Mastering SEO in Nigeria and How to Optimize for Local Search Visibility

As a brand, your number one strategy to attract Nigerians to your business is to understand SEO in Nigeria, utilize local SEO and evolve pragmatic strategies to drive extensive visibility.

This is what your favorites brands are doing to gain the needed boost in visibility, improve traffic and drive their business into the heart of the largest market in Africa.

While most businesses are reaping off the benefits of local SEO, unfortunately, a lot of brands and are not aware of it’s existence.

So many are not even realize the need to optimize for local SEO in Nigeria not to talk about taking steps to do so. But, now you do.

And after reading this tutorial, you’re going to learn about the local SEO strategies you can use to drive your business and make profit.

But, what exactly is local SEO?

I’m sure this might be the question on your mind right now and yes, I’ll be defining it below.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is a search engine optimization strategy focused on optimizing a website in order to improve traffic, leads and brand awareness from local search.

For starters, local SEO is targeted at driving traffic and customers from a specific geographic region.

Although it is popularly used by local stores and shops, local search engine optimization is not just about brick and mortar stores and local businesses.

It is an SEO strategy that can be used by any business in need of improved local traffic and search visibility.

And if this applies to you, then in the following paragraphs, I’ll be sharing with you the top bullet proof strategies you can use to boost your local search SEO in Nigeria and drive traffic for your business.

Use Strategic Keywords Targeting

The first step to boost your local SEO in Nigeria is to analyze and target your use of keywords accordingly.

First off, start with a complete keyword analysis to find out the top ranking keywords for your target niche.

While at it, identify the top ranking websites for that keyword, their domain authority, back links and essentially keyword difficulty levels.

As soon as this is done, get over to your content strategy to find out ways to use the keywords in your content and on your website generally.

After that, optimize the keywords accordingly where you want them rank both within your content and web pages.

Depending on the level of keyword difficulty, you might consider going for long tail keywords so you can rank easily, where your targeted keywords are highly competitive.

Enlist in Google My Business

Enlisting your business in the local Google My Business Listing is an important strategy you can use to improve your local SEO in Nigeria.

GMB is a business listing brochure from Google that allows you to create a free business account to list your business.

It is a very important ranking factor considered by Google when it comes to local search engine optimization.

And the good thing about enlisting on Google My Business is that it helps your business to show up in Google Local Search engine and maps.

And it’s very easy to get started.

You can start with creating an account on GMB, listing all your services and or products and optimizing them accordingly.

In addition to that, you can also add photos and videos that depicts the services or products among other details and even update the page with posts at intervals.

Doing this enhances your visibility in local search.

Use Targeted Backlinks

Another important strategy to boost your local SEO in Nigeria is to use targeted local back links.

Targeted back linking involves building back links only on strategic websites, instead of building them indiscriminately.

By this I mean that instead of optimizing to get back link from any websites, you can choose to get your back links only from specific local websites.

And these websites will have to be high ranking websites from the region you want to build your local search engine optimization.

So, if you’re targeting to improve your local SEO in Nigeria for example, then your goal will be to build your back links only on top ranking Nigerian websites.

Doing this enhances your chances of improved ranking within the target region.

Get Reviews

Reviews are incredible social proof strategies that can go a long way in boosting your perception.

Getting over to search engine optimization, It gets even better. And you can use customer reviews as a tool to amplify your local SEO in Nigeria.

Starting with your Google My Business Profile, get your clients to authentic drop reviews and ratings for you after delivering a service or selling a product to them.

Do the same for top customer review directories, including Facebook and other platforms.

According to a research by Moz, the more positive reviews you have, the better visibility for your local search.

As much as possible, do not stop at just a few, press on for more reviews as you get to do more jobs or sell more products.

Optimize for Mobile Search

Overall, majority of local searches are from smart phones.

For this reason, mobile search cannot be ignored if you’re ready to boost your local SEO in Nigeria.

So, starting with your website, be sure everything is well optimized for mobile search.

After that, head over to your Google my business page and then turn on the click to call buttons.

On average, more than 50 percent of mobile users have contacted a business directly from search results.

With all your details indicated on the search results, including your phone number and website address, there are chances that a good number of mobile users will contact you directly from search.

Final Words

Desiring to drive improved local SEO traffic to your business is not enough.

Beyond mere wishes, you have to take steps to get the results you want, using the strategies above.

Again, you also want to ensure that your business name, address and phone number are consistent across all platforms.

These are some important factors that will affect your local search engine visibility.

Furthermore, you want to make the most of social media and content marketing to further drive your local traffic by creating geographically targeted contents and social media profile.

So, there you have the strategic steps to drive local SEO in Nigeria for your business.

But you don’t have to do it alone. Allow our team of SEO experts to do the ground work that will get you the improved visibility you desire by reaching out here.

Now, it’s over to you. What irks you about local SEO? Let’s read your comments.