Search engine optimization (known for short as SEO) is a series of activities done to improve the ranking and visibility of a business or website on search engines. The SERP (Search engine result page) is arranged in a way that the best “SEO’ed” sites are top, in descending order. To stand a chance, you must do SEO the way it should be done. This might be difficult for you, so you need an SEO Company to handle your local SEO for you.
For websites to rank, there are a few things they must satisfy, and this includes (majorly) the keyword you want to rank for. Your SEO Company must understand how keywords are applied, how this keyword must be placed in the Meta tags of posts, images and search description of your website.
A good SEO company must know how to play with keyword density in a way that search engines wouldn’t get upset (or even delist your site). Keyword density is the ratio of your chosen keywords to your article length and at the moment it shouldn’t exceed 4 percent. This means for a post of a thousand words, the keywords use must not exceed 40, otherwise, you might be penalized for keyword stuffing. It could be less, but it must not be more, a good keyword density begins from 0.5% and must not exceed 4%.
Local SEO involves including specific keywords which people from your town or city includes their search terms. For instance, someone from “Alaska” might include Alaska in his search term (e.g. Local SEO companies in Alaska), this way, you stand a better chance of being shown on top of SERP if you included it in your text or content.
Keyword proximity
Your SEO firm must also understand Keyword Proximity. Keyword proximity is the closeness of keywords (which tells search engines how relevant your post is to that keyword.) for instance “How to do keyword research” is a keyword and “How to carry out keyword research” are both the same keywords, but they both have different proximity, the first has a 100% proximity, if searchers type that exact phrase in their search bar, but does not have 100% proximity when the second is searched for (although they are the same keywords). The closer the proximity, the better, and a good SEO firm knows how to include your keywords in your content naturally when search engines detect keyword stuffing, there will be a serious penalty placed on your site.
The SEO firm you choose must have a good knowledge of the application of LSI. The term LSI stands for ‘Latent Semantic index. This simply means the variation of the same keywords as used by searchers of the search engines. This is often displayed in blue under your search results. And your SEO firm must be able to use this effectively.
On the importance of backlinks
This is the biggest factor in SEO today. Your SEO firm must be able to build backlinks to your website from other quality websites. This will improve your Domain authority (DA). Page Authority (PA) etc. You must get backlinks from related brands and probably from related websites which have also done local SEO like you.
A good local SEO company or firm must understand all these and more to help you improve in your SEO pursuit. A nice SEO firm must put to good use long tail keywords. The use of long tail keywords shoots you directly to the number on the search engine result pages.