If your goal is to increase your acoustical consulting business’ customer base through organic search, then leveraging local SEO strategies is key. However, it’s important to understand what local SEO entails, how it functions, and which ranking factors hold the most significance.
This guide aims to offer valuable insights on optimizing your acoustical consulting business for local search, enabling you to attract more customers and grow your business.
Intro to Local SEO for Acoustical Consultants.
What Is Acoustical Consultant SEO?
Local SEO involves optimizing your acoustical consulting business’ online presence to increase its visibility in both local and localized organic search engine results.
The three key elements of local search are proximity, prominence, and relevance.
To achieve prominence in search results, local SEO relies on a combination of technical and creative methods.
By demonstrating to search engines that your acoustical consulting agency is a relevant answer to online searches conducted in the vicinity of each of your business locations, local SEO can help ensure that your business is prominently featured in search results.
Why Is SEO Important for Acoustical Consultants?
Local searches are a significant aspect of the SEO landscape, as 46% of all Google searches have “local intent,” according to Search Engine Roundtable. This indicates a strong interest among users in finding nearby businesses that offer the products or services they need.
In addition, RankRanger has found that local packs appear in 29% of Google search engine results pages (SERPs), highlighting the importance of local SEO in helping businesses to stand out.
Moreover, Google has reported that 76% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone visit a store within the same day, underscoring the value of optimizing your acoustical consulting business for local search.
By ensuring that your business appears prominently in these search results, you can increase your chances of attracting potential customers to your door in a matter of minutes.
Local SEO Ranking Factors.
When a user searches for an acoustical consultant, Google scans its index to deliver the most relevant results for that query. Local SEO differs from traditional SEO in that it relies on a distinct set of ranking factors to determine local search results.
Local SEO incorporates a unique set of ranking signals:
- The location that the person is searching from.
- Presence of Google My Business listing.
- NAP citations.
- Keywords used in Google My Business Profile
- Google Maps star rating for that business.
- The sentiment of online reviews.
- Keywords used in online reviews.
- The number of “check-ins” at that location.
Local SEO yields two types of search results: map pack results and organic blue link results. The good news is that businesses can optimize their online presence to rank well in both types of results.
Map Pack Results.
The map pack, also referred to as the local pack, is a Google search engine results page (SERP) feature that showcases the highest-ranking local business listings along with a map. Typically, this feature appears at the top of Google’s search results for local queries, making it a prominent source of information for users seeking nearby businesses.
Organic Search Results.
The organic search results that are considered “standard” include the well-known “10 blue links” and are usually displayed below the map pack results.
Step-By-Step SEO Guide for Acoustical Consultants.
Optimizing your website for local search can be a challenging and time-consuming process that requires a significant investment of both time and money.
Despite your best efforts, it may take several months before you begin to see tangible results, and even then, it may require a considerable budget to compete with established sites that have invested heavily in their content and backlinks.
Many of these established sites may already be well ahead of you in the race for target keywords, making it difficult for your acoustic business to outcompete them.
However, the good news is that there are countless keywords out there, and with the right strategy, there is room for everyone to succeed.
To make your business stand out in search results, it’s essential to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes effective keyword research and optimization techniques.
With the right approach, you can identify and target the most relevant keywords for your business, and improve your website’s visibility and ranking over time.
1. Keyword Research.
To develop a successful SEO strategy, it’s crucial to compile a comprehensive list of keywords that you wish to target.
Start by jotting down all the services that your acoustical consulting firm offers.
By utilizing professional SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, and others, you can determine how potential customers search for your services and identify the specific keywords they use.
Although you may end up with a lengthy list of keywords, not all of them will require optimization for your site.
Sort the list to find one keyword for each service—those will be your target keywords.
To find the target keywords, you will need to cherry-pick the ones that:
- Have commercial intent (people aren’t just looking for the information related to your business).
- Have as few words as possible.
- Have a reasonable monthly search volume.
