Whether your venue is located in a small town or a big city, the quality of your local SEO strategy will determine whether your venue shows up on the first page of search engine results. You might be wondering where to begin with local SEO. It seems complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. What local SEO really comes down to is creating great content and experiences for customers, and optimizing it in simple ways that make it more discoverable through search engines such as Google and Bing.
Here’s a simple guide with five steps for developing a local SEO strategy to promote your venue.
1. Optimize your venue’s on-page local SEO
To begin, you’ll need to optimize your website’s content for search using on-page SEO. On-page SEO means making your web pages full of good, useful information so that your venue ranks for keywords.
Use local keywords throughout your content such as:
- H1 titles on-page
- H2 (you can have as many H2’s as you’d like)
- In the “alt text” of at least one image
- In the URL
- In the meta description
To find keywords, think of phrases your customers might use to find you in your specific location. One simple way to see what people might search for as it relates to your venue is to type the name of your venue into Google’s search bar and see what it auto-populates with- do this with your location name included as well, to see if results vary so you can narrow in on those local terms.
You can also use a tool such as Ahrefs to help you find keywords your potential customers are using. So for example, if a couple is looking for a wedding venue in Chicago, what might they search for?
Ahrefs gives us some ideas. Couples might search for “wedding venues near me,” or “best wedding venues in Chicago,” when looking for the right venue.
You should also find secondary keywords to use, which help support your main keyword. A simple Google search will do the trick.
For example, wedding venues in Chicago shows related keywords at the bottom of the first page:
