SEO is an essential part of website design for all businesses. Focusing on local SEO helps draw traffic from people who are already close by. Consider these tips when optimising website content for local search results.

1) Do Local Keyword Research

Business owners should know what keywords are ranking locally for their particular industry. Tools such as Google Insights can provide a window into what people are searching for and help determine which keywords to include in website content. Input likely keywords and narrow the results to a particular location and period to get the most relevant data along with related terms and new search trends.

2) Include Location Information

Every business website should include full location and contact information on each page. Business name, physical address, phone number, and e-mail address should appear in a prominent place so that it’s visible to both visitors and search engines. Include the same information along with the main website URL in all social media profiles to boost visibility in search results.

3) Use Local Online Listings

Business directories such as Yelp, Yahoo, Google Places and Yellow Pages offer another way to increase local visibility. Listings from these sites appear in search results and provide users with complete business information along with maps. Some also offer user reviews, which many people rely on for help when making purchasing decisions.

4) Don’t Forget Google+

For users with Google+ accounts, the social network has some influence over what they see in search results. Businesses can take advantage of this by creating a Google+ Business page and getting it listed in relevant categories of Google+ Local. This service integrates scoring and user review summaries from Zagat to help users choose everything from stores to restaurants. Users can also visit individual Business pages for more information, generating fresh traffic and potentially resulting in click-thru to the official business website.

5) Think Mobile

Depending on the industry, a business website may get as much as 50 percent of its traffic from mobile users. This makes it essential to have an easily navigable, mobile-friendly site. A growing number of people are performing mobile searches, looking for restaurants, retailers and other business locations that are accessible as they go about their daily activities. Mobile websites make businesses more readily available to active users and open the door to new marketing opportunities.

6) Track Keywords

Using an analytics tool like Google Analytics to keep track of keywords allows a business to see which terms are generating the most traffic. These results can be used to tweak website content or create fresh content that helps improve local SEO and boosts organic search rankings.

7) Be Visible Locally

One of the great ways to garner attention for a business is to get involved in the local community. Attending fairs and festivals and participating in community events such as fundraisers puts a business in the spotlight and may generate media coverage. Newspapers and local television stations post local news on their websites, increasing visibility for any business or organisation mentioned in the story.

Marketing to a local demographic allows businesses to take advantage of a large customer base in the immediate community and the surrounding area. A solid local presence can generate repeat customers from within the community and increases word-of-mouth advertising both online and off, leading to even more local traffic.

In order to truly take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that being an ecommerce provides, generating traffic through a number of different sources is very important. You can never guarantee that one of the traffic streams you’ve built is going to remain and maintain for good, so putting all of your eggs in that one basket can be very risky.

As a part of a complete digital marketing strategy, by experienced professionals, you should be working towards generating business through a number of different channels; social, email marketing, search engine marketing (both PPC and SEO), display ad networks, and blog outreach are some of the key areas worth your attention. In order to benefit from each of these areas, a big part of that is achieved through the collection, analysis and response to data.

Google analytics is the most widely used traffic analysis software in the world. It has a wide number of features and functions, but probably its most important is the channel attribution it offers. Its not enough to just see how much traffic you’re getting, you need to be able to how, where and when you’re getting it too; this is what channel attribution does.

If you’re able to refine the data in google analytics effectively, then you’ll be able to see precise channel attribution data. This can allow you to determine how effective each channel is at generating traffic and conversions, and in particular, which campaign was the most effective in each of them. It is important to note that the basic google analytics platform isn’t very adept at this by itself, and it may require greater integration with social media accounts, for instance.