Local businesses are well-served by optimising their websites for Google and other search engines. Your business can benefit when you get your local SEO right in Brisbane, with potential customers easily finding you on Google.

Being visible on search engines is crucial, considering that 97% of users have searched for a local business. Your business can’t afford to miss out on traffic like that because 28% of searches for a local business result in a purchase.

You can see how the best SEO practices can help you grow your Brisbane business. Our 13 tips will help you optimise your website for local SEO.

13 Tips to Optimise Your Local SEO in Brisbane

These tips will help you to optimise your website for local search results.

1. Google Business Profile

Claiming your Google Business Profile is a fundamental step for better performance in local Google search results. You should do this immediately if you haven’t already done so.

With Google Business, you can create a profile for your business on Google. You can publish critical information about your business, such as location and opening hours.

Setting up a Google Business Profile is easy. You just need to ensure that it’s accurate and optimised to get the best results. Follow these steps to set it up.

• Log into Google or create an account
• Go to Google Business and add your business
• Enter your business location
• Add contact information
• Verify your business
• Optimise your profile

You need to optimise your profile so that people know what your business does. Here, you should tell people what you do or sell, when you’re open, and how they can contact you. Also, you can add photos and videos to show more about your business.

Complete your business profile to the best of your ability because it helps Google to match your business with the right searches. Make sure the information is complete and accurate.

Additionally, you can ask customers to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile. This helps other potential customers and builds trust in your business.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is free, and you should take advantage of it for your business. It helps optimise your website to rank better in search results.

Linking your website to Google Search Console ensures Google has a record of your site. It means Google will actively crawl your website, checking for keywords and relevant information to rank it correctly. That helps get your website in front of people who search for your products or services.

The Google Search Console dashboard also gives you access to daily reports. It offers information on how your site performs in search and how it can rank better.

You can see the keywords you rank for and any site errors you need to fix.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is also a free tool that helps your local SEO efforts in Brisbane. With this tool, you can track your website traffic and other SEO data. Such information is critical when planning and executing your SEO strategy.

You can see what pages perform the best on your website. That information gives you an idea of what kind of content performs the best with your audience, helping you to decide which content to invest in and where to put your efforts.

4. Optimise Web Pages

You should consider URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, content, images and NAP details when optimising your web pages for local SEO. Getting these elements right helps boost your SEO and increase organic traffic to your website.

• URLs – these should be clear and simple. It’s best practice to include the keyword you’re targeting in the URL. For instance, an electrician targeting the keyword ‘solar installation’ could use ‘thebestelectrician.com.au/services/solar-installation’ as the URL.

• Title Tags – these appear on Google search results like a headline. You should keep them concise and make sure they include your target keyword.

• Meta Descriptions – they’re the preview text that appears on Google and tells people what the content is about. You can optimise meta descriptions by including the keyword and staying within a character limit (around 155 characters is best practice).

• Content – this should tell the audience what your business does and the services it offers. Ensure you address your keywords in your content so that the page appears when people search for that term.

• Images – they can show your goods and services while boosting your SEO. Google likes original images instead of stock images, so use your own images where possible.

• NAP Details – name, address and phone details should always be the same on every page of your website. These should also appear the same in your Google Business Profile and any directory listings. Uniform NAP details help your business rank on Google, as there’s no conflicting information to ‘confuse’ search engines.

5. Mobile-Friendly Site

Most people use their phones to search the web. Your website needs to be mobile-friendly so that these searchers have a good user experience.

Also, Google’s algorithm favours mobile-friendly websites. It ranks them higher in search results, so your site must be responsive on mobile devices to take advantage of that.

6. Blog Content

You can also target keywords with blog content. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to use every relevant keyword on your website service pages. Blog content is an excellent way to use keywords that you haven’t been able to use yet.

Regularly posting blog content is crucial to your digital marketing strategy. Targeting keywords in this way helps to boost your visibility in search results.

