Top 7 Local SEO Challenges and How to Fix Them
Table of the content
Introduction
This can be one of the most important aspects of digital marketing for any business if it targets a specific geography. However, this also comes with its own unique set of challenges that can often frustrate even the most seasoned marketers. I’m Deepak Sharma, the founder of Digital Deep Tech provides white label local SEO services. And in this blog post, I will walk you through some of the biggest local SEO challenges businesses face-and more importantly-how to solve them effectively.
Now let’s dive right into the problems, how they affect your business, and most importantly, the actionable solutions you can apply right now.
1. Challenge: Inconsistent NAP Information (Name, Address, Phone Number)
Why Does NAP Consistency Matter?
Ensure that all NAP information on your website and other platforms, such as social media, Google My Business, and local directories is consistent. Having different NAP information will confuse not only the customers but also search engines about your credibility. Google heavily relies on this data to confirm your business existence, and even minor variations like “Street” being abbreviated as “St.” can contribute to a low ranking in search results.
Solution: Conduct a NAP Audit and Standardize Your Information
First, audit any and every online directory your business is listed in. Moz Local and BrightLocal can scan across multiple directories and platforms to look for any sort of inconsistency in your NAP. Once you identify them, update them everywhere. To keep things consistent long-term, maintain a central document for the official NAP format of your business. This will keep things organized for future updates and changes.
2. Challenge: Un-optimized Google My Business Profile
How an Un-optimized GMB Hurts Your Ranking?
That’s really the heart of a local SEO strategy. Many business owners set this up once and never think about it or fill it out with minimal information. Huge mistake. No, leaving your GMB profile not fully optimized is leaving tremendous traffic and leads to others. And, if your GMB profile is actually incomplete or out-of-date, that will be negatively impacting your local search visibility and ranking in the local pack.
Solution: Fully Optimize Your Google My Business Profile
Here’s my recommendation for you to make the most from GMB:
- Fill in All Fields: Update your company name, address, phone number, website, and working hours.
- Add Photos and Videos: Businesses with photos get 42% more requests for directions and 35% more click-through to their website than those without.
- Use Keywords Wisely: Even though GMB has fewer fields, a primary and secondary keyword should be subtly included in your business description.
- Post Regularly: Use the post feature of GMB to update promotions or announcements. This will keep your profile fresh and active.
A Moz study reported that Google My Business signals account for 25% of the top-ranking factors of local SEO. If you want better visibility, then this is one indispensable step.
3. Challenge: Your Website Has Low-Localized Content
Why Location-Specific Content is a Game-Changer?
The largest local SEO mistake a business can make is by creating generic content that is not specific to the location they are targeting. Many businesses miss the point of this, meaning they never connect with the local audiences or rank in their country’s search results. Without localized content, Google can’t quite associate your business with the location you’re targeting as easily, making it even harder for you to pop up on searches for services nearby.
Solution: Location-Specific Landing Pages and Content
The best way to do this is by establishing landing pages for each geographic region that you service. Being a plumber in Sydney, you would develop a different page for key suburbs of Sydney, like North Sydney, Parramatta, or Bondi Beach, but include keywords “Plumbing services in North Sydney.”
These pages must carry:
- Location-specific keywords
- Local events, news or customer stories.
- You should also show customer reviews based on that location.
You can also leverage localized blog posts as a way to engage your community and improve your search ranking. Information suitable for local readers, such as guides on what’s happening in the local scene or specific tips only relevant to that region, can give your business a local advantage over your competition.
4. Challenge: Inadequate Citation Building and Management
Bad Citations Can Wreck Your Local Rankings
Citations, or other sites mentioning your business, comprise a huge part of local SEO. When your business isn’t listed in enough trusted local directories-or worse, if the information is bad-this will severely impact your business’s local search rankings. Poor-quality or inadequate numbers of citations tell Google that your business isn’t nearly as trustworthy or relevant as others.
Solution: Create Quality Local Citations
When this happens, the best cure is to keep building citations in better local directories relevant to your business. A simple way to begin is by adding your business to:
- Google My Business
- Bing Places
- Yelp
- Local business associations or chambers of commerce
Ensure that your NAP is the same on all these platforms. WhiteSpark and BrightLocal are great for citation management and will also help you find new opportunities for local citations. Citations don’t just give a boost to your SEO; they increase your business’s online authority.
5. Challenge: Not Collecting and Managing Reviews Effectively
Why Reviews Are Critical for Local SEO?
Online reviews are one of the highest impact levers for both rankings and user trust. A BrightLocal study claims that 87% of consumers check online reviews for local businesses, and businesses with positive reviews get perceived as more credible. On the other hand, not managing reviews or, worse, having negative reviews with no response can break your reputation and your ranks.
