Local SEO Services – Austin TX – Round Rock – Georgetown

Our local SEO services can significantly improve search rankings, online visibility and sales. Especially for businesses offering consumer products and services. As with organic search, your company is engaged in a daily local SEO competition with rivals in your industry and geographical area. A retail store, restaurant or home services company that doesn’t show up in Google, Yelp or Facebook searches is losing business to competitors. For a FREE Local SEO assessment, contact Semantic Advantage today!

If your company is located in a well-known part of a large city, we can often improve local search visibility by focusing our optimization efforts on that specific neighborhood. This is a key strategy in SEO for small business. Of course, we’ll evaluate the usual trade-offs of specificity vs. traffic volume. And we target keywords that differentiate your company from competitors.

For example, it is easier to attain Page One ranking (or a top Google Places or Yelp position) for ‘lakeway restaurant’, ‘four points hair salon’ or ‘steiner ranch realtor’ than for the analogous Austin searches. But the lower traffic volumes for those keywords may not justify this approach. Our team of local SEO experts will conduct a thorough keyword research effort to assess these traffic volumes and the competitive environment. This ensures your online marketing program targets the most productive keywords.

Example of Local SEO – Austin – Four Points – Steiner Ranch

In the west Austin suburbs, businesses in Lakeway, Steiner Ranch and Four Points can benefit from local search engine optimization. Lakeway (Zip Code 78734) has a population of about 12,000. Steiner Ranch (78732) ~15,000 and Four Points (also 78732) have around 8,500. Interestingly, the search volumes (US searches/month) for keyword phrases containing these community names do not correlate with their populations:

Root Keyword	+ austin	+ lakeway	+ four points	+ steiner ranch
restaurant	480	30	<10	30
hair salon	110	20	<10	<10
luxury homes	210	<10	<10	<10
ac repair	260	<10	<10	<10

While Four Points-related searches generally receive the least traffic (as expected), the least populous Lakeway receives the most. Steiner Ranch does well in restaurant searches – primarily due to the popular Steiner Ranch Steakhouse which accounts for nearly all this search volume.

NOTE: The fact that there are less than 10 searches per month for a given keyword does not mean this is an unproductive search term for your company’s local SEO campaign. In aggregate, a few dozen of these ‘long-tail’ search terms can generate hundreds of searches per month. That represents a pretty good traffic stream for a small business. And this Short Tail Strategy makes it less difficult to achieve a high placement on Google Places (as well as the Google organic results). You can eliminate online competition from all those downtown Austin businesses by optimizing for search terms like ‘four points restaurants’, ‘steiner ranch ac repair’ or ‘lakeway hair salons’.

Tips for Local Search Optimization

In the past few years, most search engines have altered their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) layouts to incorporate “local results” on Page One. Near the top, just below the top ads. These generally include capsule summaries of three local businesses. Those businesses may or may not have earned first page placement via the normal ranking algorithm.

At the same time, search engines have also increased their ranking algorithms’ weighting of ‘social signals’. This gives more consideration to social media business pages and ratings-reviews site mentions of your company. As a consequence, we allocate some of our local SEO services effort to Facebook, Google My Business, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. As well as optimizing listings in business directories like CitySearch, Manta, MerchantCircle and YellowPages.

Recommended Local SEO Services Tasks

1. Analyze the competition. We begin by doing Google, Bing and Facebook searches using search terms relevant to your business. Our Local SEO team notes who the major competitors are and assesses their websites, social media sites, ratings and reviews. Generally speaking, to get ahead of a rival in the local SEO competition, you need a bigger/better website, and better search optimization. Also more and better ratings-reviews, and more links to and from those reviews.
2. Research keyword search volumes and choose target keywords accordingly. Pick local seo battles your company can win by focusing on relevant long-tail keywords. As the above example illustrates, a neighborhood-focused business should not rely on an Austin-oriented local SEO program. Focusing on Steiner Ranch, Lakeway and Four Points can bring you plenty of traffic.
3. Utilize Short-Tail/Long-Tail Local SEO strategy. The combination of a few short-tail keywords and lots of long-tail search terms generally provides the most cost-effective strategy.
4. Optimize listing profiles in major business directories, social media sites and industry-specific ratings-review sites. By ‘optimize’ we mean creating SEO-enhanced profiles, images and website links.
5. Evaluate Zip Codes in your keyword research. These prove to be useful for city or neighborhood names that are long or difficult to spell. People will use the Zip Code instead. In the examples above, we can enhance your local SEO by including the ZIP in page copy and meta tags. For example, ‘restaurant in Lakeway 78734′, Steiner Ranch real estate 78734’, or ‘dry cleaners near Four Points 78732’.

Local Search ZIP Codes – Austin 78701 78702 – Suburbs 78734 78746 78759

Semantic Advantage – Local SEO Company – Austin Texas

Businesses looking for local SEO services in the Austin area should consider several factors when selecting an agency or consultant. In most cases, the company you choose should have experience within your industry and geographic locale. And working on the ratings-review platforms specific to that industry. For restaurants – Google My Business, Yelp and Zomato business page enhancements usually produce the most value. As with SEM-PPC programs and organic search optimization, local search marketing requires highly technical expertise. Most small businesses will obtain better results by engaging a local SEO services agency to design and implement these programs.

In the process of enhancing your local search rankings, a professional local SEO company can also increase your exposure on popular ratings-reviews sites. We also optimize corporate listings in business directories and social media sites. With Local SEO enhancements, these can provide new avenues for customers to find your business.

For some types of products and services, people prefer to search on Angie’s List, Facebook or Yelp. Or an industry-specific directory or ratings-review site like TripAdvisor (hotels), Zocdoc (doctors) or Zomato (restaurants). And for B2B products and services, many people look on LinkedIn. In Austin the best local SEO services companies will also target high traffic online news sites, community bulletin boards and blog sites.

Contact Semantic Advantage today to learn how our Local Search optimization services can enhance your website traffic and search rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook and Yelp.