Guides to Improving your Local SEO in Nigeria

Whether you have a single location or a nationwide chain, a local SEO strategy is a key to driving more prospects through your doors.
In this post, I will be taking us through the key parts of your website that must be optimized to increase your prospects' chances of finding you in local search results.

Search engines rely on signals including local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user.

Optimize these three areas on your website to boost your chance of appearing in local search results: 

On-Page, Local Profile Pages, and Inbound Links & Citations.

 

On-Page Signals

 

1.    Set Up Your NAP.

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. NAP is critical for businesses wishing to rank well in the local organic search results.
Search engines like Google take this data into account when determining which companies to show for geo-targeted searches. 

Google and the other search engines cross-check your NAP information across a variety of websites as a validation that you are a legitimate business.

Google as the most used search engine started ranking search results based on the searchers' geographical locations with the release of the Possum update in 2016. 
So now the closer you are situated to a company's location, the more chances you have to see it among your search results.

You've got to make it easy for people and search engines to find you. 
To do this you must set up your NAP. 
This should be included as crawlable HTML text on your site.

Avoid the common mistake of only including the NAP within an image-- images can’t be crawled from search engines like HTML text. 

The most common location for the NAP is in the footer or header of the site.

2.   Create location pages.

 

Create location pages if you have more than one location for your business. Location pages provide readers with your NAP, business hours, location descriptions, promotions, and testimonials from happy/satisfied customers, and more.

It's also important you avoid duplicating content across multiple location pages. For single location businesses, create a locally descriptive “About Us” page.

3.   Publish locally relevant content.

 

Be the local authority for your industry -- I recommend doing this through regularly publishing blog content.
Promote local industry gatherings and valuable educational content on your blog.
Think of top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your business sells.

Local Profile Pages

 

1.   Google+ Local

 

Create and verify a Google+ Local page for each of your locations. If you have multiple locations, link these to your location pages we mentioned above.

2.    Remove duplicate listings.

 

Duplicate listings are common, as multiple employees may create a new listing not knowing one already exists. Avoid diluting reviews and links across several Google+ Local pages by removing duplicate listings.

3.    Develop a system for building customer reviews.

 

Your customers may be new to giving Google+ reviews online. Make it easy for them by showing them a process.

Whitespark has this handy review handout generator to give to your customers if you need a place to start.
You could print out this handout for your customers in-store, or you could email to them after their visit.

Once you get more than 5 Google+ local reviews, you can start gaining those little yellow stars next to your local search listing.

 

4.    Optimize your business categories.

 

Google+ Local profiles allow business owners to declare their type of business category.
Add at least 4-5 categories related to your business, including both broad and specific categories.

Inbound Links and Citations

 

You're probably familiar with inbound links -- links from another domain to your site.

Citations are different-- they're mentions of your business name and address on other sites. And a citation doesn’t necessarily contain a link.

Citations and external links are both important for off-page local SEO. 

Here are a few tips on improving the chances you'll receive citations and inbound links.

1.    Verify the consistency of your business address across the web.

 

Consistent spelling of your business name, address, and phone numbers is critical for local SEO.

For example, if your address is 42b, Ikota Villa Estate Road, then use that spelling on all of your listings. Avoid variations like 42b, Ikota Est Road.

Moz.com/Local is a useful tool to check for the consistent spelling of your local citations across the web.

2.    Build these directory citations.

 

According to a source, these are the Top 10 Free Business Listing Websites In Nigeria.

• Google My Business.
• Facebook Business Page.
• VConnect Nigeria.
• Business List.
• Connect Nigeria.
• DealDey Nigeria.
• SME Arena.
• FineLib.com.
• NG Contacts.
• LGT Nigeria.

Verify that your citations are consistent and complete across all these Business Directories. 

Remove any duplicate listings you find.

3.    Earn local links.

 

Another way to improve your local search presence is by earning links from local sources.
You have a little less control over this, to be sure, but the key is in the word "earn."

Creating content worth linking to is the tried-and-true method of earning eyes on the internet.

This guide is intended to be a local SEO jumpstart for your local business. Some of the tips are one-off activities where you can set it and forget it (i.e. making sure your NAP is clearly written on your site).

On the other hand, building reviews and publishing locally relevant content is an activity your organization needs to do on a regular basis for long-term local SEO success or hire a Local SEO Company/Expert.

Keep both in mind as you work toward better online visibility for your business.

 

Guidelines to adopt in choosing the best internet marketing agency for your business in Nigeria.

As the current era is witnessing a major boost in businesses using digital platforms, there are a few dark truths about digital marketing agencies which remain unknown. 

These are the reasons some businesses hesitate when it involves trusting digital agencies.

Here we take you through those dark truths and also outline the skills to be present in the best digital marketing agency you plan on choosing for your business.

The Dark Truth behind the Wall:

 

1.   Overcommitting clients goals

 
Numerous agencies are fighting to win new business and retain existing clients against the ferocious and continually increasing competition. 
As a result of this, many digital agencies fill clients' heads with the belief that they can somehow make their business increase to a high level or provide a commitment to make their sales increase etc. 

These fake commitments results to missing deadlines, fail to deliver on promises and hurt their company reputation.

 

2.   Selecting the wrong media platform for advertisement

 
There are various social media platforms for advertising brands such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. 
Different social media sites generate different levels of traffic, and this can vary heavily according to a company's niche. 

