5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Venue’s Local SEO

No matter the size of your venue, or in a smaller town or a bustling larger city, ensuring representation at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) is the key for your target audience finding you. So how can you make sure that you are on the first page of a search result? With a great local SEO strategy, you can generate content and social engagement optimized for search results.

Here is our five-step guide to improving your venue’s local SEO ranking factors to ensure positioning your business and brand as well as possible.

Your Website

Your website is the ultimate destination you want to guide customers and be the first place potential visitors will go. Depending on the promotion, customers see or hear something that piques their interest, whether word-of-mouth, advertising, social media posts, or blog content. So design your website to help those visitors take the next step – coming to your venue. Then, ensure that the on-page local search engine optimization is well implemented, correctly targeted, and localized. The search engine algorithms will rank your website higher as it is deemed authoritative and trustworthy.

Use local keywords across all elements of your webpage content, including:

• Headers (H1 titles)
• Sub-headers (H2 text)
• Meta tags
• Image alternative text descriptions
• Even in the URL, if possible

How do you find the right keywords? First, try searching for your venue as you might expect a potential visitor to search for it – go to your search engine of choice and type out the search term you think is most appropriate. The search engine will offer to autocomplete text – this is what typical searchers are ending the search with, and therefore is a good indicator of how to construct SEO.

Inbound Link Building

Search engines do not just rank your website on the page contents – it is also essential to have other web pages or content linking to your site. So you need to generate content (blogs, social posts, ‘mentions’) and have other businesses point to your website. Begin by writing content for local pages that cover the industry sector that you are involved. For example, you could connect with local food review websites if you run a restaurant. Additionally, offer to write a blog post or article for your local news site about your business, industry, or a particular event you are hosting. 

The key with this kind of content is to ensure that it is consumer-focused – the average reader will not engage with an overtly and purely self-servicing article. Instead, they need to feel that their interests or needs are being acknowledged and discussed. For more detail on effective content building, Inc. poses a few tips here as a good starting point.

If you have companies that you partner with, ask them to link to you on their website. For example, in the case of a restaurant, it could be the company that cleans your linens, supplies your silverware, or sources your produce. It can be mutually beneficial, as they want to be associated with a successful venue. They will also need external links for their SEO purposes.

Add a Map

For Google, in particular, you can boost your place in the search results by adding the Google Map location for your business on your webpage. It is effortless to do by simply finding the company on the maps page and copying the link and ‘embed’ to your web page. Speak to your web page designer if you are having difficulty! With the added benefit of making your venue easy to find and visit you – and that is the end game, after all.

Leverage the Local Pack

When conducting a locally focused search into Google, for example, 'restaurants in West Las Vegas, the results show a particular pack at the top of the page. Named the local pack and consisted of a Google map image with three results pinned and the corresponding business information. Getting on this local pack results from a strong correlation between your business and the presumed search intent. Essentially, it is the result of excellent SEO. You want your venue to be in the local pack in few local keywords as possible. So rather than just appearing for 'Asian fusion vegan restaurants in West Las Vegas, you want to be one of the top three that appear for 'restaurants Las Vegas.' A difficult task – competition is very high, and the market is saturated. Still, you can ensure that you are better positioned by following the advice in this article, as well as spending some time building reviews.

Google local pack ranking is heavily dependent on consistent and frequent online reviews. However, the typical consumer will only usually go out of their way to review your business if there is an issue – and that is not what you want to highlight. So instead, encourage positive reviews by simply asking your customers to review your venue after an event or visit or offering incentives for the next visit if they leave a review. Forbes offers four easy strategies to consider for more advice on reviews.

Separate Your Services

Suppose you have a separate, distinct webpage for each service you offer. In that case, customers are significantly more likely to find you, and your ranking on search engines will be considerably higher. Rather than having a single page for your venue, make sub-pages that highlight different events, features, or services that you offer. So for a restaurant, you might have your home page, a functions page, a private dining page, a breakfast page, a brunch page, etc. You can better seed your SEO terms more naturally by relevance and authority on a particular search term will be improved.

Need Help?

If you need further guidance or assistance in optimizing your local SEO, our Las Vegas Local SEO Agency is here for you.

For broader SEO needs, visit our Las Vegas SEO Agency, and we will be happy to help you.  Alternatively, if you would like to discuss a complete digital marketing strategy, visit our Las Vegas Digital Agency for world-class service.