Is your small business making the most of the internet to bring in more customers and spread brand awareness? If you’re not using a strong local SEO strategy, you’re leaving money on the table.
Local search is a powerful tool for bringing new customers into your business. Forty-six percent of Google searches are local in intent, and 72 percent of people who perform a local search visit a brick-and-mortar business within five miles of their homes. People who perform local searches are already near the bottom of the purchase funnel, so traffic from local search is going to lead to a lot more conversions. Here’s how to put together a local SEO strategy that will bring more local search traffic to your business website.
Add Your Business Listing to Google Maps and Other Directories
If you haven’t yet added your business to Google Maps, it’s time. If you added your business to the now-defunct Google Business Profile, you need to make sure that your business information appears correctly on Google Maps. