The results of the search engines are influenced by criteria that evolve regularly in order to answer more and more relevant to the user. The geographic context is an element that has gained importance in recent years and must be taken into account by companies and organizations that have a delimited catchment area on a sector. Local SEO in Kenya consists of setting up an SEO strategy to provide visibility according to geographical criteria.

According to @ThinkWithGoogle, 76% of people who search for local businesses on mobile visit a related business that same day. #LocalSEOKenya

How to improve your Local SEO in Kenya?

Recently, Google has updated its local search algorithm to provide Internet users with more and more relevant results.

The local SEO in Kenya becomes a very important point to take into account to increase your traffic and improve your online reputation, especially if you have an activity that is to deal only with clients close to you. I have also made a Local SEO Complete Guide for those who want to go deeper into the subject. Are you ready?

According to the statistics announced, 25% of searches on Google are local, with a conversion rate of about 88%, knowing that most queries turn into a visit or a phone call.

In this article you will know more about –

How does Local SEO work?

Why local SEO?

Get started with Google Analytics

How to optimize our SEO?

Optimize your Google my Business page

Be present in local directories

Make sure your quotes give the same information

Have a good Google+ page

Get more customer reviews

Well write the content of the site

Have a site “mobile friendly seo”

Optimize local netlinking

Optimize your site with a local context

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How does Local SEO work?

Local SEO is a very effective way to give online visibility to your small business in Kenya. It helps small businesses to promote their products and services in their chalk area.

When people search for a particular product, local search allows some companies in a particular area to appear in search results.

Local SEO includes several strategies such as using local directories like Yelp, Yellow Page, Google My Business or Bing, writing localized content or having more customer reviews.

Millions of customers use Google daily for local searches to find the best companies in their city or region.

You can increase your chances of appearing in these results by working with an SEO expert who can guide you and give the best tips.

Local SEO services Kenya offer highly targeted online marketing. It’s not like you distribute brochures or advertise in a local newspaper).

Local SEO agencies give you the opportunity to give you more visibility on search engines and other platforms.

We are one of the top local digital marketing agency in Kenya for SMEs and VSEs. We want to help traders and artisans to have a lot more visibility. Today, being visible in one’s geographical area is an essential element.

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LOCAL SEO RANKING FACTORS

Get Your Small Business Website On 1st Page In Google

Why local SEO?

Local SEO is a branch of natural referencing. It’s a way for companies to position themselves in local search results .

Today, many Google searches are local: a plumber near my home, a hotel for my vacation in London, a sports club in Paris, etc.

According to the results of a study by Google, 4 out of 5 Internet users search locally on the search engine, and 34% of them visit a store during the day. Being locally referenced is a very important strategy for not missing out on potential customers.

Local searches are usually used to find a specific company or in a second case to find a particular type of product or service. Many Internet users are looking for a unique business when they search for others do not have a name in mind.

When you use marketing strategies for local searches you can position yourself much better in this type of search.

Conversions or rather sales are more numerous through local searches because Internet users already want your product or service.

Local SEO Kenya Checklist 2019

Get started with Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps sites to identify sources for their traffic. It’s a free analytics tool that offers great features like:

See traffic from different channels such as search engines, social media networks, and referral sites.

Identify pages on your site that bring the most traffic

Compare the performance of monthly, weekly, or daily traffic from your site

View audience demographics, page views, bounce rates, and average time on the site.

Many site owners don’t know this super-useful strategy in connecting Google Analytics with Google Search Console to identify keywords for site rankings, impressions, and CTR from your main landing page.

You can use the following resources to implement Google Analytics if you use other platforms for your site.

Start with Analytics

    Enter your Google account. Open Google Analytics

    Register for Google Analytics. Enter your website URL and fill in all other required fields

    When finished, you will be shown the Analytics tracking code

    Install the Google Analytics Plugin Dashboard on your site. You will be asked to authenticate your Google account

    Make sure you keep signing in with your Google Account.

    Choose the right GA profile from your site and you are done.

Optimize your Google my Business page

Creating a Google My Business (GMB) page is the best way to improve your Google Local Search results and improve your local SEO.

First, you need to put your GMB profile online. Afterward, you must follow a specific procedure to validate the fact that you are the owner of the company. Then you can add all the information related to your establishment:

the name of the company,

the mailing address,

opening hours,

the category, your website,

telephone number,

your photos, etc.

It is highly recommended to add information about your service area and to add your location to Google Maps.

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To further optimize your GMB page, it is very interesting to insert the right keywords, as if referring to a website.

Build, verify and optimize “Google My Business” pages

“Maps pack” rankings are tied to your Google My Business listing, not [necessarily] your website.

Since the Maps Pack dominates clicks, it’s important we pay special attention to optimizing our listings.