Solution: Actively Manage Your Reviews
Here’s how you can make reviews a competitive edge:
- Ask satisfied customers for a review
- Follow up on services completed with emails or texts asking happy customers to leave a review.
- Respond to all reviews, good or bad. Thank people for positive ones and address negative reviews professionally. A well-crafted response to a negative review can showcase your commitment to customer satisfaction.
- It can infuse local keywords into the responses to be slightly more relevant locally.
Just remember, Google wants to showcase business places with many, fresh, and high-quality reviews. Promoting and reviewing can help increase rankings quite effectively.
6. Challenge: Slow or Unresponsive Mobile Experience
Mobile Responsiveness is Non-Negotiable
We are living in a mobile-first world. As of 2024, more than 60% of all searches are conducted from mobile devices. So, if your users would like to find a restaurant near their location or plumbing service in the city, they likely do that on the go. So, when they do not see something adapted well to their mobile device, it’s single slide, and Google does not have good things to say about your ranking.
Solution: Optimize Your Website for Mobile and Speed
You have to make sure that your website provides an absolutely smooth mobile experience. Here’s what you have to pay attention to:
- Responsive Design: Ensure it looks pretty good on all devices
- Page Load Speed: If your page loads in over 3 seconds, then you lose 40% of users, says Google.
- Mobile-Friendly Content: Ensure that the content on your website is readable on a small screen.
Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how you’re doing, and change your ways if it reveals issues. If that doesn’t get your site ready, consider a professional audit and redesign with a view to giving mobile usability priority.
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7. Challenge: Overlooking Local Backlink Building
More often than not, local SEO optimization overlooks backlinks. High-quality local backlinks or authoritative domain backlinks can make a huge difference in your rankings. The lack of these local backlinks means that Google will argue that your business isn’t very connected or relevant to the local area and pushes you even further behind your competitors who’ve earned some level of local authority.
Solution: Build Local Backlinks through Intentional Outreach
Here’s how to go about local blacklining:
- Partner with Local Businesses: This can be guest blogging or cohosting an event for backlinking.
- Host or Participate in a Local Event or Charity: When hosting your local events, your business is listed on the website of the event you will participate in along with a backlink.
- Get Featured in Local Press: For example, you can reach out to your local newspapers or blogs and get your business featured or interviewed for backlinking.
This generates those backlinks as a vote of confidence from local authorities and plays a vital role in enhancing both your domain authority and your local rankings.
Conclusion
The closest geolocation customers to attract your business from is a big challenge when talking about local SEO. Some of the core problems from the list above, such as NAP consistency, GMB optimization, localization of content, and mobile responsiveness, give you a rather significant uplift in ranking within the local search. From my personal experience of helping many businesses lift their local SEO, I can ensure you that those problems above directly affect your digital presence.
Let’s make sure your business doesn’t fall behind in the race of local SEO!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website to increase traffic, leads, and brand awareness coming from local search. This targets customers in a certain geographic area.
2. How does Google My Business impact local SEO?
GMB is a local SEO game-changer. It means that your business is much more likely to be shown in Google Maps and search results.
3. Why is NAP consistency important?
NAP stands for name, address, phone number. NAP consistency translates into the trust of information about your business from search engines as well as customers. Unrelated data can have an adverse effect on the rankings.
4. How can I generate more reviews for my business?
This can be achieved by encouraging satisfied customers to leave feedback and easily accessible review platforms like Google or Yelp.
5. What are citations in local SEO?
Citations refer to the mention of your business name, address, and phone number on other websites where they help build your online authority.
6. How can I optimize my website for mobile?
Implement responsive design, optimize your website for speed, and mobile friendly content. We these Tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test allow you to know what needs improvement.
7. How do backlinks influence local SEO?
Using quality back links coming from other established local sites and authority improves the worth of your website as well as boosts locality specific rankings in search results.
8. What tools can be used to check out local SEO performance?
Tools such as Google My Business Insights, Moz Local, and BrightLocal can help you monitor and enhance your local SEO performance.
9. Does social media have any relation to local SEO?
If you’re interacting with the geographical location in which you are on social media, then you are directly increasing your chances of online visibility and quality traffic to your website.
10. How long should I wait before getting the results for my local SEO?
It may take as many weeks or months before major changes start to be viewed within the level of competition involved and some strategies used.
About the Author
Deepak Sharma is the founder of Digital Deep Tech and a renowned SEO and digital marketing expert with over a decade of experience. Passionate about helping businesses enhance their online presence, Deepak specializes in creating SEO strategies that drive traffic and generate leads.