Local SEO is an efficient and sustainable way to attract organic traffic and the right attention to your local business. 

Speaking of attention, do you know Google processes around 8.5 billion searches daily? And 46% of these searches on Google have local intent.  

Now, imagine your business showing up among local searches for products or services in your industry. 

Won’t that be fulfilling?

With the help of Local SEO, you can easily achieve this. However, when doing local SEO, you must avoid a few mistakes, so your efforts don’t go down the drain. In this article, we’ll uncover 10 common Local SEO mistakes and how you can avoid them.

Top 10 Common Local SEO Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

These common mistakes can sabotage your local SEO efforts if not corrected. 

1. Lack of Multiple Directory Profiles

Listing your business in just one public directory is not enough.

What’s even worse is not having your business listed in any public directory at all.

Naturally, your local business will gain more credibility when it’s listed on public directories like Google Business, Yellow Pages, Bing Places, and Yelp. But more importantly, search engines love it when your business is listed on multiple public directories with the same company information. 

It shows that your business is “REAL” and worth ranking in your location. 

Having multiple directory profiles also means customers can find your business in whichever public directory they look.

2. No Google Business Profile

Even if you aren’t listed on other public directories, getting listed on Google Business is a must. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, with about 91.54% of the search engine market share. 

So, not listing your business on Google is like hiding away from 90% of the world’s daily searches. To put this in a better perspective, you would be hidden from the 8.5 billion searches Google processes daily.

Here’s an example of a Google business profile of a local business based in the United States. 

Image source: Google

3. Inconsistencies in NAPW Info

NAPW is an abbreviation for Name, Address, Phone number, and Website.

This information shouldn’t be inconsistent across multiple listings for the same company. Always remember to update business profiles on directories after changing phone numbers or moving your business to a new location. 

Having inconsistent NAPW information can confuse search engines and even your potential customers.

4. Less or No Customer Reviews

It’s a huge mistake when businesses view customer reviews as a “nice to have” thing.

Imagine if someone searched online for “nearby restaurants,” and a couple of nice places popped up. How do you think the person would choose which restaurants to go to?

For many people, they’d simply choose the restaurant with the best customer reviews. Having lots of customer reviews will give your local business more credibility. 

Even search engines prefer and rank businesses with lots of positive customer reviews.

5. Neglecting Negative Reviews

Negative customer reviews can be tough to swallow sometimes, especially when the customer is rude, inconsiderate, and uncooperative. 

But no matter how negative the review, never ignore it. As awkward as it may sound, the presence of one or two negative reviews sometimes makes a business feel more “REAL.”

That’s why you shouldn’t ignore such reviews but instead respond with high professionalism. Your response alone can be the reason why potential customers feel convinced to do business with you.  

6. Generalized Keyword Targets

That’s like expecting to hit the bullseye while shooting everywhere with no target in mind.

Instead of attempting to rank for a keyword like “best plumbing services”, why not target “best plumbing service in Arizona”? The keyword “best plumbing services” is too generic and would only set you against many competitors globally.

But if your services only cover a specific area like Arizona, you would achieve better SEO results by targeting “best plumbing service in Arizona.” 

Another good example is targeting “Kid dentist Chicago” instead of a generic keyword like “best dentist for kids.”

7. Keyword Stuffing

Adding keywords to different areas on your website and public listings is a good SEO practice. However, overdoing it is bad and can sabotage your SEO efforts. 

You shouldn’t stuff 45 different keywords on your website because they are all related to your products and services. 

Even if you found 150+ high-quality keywords, ensure you only use them where they fit naturally. Sprinkle them in your website content, meta descriptions, image alt text, and even your business profiles on public directories like Yelp and Google. 

Remember, you don’t have to use up all your keywords. You can achieve excellent results with just a few keywords used properly. 

8. Not Optimizing Website for Mobile

A recent survey shows that mobile phones make up 53.59% of the worldwide market share of device usage. So, definitely, more people will view your business’ website on mobile phones than desktop or laptop devices. 

Google has also stated that mobile-friendliness is one of the top factors they consider in ranking websites. That’s why you should optimize your website to load faster and respond smoothly on mobile devices.

9. Not Optimizing Website Images

Imagine someone searching for a plumbing service in their area to fix broken pipes. Wouldn’t they love to see photos of a repaired broken pipe done by a nearby plumber? 

Something like this:

Image source: Waterextractionexperts

And guess what: search engines also love to index such photos and would show them to people searching for a related keyword like “hire a plumber to fix my broken pipe”

But if all the photos on your website aren’t optimized, how would search engines know that your plumbing service covers broken pipes?

Give descriptive names to the images you use on your website and add an ALT text for each.

See the example below.

Image source: ImageSeo

Optimizing your website images will boost your local SEO efforts and even attract more traffic from image searches.

10. Missing Contact Info on the Website

Even if your contact info is already on your public directory profiles, you should still add it to your website.

It could be somewhere at the bottom of each page, just as seen below.

It’s a total waste if your website ranks on top of search engine result pages, but no one can reach you because your website has no contact info. Add your contact address, email, and phone number. If possible, embed Google Maps to help potential customers locate your physical office. 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been making any of these local SEO mistakes, correct them now, and you’ll notice a huge improvement in your sales and revenue. 

List your business on multiple public directories with consistent contact info and use specific keywords relevant to your location. More importantly, optimize your website images because they’ll help you draw more attention from image searches.

However, if this is outside of your expertise and you’d prefer professional help, reach out to Inscribe. We’ve generated over $10 million in revenue for our clients, and we can help you use local SEO to get more customers. Book a call here to get started.