- Have a SERP that you can compete in.
To check the SERP, look up your target keyword and see what websites come up on the first page.
The good news is that If you properly optimize your page for the target keyword, you will win hundreds of secondary keywords.
2. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly.
Over 60% of organic search visits now originate from mobile devices, surpassing other forms of search traffic.
Since 2019, Google has been primarily using the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking, giving priority to the mobile version of your site when determining search rankings.
It’s important to note that there is only one index for both desktop and mobile versions of your site, and it favors the mobile version.
To ensure your content is properly indexed and ranked, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website before adding new content.
The best way to optimize your website for mobile devices is by using a responsive design.
Responsive design allows the same web page to be displayed to both mobile and desktop users by adjusting the layout based on the device.
Its benefits for SEO include sharing and linking with a single URL, reducing mobile site errors, being less time-consuming to maintain, not requiring redirection, and saving resources when crawled by Google.
By creating one page per content piece and automatically adjusting the layout, responsive design is a win-win for mobile SEO.
3. Create a Landing Page for Each of Your Services.
Once you have a list of your target keywords, it’s time to create landing pages for your acoustical consulting services.
The primary feature that sets a landing page apart is its form, strategically crafted to gather important visitor information.
To provide a seamless user experience, successful landing pages are straightforward and to the point.
Rather than overwhelming visitors with flashy distractions, they guide them toward a conversion event through a clear and concise process.
You should create a landing page for each service your acoustical consulting agency provides.
4. Optimize Your Landing Pages.
The primary goal of a landing page is to rank well for particular keywords while also encouraging user engagement through a clear call-to-action (CTA).
To achieve the best results, it is important to optimize your landing pages for both search engines and human users.
In order to do this, you should strategically include your target keyword and related variations in specific areas of the page to increase its relevance and visibility in search results.
Keyword optimization can get complicated, so here are the four places where you need to put your target keyword:
- URL.
- Title tag.
- H1 tag.
- Once in the paragraph.
The primary objective of a landing page is to generate conversions.
Even if a landing page is successful in ranking well in search results, it is essentially ineffective if it does not drive any leads or conversions for your acoustical consulting agency.
In other words, the success of a landing page should be measured by its ability to effectively convert website visitors into actual customers, rather than simply its ability to rank highly in search results.
After you have optimized your landing page for Google, it’s time to optimize the conversion rate of that page:
- Write a good and compelling copy.
- Let your visitors have different options to contact you.
- Prominently display your phone number and make it clickable.
- Create a web form as simple as possible to reduce any friction points.
- Add an online chat widget.
- Don’t link to other pages from your landing page (you don’t want your visitors to steer away from completing the conversion).
- Add reviews and testimonials.
5. Verify Your Google Business Profile.
When it comes to local SEO, the Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) should be a top priority for acoustical consulting businesses.
Its importance cannot be overstated, as it has the potential to attract a significant number of customers even if you don’t have a website.
To get started, you’ll first need to claim your business and verify it using a postcard or phone number (if available).
Once verified, it’s important to provide accurate information for every data point on your profile.
Research your competitors to choose the appropriate main and secondary categories for your business.
Pay special attention to your business name, address, and phone number as this information will be needed for building citations later on.
It’s important to use a local phone number with the area code of the specific location where you wish to rank.
6. Get More Reviews.
Maximizing positive reviews on your Google Business Profile is crucial for your business.
To achieve this, reach out to your past clients via email and politely ask them to leave you a review. Similarly, always ask your existing customers to share their experiences with your business.
Simplicity is key, so make it easy for your clients to leave a review by creating a shortcut link in your GBP management dashboard.
This link will enable clients to write a review with just one click. You can also print a QR code for the link and place it in your office or on your business cards.
It is crucial to respond to every review you receive, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative.
Create an action plan to handle disputes, and respond to negative reviews promptly to resolve the issue and mitigate the consequences.
One important note: do not respond to reviews you think are fake. It will be much easier to remove them.