• Selecting your Categories for your SEO

Selecting your categories is a crucial step for your local SEO. Categories are like sections of the Yellow Pages directory. The more you have, the more likely you will be seen by prospects.

However, you have to pay attention to the relevance of your categories and select only the ones that most describe your activity. You will be penalized if this is not the case.

• How to choose your category?

You can benchmark all of your top competitors and see the most used categories.

We must also take into account the categories that convert most that is to say those that will bring back the most customers. Be careful not to lie about your activity as this may affect the relevance of your company in the search engines.

Local citation – Be present in local directories

Today, online directories are on the rise. Being present on local directories is a technique that can help you improve your local SEO.

To search for a specific place, many people use online directories, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor.

These are sites that allow prospects to have a clear idea about the quality of the product and the service offered by the company, and this, based on the opinions published by the old customers.

It is therefore very important to be present on the main local directories and to ensure that all the information is included. In this way, you can improve your local SEO and attract more and more customers

Make sure your contact information is consistent across all channels

NAP is an acronym for Name, Address and Phone, this is your company name, address and phone number.

For the rest of the page, you can have contact information in the footer.

I have separated the homepage from other pages to emphasize the importance of contact information so that it can be seen on the homepage.

One of the biggest mistakes that many people make, when it comes to Local SEO optimization, is the inconsistency of NAP information.

This means that the address and telephone number that you show on the website must be the same as the address you have on Facebook, the Google My Business page, and other places where your company is registered.

These citations help with local SEO because they show Google you’re a legitimate business that wants to be found.

We have a 3 step process to manage citations:

Clean up existing citations

Find new opportunities

Create new citations

Besides Google My Business, Bing Places, Yext and Yelp, there are countless business directories with solid domain authority that will list your business, including:

Superpages

Citysearch

Local.com

MerchantCircle

ShowMeLocal

Add Google maps on the contact information page

It’s easy to add a Google map of your business on our contact page and this is another strong signal from the location of your business for search engines.

The best way to add a map is to go to Google Maps, type your address and then select “Share or Embed Map” from the top left menu.

In the pop-up window, click the Embed Map tab and copy and paste the code into your WordPress website.

NAP is essential for your local SEO to have the same information listed on your site and your Google My Business page. That’s not all. Google also looks for correspondence with other mentions of your business on other sites.

Bing Places for Business is free, easy to complete and allows you to check your business information online.

Your information, contact details must be the same on each of the sites in which you are mentioned especially your local directories.

Optimize your Social Networks

• Well configured your Social Networks

If you do not have a Facebook page yet, it may be time to get started. Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter provide additional information about your business.

You do not need to do anything other than save your information, contact details on your pages.

It is important to know that you can add many of your addresses to Facebook if you have multiple locations. This will allow you to grow your local SEO.

• Have a good Google+ page

To improve your local SEO, it is very important to be present on Google Plus.

So you need to create a Google+ account with all the required information, that is;

the URL of your website,

The description of your company,

The Google Maps location,

The postal address,

Your phone number, etc.

In this way, Google’s robots will understand your business and position you around your region to attract new prospects.

By having a page on Google Plus with all the necessary information, you will provide your prospects with all the elements they need to determine your professionalism and the viability of your company. We, therefore, advise you to always update your information. Google Plus is your tool to increase your local SEO.

Get more customer reviews

More and more local businesses are realizing the importance of having online reviews of their customers. According to a recent study, 79% of people trust opinions online to make a decision.

There are many online tools you can use to track and manage your reviews. Here are the best on the market:

Trust Pilot

Reputation Loop

VendAsta

In addition, there are some social media platforms like Hootsuite to allow you to have alerts when your Brand is mentioned online.

It is strongly recommended that you have the most positive reviews on your Google Plus page. We advise you to solicit your satisfied customers to leave an opinion on your page.

In addition, it is advisable to answer them in order to reassure your Internet users, even if you will receive a bad opinion. In this way, you establish a relationship of trust with your customers, who can recommend you to those around them.

The 2 most important platforms are Google my Business and Facebook, they are the biggest and the most legitimate ones. Many people look at what their family thinks of a business. So having good advice can attract many new customers to your business.

When you receive reviews on Google My Business, these appear on Google when someone searches for your business. At the same time, the positive reviews would promote the visibility of the company so an important factor for your local SEO and be in the pack.

We’ve talked about optimizing your Google My Business listing now here are 5 effective ways to improve your local SEO for your business.

Improve your internal mesh (internal links)

It is obvious that the backlinks or external links that point are important but you must also take into account the structure of your internal links. Why is the internal mesh of your site important for your local SEO?