Some digital agencies do not use the right media platform to advertise a product so this creates a vast amount of loss to a brand and even the loss of reputation of a digital agency concerned.

 

3.   Hurting online brand image and reputation of businesses

 
Growing a business is an exciting process but, some marketer does not try to understand the need of the customers or by not making them understand what the internet marketing campaign can do in relation to their goals and for their businesses. 
This agency only wants to make money without setting up the proper strategy to go about for the need of the clients. It is only in an agency's benefit to challenging client’s expectations whether with fake or true commitment. 

If given false commitment what will be hurt is the agency brand image and the reputation.

 

4.   Selling generated business leads to 3rd party businesses

 
Some digital marketing companies are facing continuous struggles with consumers' perception of data, as new research reveals brands with access to their personal data are using it unethically. 
Some digital marketers misuse the customer's leads by selling their generated leads to the 3rd party businesses. 

This leads to cheating on clients trust.

 

5.  Cheating customer's ad spends budgets 

 

Some digital marketing company prepares the budget contract which is only good for their profit and not for the customers. 

They don't care to understand customer's needs and requirements which leads to the waste of budget. 

This will be cheating on customer's trust and faith upon the agency.

 

6.  Falling short of promised ROI

 
If you are investing time and money into a system that's meant to improve productivity and yield a positive return on investment, you are going to desire results on whichever platform you are investing whether it is social media marketing or any other platform. 
Some digital agencies give expectations to the clients which are unrealistic and unattainable. 

If as an agency you can't demonstrate the client intended ROI they are paying you into their business, then the agency will struggle.

Here are the skills to expect in an agency that will deliver success:

 1.   Speed

 
The digital age moves at lightning speed, and agencies need to have the ability to adapt and keep up with the pace. It's critical for agencies to evolve the speed factor so that they move as quickly as consumers do.

 

2.   Website Security

 
Every website available is most likely to be hacked eventually. A good digital marketing agency should be equipped with all the necessary tools and knowledge to protect a website with any form of hacking, besides changing your password.

3.   Human Behavior Knowledge

 
A good digital marketing agency should understand the science of how people behave online to increase clicks, engagement, and views. 

Digital marketing agency should understand marketing is everything about tech + deeper understanding of human psychology and emotions.

 

4.   Industry Expertise

 
A good digital marketing agency should be an industry expert, that has the know all about the industry it's trying to help a business in. 
You can have them help you with your digital marketing campaign, but sometimes it doesn't really feel worth it if they need to return to you to inquire about technical or industry-related things.

 

5.   Conversion Optimization

 
Every business wants conversion, that's the goal. An agency should not only concentrate on design and completely ignoring conversion optimization.

 

6.   Adaptability

 
Digital marketing keeps changing and evolving. The best skill any digital marketing professional needs to have is the ability to adapt to change.

 

7.   Client Retention

 
Understanding "red flag metrics," the metrics that cause a client to churn, would be a valuable differentiation for any agency. The focus should not be only on getting a new client but also most importantly on client retention. 

Ultimately, a low churn rate is the only manner in which a company can achieve long-term growth.

 

8.   Creative Content Marketing

 
As one of the key factor to Google ranking. An agency should know how to create truly engaging content either through one of its staffs or outsourcing it to get the best of the best. 

A large number of social audiences are tuning out fast to the overabundance of posts, and it's instrumental today to stand out.

I hope the above outline will help you in choosing the best digital marketing agency in Nigeria that will cater to all the details necessary for the growth of your business. If you have any question or addition, you can do that with the comment section below.

These answers were provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC).

Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings

Your website's ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods.

The Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to boost their link popularity by tweaking and deceiving search engines.

The bright side is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on alert for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their rankings by black hat methods. When search engines locate such a site, that site is relegated in ranking or completely removed from the search engine's index.

The bad news is that some top quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these websites criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and pitched from a search engine's index, despite the fact that you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment.

There are things you can do -- and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will avoid this kind of misperception.

Link popularity 

This is mostly based on the quality of the sites you are linked to. Google started this standard for assigning website ranking, and practically all search engines on the Internet now use it. 

There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently penalizes sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labelled these links "bad neighbourhoods."

You can celebrate to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighbourhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighbourhood. 

But you must always check and confirm all the links that are active on your webpage to make sure you haven't linked to a bad neighbourhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way is to check is at https://ismywebsitepenalized.com/.

Do not link to any site that is penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like a virus, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

However, do make sure that you closely monitor all links that are you linked to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Hidden Text

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to unnaturally boost their website popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site.

For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same colour as the background colour of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. 

You cannot see these words with the human eye -- but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page's link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text - bang! The page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background colour of your page is grey, and you have placed grey text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the grey text and assume you are employing hidden text. 

To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same colour to text as the background colour of the page -- ever!

Keyword Stuffing

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called "keyword stuffing." It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders.

A search engine uses what is called "Keyphrase Density" to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering -- unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. 

So, if your keyword is "surer insurance," be sure you don't use this phrase in every sentence. 

Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly.

Cloaking

The final potential risk factor is known as "cloaking. Cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site's search engine ranking.

 A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page's ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have reacted to this act of deception with extreme unfriendliness, imposing steep penalties on these sites. 

The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as "pagejacking’’.

Pagejacking is the process of illegally copying legitimate website content (usually, in the form of source code) to another website designed to replicate the original website.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. 

So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of unnaturally boosting your rankings.