This content is an excellent way to target longtail keywords people search for. For instance, people might search for this: How much is solar installation in Brisbane? You can write an article for your blog that answers this question and others like it.

Also, this content helps the audience and gives it value. Blog content is a great way to build trust and authority by providing valuable information.

7. Optimise Citations

Optimising citations across the web helps your SEO strategy. Citations are other mentions of your NAP details (name, address and phone number) across the web. Google uses these citations to verify the authority of your business.

The following steps help you to optimise citations:

• Ensure every web page and all business listings have accurate and consistent NAP details.
• Every link to your website must direct to the right landing page.
• Do a citation audit using a citation checker, and clean up any mistakes.
• Check where your competitors get their citations from and make sure you get listed there as well.
• Get your business listed on local directories.

8. Local Link Building

The previous tip helps with link building for your website. With local link building, you want to get authoritative backlinks to your website from locally relevant websites. These backlinks help to build your website’s authority in the eyes of Google search.

But how do you secure backlinks to your website? Here are some options to get local backlinks and build your authority.

• Join a local chamber of commerce and ask them to link to your website.
• Sponsor community events.
• Write guest posts for local blogs and publications.
• Use a backlink checker to see how your competitors get backlinks and use the same strategy.

The more backlinks you can get to your website, the better it is for your SEO strategy.

9. Local PR

It’s always a good idea to get your business name in front of the public. Getting local PR is an effective way to do that. It builds brand awareness and trust with potential customers.

You can try to get local newspapers or publications to cover your business. Maybe you’re hosting an event and would like local news to cover it. This strategy also helps you get local backlinks.

10. Local Directories and Listings

Listing your business in local directories is another way to boost local SEO. Google gets more signals that your business is notable when it appears in more directories like Yelp and Yellow Pages. It sends Google a message to prioritise your business in local searches for your products or services.

Ensure your business details are accurate and consistent across all directories. You can also upload images to local listings, which get added to the Google Images algorithm.

11. Schema Geographic Markup

Search engines like Google can better understand your website if you use Schema markup on your website. It helps search engines rank your website accordingly and can improve your local SEO.

Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Yandex created Schema.org. You can add it to your website to get star ratings, reviews, and prices to appear in Google search results.

The Geographic Markup feature is crucial for local SEO. Using it gives search engines more information about your location and boosts local SEO as a result.

12. Social Media

We all know about the power of social media by now. For your business, it can help build your brand and boost awareness. What may not be so clear is how social media can help with local SEO.

Boost SEO with backlinks

It’s unclear if a strong social media presence sends signals to Google to boost your SEO. However, you can use your social media accounts to create backlinks to your website.

The more social media platforms you use for your business, the more backlinks you can generate. That’s a proven way to boost your local SEO.

Build Connections

Social media also helps you to build connections with your audience. People get a better insight into your business and have a greater chance of relating to it. That is an excellent way to foster trust between you and your customers.

Paid ads through social media are also an outstanding way to build your business. Facebook and Instagram Ads and Google Ads extend your reach to potential customers.

13. Customer Reviews

Most customers read online reviews before visiting a business. They help build trust between potential customers and your business.

However, reviews are also a crucial factor for boosting local SEO. In particular, responding to reviews helps your SEO efforts.

Generating reviews for your business is easy. You can:

• Ask customers to leave a review
• Have a Google review button on your website
• Review other businesses in your area – they might leave you a review also if they use your services.

You should respond to every review you get, whether negative or positive. According to Google, negative reviews may impact your business, but responding to all reviews boosts your local SEO.

Conclusion

Following the tips in this article will help with local SEO for your Brisbane business. It’s essential to make your business visible to potential customers. You can then let your excellent products and services do the rest.

We hope you found these tips helpful. Sometimes implementing an effective SEO strategy can be overwhelming, and many business owners are too busy to do it, but we’re here to help.

If you have more questions about boosting your SEO, feel free to contact us, and we’ll be happy to answer them.