This helps to facilitate navigation on your site

There is a transmission of authority domain between your pages

Your site is better organized and more understandable for the Google robot

Optimize the URL, your Title tag and meta description

When you write content on your blog or a new service or product page, you must optimize your content for search engines. You can use your keywords in your URL, your titles, your meta descriptions and even your paragraph in order to have a good local SEO.

If you have trouble finding topics that concern your area, you can also highlight your clients’ testimonials and their experience.

Mention your details (addresses, phone, name) on your Pages

If your business has multiple addresses you must create multiple pages for each address.

You will need to include your Name, Address, Phone, Opening Hours and a short description for each of the locations. Be careful, do not copy pasted your content to not have duplicate content.

If you have only one address, I suggest you create an “About” page in your Menu that traces all the elements mentioned above.

Bonus: You can also include a localized map of your location on each of your address pages for better local listings.

To inform your visitors

To show your expertise, do not hesitate to add photos of your achievements, your company, your collaborators and your products and services to give Internet users a clear idea about the quality of the service you provide.

To finish with Google Plus, we want to clarify that you must intelligently insert the right keywords in your content to optimize your local SEO.

Have a site “mobile friendly SEO”

Today, Google gives more importance to responsive sites or “mobile friendly SEO”. These are sites that the user can visit from his computer, Smartphone or tablet, without difficulty.

Global mobile data traffic from 2017 to 2022 (in exabytes per month)

More and more customers are using their phones or tablets to find the best products or services locally. In fact, searches on mobile phones in France are more important than those on computers. Are you mobile-friendly? Find out using Google’s mobile-friendly test tool.

So what are you waiting for?

Local SEO covers both aspects, which means that you will never run out of potential customers on your mobile or computer.

On the other hand, if your site is not “mobile friendly”, Google can penalize it. As a result, you lose positions on the search engine.

To improve your local SEO, this point must be taken into consideration.

Optimize linking for your local SEO

Optimizing your local netlinking strategy is something you need to take seriously.

To do this, it is necessary to create external links on local news sites, sites of local associations, the site of the town hall, the tourist office or the chamber of commerce and industry of your region.

You can also contact local blogs and suggest they write a guest article.

Optimize your site with a local context

To improve your local SEO, it is important to optimize your site by inserting the most searched local keywords in your area.

You must also enter your keywords in the Title tag, the URL, the meta description tag, the H1, H2, H3 title with the ALT tags of your images.

Set up structured data (Schema Markup)

Using structured data, you can specify:

Your business name, logo, location and contact information

Your business hours

Your products and services, as well as what they cost and their customer ratings

What types of payment you accept

Blog post authors, dates and images

There’s a pretty long list of attributes you can tag just with LocalBusiness schema,

There are thousands of structured data. But the one that concerns us particularly is the tag schema: “LocalBusiness” at least it is the one you should have to start. It is almost impossible to be well referenced locally without this Schema Tag.

You can also set up Schema Tags for your products and services. Remember that the idea is to facilitate the language with the Google robot (search engine). The goal is to simplify things for search engines and optimize your local SEO.

Not sure if you already have structured data on your site? Do not panic, you can use this test site created by Google called Structured Data Test Tools. This Tool will give you all of your different data on your website.

Schema Markup Plugins in WordPress

make sure to choose one that specifically includes LocalBusiness schema, for example:

Business Profile by Theme of the Crop

WP SEO Structured Data Schema by WPSEMPlugins

Rich Snippets by WPBuddy

From now on, you have all the elements to better understand the stakes and the implementation of your local SEO strategy.

If you are already successfully implementing your Google My Business, you will see big changes in your online visibility.

To sum up all of the elements that will help you optimize your local SEO:

Optimize your Google My Business listing, which is the basis of your local search engine optimization;

Register on local directories relevant to your activity;

Provide information on all platforms;

Have your Google Page;

Get feedback from your most loyal customers because their reviews will help your local SEO;

The key to any local SEO in Kenya is the content of the site (Content is King);

Always have a responsive and mobile friendly website for your visitors;

Improve your local linking by demarcating some sites that speak about your area or city;

Always quote your address on your pages and surroundings to improve your local SEO.

Another way to make your geolocation SEO succeed is to entrust it to an SEO agency Kenya. To develop a good local SEO strategy and be ahead of the competition, hiring a professional is a real added value.

Find Local “influencers”

Bring local “influencers” in and give them an experience worth sharing.

Contact Local SEO Pros at DIMEHUB

DimeHub provides practical advice to local businesses wishing to increase their visibility and accumulate traffic very quickly. In addition, our expertise in the field guarantees a perfect mastery of optimization techniques (natural and local) while staying in step with Google trends.

Our goal is to give companies real visibility in geo location on search engines. Local search is now a prime marketing point of view to attract new customers. It makes it possible to rapidly increase the turnover of a company or business.

Local SEO in Kenya | Get Higher Rankings, More Leads