Local SEO is essential to businesses as the world moves closer and closer into the digital world. A local SEO strategy relies on marketing your brand, product and services to the local population and customers and thus staying relevant. By putting of the focus from your local SEO your business could be losing out on a significant amount of traffic. 

Here are the top 5 methods to improve your local SEO and social media marketing efforts in Dubai.

1. Create a Google My Business Account

It would be foolish to deny that Google accounts for 90% of search traffic and hence optimizing your Google listing is perhaps the most effective way to rank higher in Google search and other portfolio of Google applications like Google Maps. The tool is available free of cost.  

To make the best of your business profile on Google, ensure that you:

Provide accurate and updated information such as logo, operating hours, product and services you offer, acceptable mode of payment. Try including images of your business. Also ask your happy customers to leave reviews online and respond to their reviews on time. Regularly publish posts on to your Business profile through the Google My Business dashboard.  

2. Customer Reviews are Important

Getting positive customer reviews for your business not only optimizes your SERP ranking it would also encourage potential customers to buy from you and help create a loyal customer base.

Here are some ways to urge customers to leave reviews:

• After the sale closed ask the customer for a review in person politely.
• Send an email or text asking customers to leave a review on your Google profile after ensuring that you are not approaching a grumpy customer.

3. Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search will make rapid progress in the years ahead. Therefore it is important to optimize your keywords in a way that users speak into the device rather than the keywords they type into the search engine. Customers prefer long-tail keywords for voice search instead of short keywords. Also you will have to account for the usual conversation starters like who, what, when, where, why and how.

It is also important to contemplate about the user intent while optimizing for voice as these searches are conducted when user needs specific information.  

4. Create Content Tailored to Local News Stories

There is no better way to grab local customer attention other than using content that relates to them. 

Some ways that can be used include: 

• Writing content like blogs, videos about local news, events or activities.
• Initiatives supporting local charities or causes that your business supports.
• If your business serves customers on different parts of the region set up location specific web pages on your website with high quality local content. 

5. Focus On Getting High-Quality Backlinks

Inbound links play a major role in SERP rankings, whether it is a local business service or a local retailer. Along with getting links to boost SEO, the quality of links also matters.

Here are some useful ways of getting high-quality backlinks:

• Create top notch content on your site so that others would like to link to your content.
• Guest blog on highly reputable sites and hence high domain authority.
• Connect with local influencers through social media or by e-mail to link back to your content.

Internet marketing in Dubai undergoes changes quite rapidly. Google regularly introduces new features on its SERPs for local searches, hence it is always important to be updated in terms of local SEO.  

By applying the five actionable steps, you can make sure that your business doesn’t lose out on lucrative local searches but also is updated about the latest SEO features.

And if you don’t have the time and resources to make adjustments, you may avail the help of small business SEO companies in Dubai.