If you’re serious about using SEO to grow your local business, you need to make sure that you are dominating local search rankings. When potential customers use a search engine to look for businesses in their area, the results that they see will be based on a combination of “organic” and “paid” listings.
1. Get local business listing and reviews If your business has a website, make sure to add your business to all of the local business directories, like Yelp and Foursquare. If you don’t have a website, then these websites can be a great way to get local inbound links that can help you rank better in local search results. If you already have a website, make sure that it is correctly set up and optimized. Most importantly, make sure that it’s driving traffic and conversions for your business! If you’re using a local citation building solution like Whit spark, OpenTable, or Whit spark Business Profiles, you need to make sure that you are submitting all of your local business listings to the appropriate directories. To get your local listings to show up on the most popular local business directories, you need to use opt-in hosting services or ask your customer services staff to download their listings to you. Seeing listings on these sites will definitely boost your rankings in the local search engines. If you’re still using WordPress or some other content management system, make sure that it is setup correctly so that your page titles, meta descriptions, URLs and page content tags are optimized to show up on the most popular sites. If you’re using a platform like Hubspot, Optimizely or HABA — all three are great for local SEO — you need to make sure that the site is set up with Google Webmaster Tools data so that you can monitor your website’s performance in the search engines. If you have good product or website design, and a good user experience, then you need to make sure that your site has the basics like an easy navigation menu that is clear and shows the most important content. Lastly, make sure that you’re including all of your contact information in your site’s header and footer activities so that it is easily readable by users. Something like contact forms or a “FAQ” page that answers common questions will also work great. 2. Optimize your website for local search rankings Local search optimization is essential for your business. With over 90% of local searches having local intent, you want to make sure that people in your area can find you when they’re looking for local businesses. Adding your business information to Google My Business is one of the easiest ways to get listed on Google Maps. However, a lack of local SEO can be detrimental to your company’s success. When businesses compete in local search results, they must be focused, organized, and strategic. While your Google My Business listing is essential, it only takes one competitor to knock you out of the local rankings. What research has shown is that Google My Business rankings are independent of actual local rankings. This means that, if a local business that you have a strong local ranking for gets knocked out of the local rankings because it has a bad Google My Business listing, there is a good chance that a rival business will rise to take its place. There are three types of local SEO that you’ll need to be aware of if you plan on growing your Local SEO game. Keyword Research The first local SEO that you’ll need to focus on is keyword research. You need to make sure that you have a healthy mix of competitive keywords that can be used to help establish your business’s knowledge of local topics. These keywords will be extremely important when you’ve finally identified a potential target market and you’re in the process of analyzing leads and formulating a business strategy for a virtual or in-store visit. According to Moz, “keyword research involves discovering and analyzing topics and phrases that are nearby or directly relevant to your business so you can choose whether to target them with searches and content, or whether to leave them alone.” Your keyword analysis will have an immense impact with your business’ ability to rank locally. Use Google’s advanced search operator to see common search phrases: "your city + keywords. 3. Promote your business through social media channels to get more reviews The goal with having reviews is to get more people to see your content. If you’re able to get more people to see your content, you’ll be able to attract more customers and have more people buying your products. So, if you want to get more reviews, you need to promote your business through social media channels. I get asked this about 3 times a week, so I thought I’d address it here, for all of you people who want to build local businesses, stay local businesses, and dominate your local market. No Deal? No Problem! Not only will social media help you get more visibility in the eyes of potential customers, but it’ll also help you build a relationship with those customers and get them to see your brand as a trusted resource when you provide quality goods and services. If you’re a turnkey real estate investor, you may already be ahead of the game on this, because your local bank, real estate agent, financial institution, or another trusted source is already helping you get the word out through social media. Just don’t make the mistake of letting this be all you do — make a plan that works for you, your business, and your marketing. The simple truth is that in today’s atmosphere, consumers are increasingly doing business on their own. So always remember that your social media presence is your front door. Don’t give up! Recently, I did a survey with about 60 real estate agents who were dominating their local market. We measured the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts and asked them to share what they’re going to do differently this year to conquer their local market. Almost everyone of them thought that building relationships with their customers was one of their most important planks of the year. Almost every single agency shared that they’ve been attempting to get at least 1 customer to do a local search in the results using the PMD website that they’ve created for the purpose. 4. Establish yourself as an authority in your industry by providing content that is both useful and engaging to your readers If you want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry, then you need to be able to provide content that is both useful and engaging to your readers. When people are reading your content, what they’re looking for is to gain some kind of insight or knowledge that they can apply to their own lives. Therefore, you need to be able to answer these questions: If you’re a first-time business owner, then online information about running or becoming a business might be overwhelming. Make sure that you have an effective SEO strategy in place that can answer these types of questions: According to Neil Patel, the Google algorithm values the following when determining a competitor’s quality: To remain at the top of the rankings you need a professionally optimized website with a well-designed, thoughtfully-crafted listing. Therefore, make sure to follow the steps described in this article to create a professional listing on Google. If you use your website as an example, below are the kinds of things you should include when you create a website listing. If you are selling your own products or services, then you need to have enough pictures to substantiate your claim. Google Images is a good resource for pictures of products and also services. Pictures will help increase your site’s user rating and possibly even rank higher in Google search results. Need more help with creating professional Google Images listings? Check out this article for more info. If you use your website as an online shop for a specific product, then you need to include the seller’s contact information on your website at some point. If Google determines that you are selling a specific product, they will give you special treatment because they will pull the identifying information for your customer right into the search result. To know exactly how Google uses a website to support the search engine results page (SERP), make sure to read this article by Google’s For Business team about how they prioritize SERPs. 5. Promote your business directly to customers with Facebook ads and other paid advertising platforms Facebook ads and other paid advertising platforms are a great way to drive people to your business. Facebook ads are one of the fastest and most powerful ways to grow your business. By using Facebook ads, you can target people in your target market and create ads that will catch their attention and make them want to check out your business. However, it’s important to note that Facebook ads work best for businesses that have a single listing on the platform. A small local business owner can easily set up a small ad on their Facebook page and make it rank for all search requests, but it’s not something that a large corporation can do easily. Most people think that if they put enough effort into their local search engine ranking, they’ll rank on hundreds of local search engines. In reality, local search traffic is hard to come by. Small businesses have to do everything they can to be in the top three results on local search engines just like they would be on a national search engine. One the main factors that local search engines use to determine your ranking on a specific search is your “organic” or non-paid traffic. It’s important to have local search traffic in order for your page to rank for web searches. How does this affect local SEO? If a potential customer goes to a local search engine and sees only one result that refers to your business, they are less likely to search for your business. Unless you increase the number of listings on local search engines, your local SEO will decrease significantly. To rank on major search engines like Google or Bing in your local area, you need to have (at least) two or three listings on these local search engines, unless you have a website. If you don’t have any local search traffic, the only way you’re going to grow your business will be by adding local search traffic into your marketing funnel. It’s that simple.
0 Comments
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2021
Categories |