” a website for search engine optimization, you don’t have to get too complicated to get started. Consider what people will search for when you want them to find your company, and then make sure you’re naturally incorporating those keywords (that’s the technical SEO term) into your content wherever it makes sense.
On your website, this means considering the following:
- The title of your website (which can usually be found in the “Settings” section of your website account). Make sure each page has a individual unique and descriptive title that will be meaningful and inviting to your users.
- Description of the meta-description (usually found directly below the site title in your settings). These are longer texts that properly announce what can be found in the content of that page. So these have to be 100% relevant to the page content and unique. No two pages can have the same title or meta description.
- Headers are the first thing you see when you walk into a room (these are just like headers in a PowerPoint but on your site pages). Consider these to be the first thing your clients will see when they enter your website. So make then interesting and include some keywords for good SEO.
- Content (any text that appears on your website’s pages!). Content is KING as they say, for clients as well as for search engines. Make sure people are happy with what they read on your website pages and that content motivates them to book an appointment. Calls to action have to be incorporated. If you need help to decide how to make these most effective, make sure to consult a lead generation specialist.
3. How to Select the Most Appropriate Keywords
When deciding which keywords to include on your website, it’s a good idea to divide the work into two categories: primary keywords and secondary keywords.
When it comes to local SEO, your primary keywords should be straightforward: your industry or service specialty, followed by your city or town name. Hence the phrase “Aesthetics clinic in London”. Your site’s title and meta description will contain the words that you’ll emphasize the most throughout the rest of the site.
Secondary keywords attract visitors who are looking for more specific requirements, such as a specific type of product or service that you provide. Individuals seeking a specific type of service or a specific brand of botox injections are those who are looking for a Clinic that specializes in those services. An example of this would be “Botox Injections London”, or “Hydrafacials near Leeds”. You can incorporate these keywords into your website in order to reach even more new visitors through Google search.
“Keyword stuffing” should be avoided.
Everything should be done with caution. You might believe that including the phrase “Organic facelift treatments London” on your homepage a dozen times will increase your chances of being noticed by Google — but Google is smarter than that in 2021! In fact, stuffing your keywords into places where they don’t make sense can sometimes backfire on your efforts. Instead, add your keywords whenever logical! In the end, the ultimate goal of local SEO is to make your website as simple to find — and as simple to understand — as possible for a potential client.
4. Social Media Activities
Google appreciates it when visitors to your website share content on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google Plus, according to Google. So have in mind that all social media activities should lead people to your website. At the same time information on your website should motivate people to share them on social media . Encourage your clients through all sorts of marketing activities to share the information about your services on their social media profiles. Engage with them through your profile and be visible.
5. Off-Page SEO Activities
Although links from other websites are important, they are especially important for local businesses because they increase the likelihood of your clinic, barbershop, or spa appearing higher on search engine results pages.
These hyperlinks and listings are referred to as backlinks from relevant websites or citations. Many of them are completely free for you to use in order to promote your company! You might wonder, what exactly are citations.
Citations are information on high-quality websites that display your company’s information, such as the name of the clinic, the address, the phone number, the website, or a combination of all of these, and it is ESSENTIAL that these details match the information displayed on your website.
When searching for information on how to improve your rankings in search engines, you may have come across the term Local Search Engine Optimization (LSEO).
Fundamentally, local SEO is driven by citations and ensuring that your website is linked to other high-quality websites that have high authority in the eyes of search engines like Google.
“What are some good examples of websites where you can include citations for my company?”
We already mentioned Google and its product called Google Business Manager (formerly known as Google My Business), and this is THE most important one to complete. There are also Yelp and Citysearch, but we’ll give you 12 more places to list your business later on.
Citations are mentions of your Clinic’s name, address, website, and telephone number, or all of them together (this is referred to as NAP in the world of search engine marketing i.e. Name Address Phone) – they don’t even have to have a link to your website in order to qualify, and Yellow Pages is a good example of how this can be accomplished.
- Keep in mind that they must be consistent across all of the websites, as well as consistent with the information on your own website.
- Name of the Clinic
The full address, including the ZIP code - Contact Information (Telephone Number)
When creating a website, always include “/” at the end of the URL (e.g. testwebsite.com/)
Excellent sources on the Internet, such as MOZ – online visibility tools – and Whitespark – local SEO software will get you started in the process of identifying the best citations for your clinic.
Go forth and rank!
So there you have it, a blueprint you can jump into that will help your clinic’s website to appear in local searches – all completely free (it just takes time).
For more marketing tips, visit our aesthetic marketing hub or subscribe to our newsletter to receive our regularly posted marketing tips straight to your inbox.
Of course getting potential clients to your website is only the first step to getting business. Once they visit, you need to do everything you can to make sure they convert into a booking.
One critical way that you can do that is to keep the booking process for potential clients as easy and frictionless as possible. The majority of customers are looking to book an appointment at night, or over the weekend (when your clinic might be closed).
Pabau’s Online Booking widget helps with this problem – a simple piece of code added to your website that connects to our system, and allows clients to make bookings online.
Pabau’s system is chock full of features that help clinic owners to market their clinic and maximise the chances of securing new clients and encouraging repeat bookings.
Get in touch with us to book a free one-to-one demo with one of our consultants and find out other ways that we can help.