7. Find Keywords for Your Supporting Content.
After creating pages targeting commercial keywords, it’s time to shift focus to pages targeting informational keywords, commonly referred to as supporting content.
Google places a high value on websites that offer a mix of commercial and non-commercial content, so it’s recommended to maintain a 30/70 ratio, where 30% of the content is commercial (landing pages) and 70% is informational (blog posts).
Blogs not only add diversity to a website but also boost the topical authority of the site, which helps in improving the ranking of commercial pages.
To further enhance this effect, it’s important to interlink the supporting content with the commercial pages.
Creating supporting content is crucial for local SEO.
To find ideas for supporting content, conduct keyword research again, but this time, focus on keywords with informational intent. As these keywords often have less competition, it is possible to rank for them quickly and attract new traffic to your website.
8. Power Up Your Landing Pages With Internal Links.
You may have heard that backlinks are crucial for SEO, but obtaining them can be challenging, especially for commercial pages. Why would someone link to a page that is selling something? Furthermore, you have no control over external links.
Fortunately, you may not need external links as much.
You can use internal links from your website to pass on link juice to your landing pages and improve their SERP ranking.
This approach works well when you link from an already ranking article, which is easy to achieve with informational content.
To boost your landing page, choose the most relevant articles and add links to your target page with descriptive anchor text.
It is recommended to select 5-7 articles or more, depending on the competition of your target keyword.
After linking, interlink the selected articles together into a silo. This approach will help search engines understand the relationship between the linked pages and improve the ranking of your target landing page.
9. Build Local Citations.
Ensuring that your acoustical consulting agency’s NAP data (Name, Address, and Phone number) is consistent across all online platforms is crucial for enhancing your business’ visibility and credibility.
To achieve this, you must ensure that your NAP data is accurate and consistent on your website, Google Business Profile (GBP), business directories, local listing sites, and any other online platforms that mention your business.
Fortunately, there are several citation tools and services available, such as WhiteSpark or Loganix, that can help you manage your NAP data.
However, before using any tool or service, it is essential to have the most up-to-date and accurate information about your business, including current and historic NAP data.
This information can help you identify and update outdated citations, ensuring that your business’ online presence is reliable and trustworthy.
One effective method to find and fix inaccurate listings is to run a report that identifies listings with incorrect information and update them.
Afterward, focus on building citations on new sites, starting with popular platforms such as Yelp, FourSquare, and Angie’s List.
To boost your business’ Map Pack rankings with highly relevant citations, it is vital to focus on local sites.
The question then becomes, how do you find these local citation opportunities?
A great strategy is to use the Link Intersect in Ahrefs or Backlink Gap feature in Semrush to identify and analyze your competitors’ backlinks and find potential citation sources in your local area.
Identify the biggest competitors in your area, who likely have numerous citations on various local directories, and run them through one of these tools to uncover potential citation sources.
10. Build Backlinks.
You may already have existing relationships with other businesses in your area.
Create a list of all the businesses you have a relationship with, such as contractors, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers, and local non-competitor businesses.
Then, reach out to those businesses to see if there’s any way you can negotiate a link from their website.
You can also sponsor local events to get your business’ name out there and potentially earn backlinks.
The good news is that traditional link-building strategies are also effective for local SEO.
The good news is that the same link-building strategies that work for SEO, in general, can also be effective for local SEO. This means that you can leverage your existing blog content and try to connect with other website owners in your niche to find potential backlink opportunities.
11. Optimize for EEAT.
E-E-A-T is an acronym, and it stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
It’s not necessarily going to boost your rankings. But it’s important to understand that when doing SEO, it’s important to cast a wide net to check as many boxes as possible.
It’s a vague ranking factor. So you don’t have to overthink it.
Here are the quick tips on how to optimize for EEAT:
- Add a local business schema on your homepage.
- Add your phone number and business address to the footer and put it on the Contact Us page.
- Create Privacy Policy and Terms of Use pages and add links to the footer.
- Add an author box to your blog posts.
- Create an author page for all your blog writers with social media links to their profiles.
- Add your team members to the About Us page.
- Add a copyright statement to the footer with the current year.
How to Track Your Local SEO Progress.
Tracking progress is crucial for any successful strategy, and this is especially true for local SEO.
Although it may take some time for the first results to appear, it is important to monitor the effectiveness of the strategy as early as possible to make any necessary adjustments.
Without monitoring progress, you may spend months implementing an SEO strategy that is ineffective and ultimately a waste of time and resources.
By keeping a close eye on progress, you can identify areas that need improvement and make changes quickly to ensure that your local SEO strategy is successful in the long term.
Local SEO Tools.
There’s a plethora of SEO tools you can use to keep track of your SEO progress.
Some of them are free, and some of them are not.
The free tools are from Google itself.
The paid ones are third-party software that can help you reverse-engineer your competitors’ SEO strategy, seamlessly track your website’s position in SERPs for your target keywords, and manage all your listings in one place.
Here are the local SEO tools you need to effectively execute your SEO strategy.
Google Business Manager.
Google Business Manager, previously known as Google My Business, allows you to monitor various metrics related to your business’ online presence.
With this tool, you can easily keep track of the number of times your business has been featured in local search results.
Additionally, you can monitor the number of visitors who have reached your website by clicking on the link provided in your profile, as well as the number of individuals who have called your business or accessed directions to your physical location.
Google Search Console.
While with Google Business Manager you can track your local map pack rankings, with GSC you can keep track of how your website performs in the organic search results.
In GSC, you can see the keywords your website’s ranking for, the number of impressions, average position, and Click-Through-Rate (CTR).
With Google Search Console, you can also troubleshoot any technical problems, like errors in your schema, slow website speed, 404 pages, redirect errors, etc.
In your GSC, you can also access your backlink report.
But keep in mind that Google doesn’t show all backlinks your website has—and don’t think that the ones Google is showing you are the most important backlinks, Google arbitrarily cherry-picks them—and to see the complete list you will need one of paid SEO software to access the backlink checker tool.
Backlink Checker.
Accessing the list of backlinks a website has is very important, whether you’re reverse-engineering your competitors’ website SEO or analyzing your own site.
There are a variety of tools you can use.
The most popular ones that provide backlink reports are Ahrefs, Semrush, and Majestic.
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
Once your website starts growing in traffic, it’s important to understand how visitors behave on your site.
In other words, do they convert into leads?
With Google Tag Manager, you can set conversion tracking and then, using Google Analytics, track how many website visitors contacted your acoustical consulting agency.
Organic Rank Tracker.
You need to track the positions your website is ranking at for your target keywords.
In Google Search Console, you can only filter the data by country.
And since you’re doing local SEO, you need to know how your website performs in a specific city or neighborhood, because the organic results vary from one city to another.
That’s why you need a tracking tool that can track your target keywords for a specific location.
Ahrefs and Semrush have a keyword tracking feature where you can narrow down your location to a zip code.
Local Map Rank Tracker.
Organic search results vary from one city to another.
But local map pack results can completely change even if you just walked across the street.
To track the local map pack results, you can use Local Viking or Local Falcon.
Those tools will show how your Google Business Profile ranks in tens or even hundreds of different places across your target local area.
Listing Management.
You will have tens or even hundreds of citations on different directory sites.
So you need a tool to manage all of them in one place and keep your NAP information consistent.
For this, you can use BrightLocal or WhiteSpark.
Final Words.
Local SEO encompasses a large variety of different techniques, and it’s impossible to cover everything all at once.
But we have covered the most important aspects of SEO for acoustical consultants.
By now, you should have a solid grasp of how it works.
If you’re interested in further expanding your knowledge and exploring the subject in greater depth, there are some additional resources you can read.
Consider taking a look at our other articles to continue your learning journey.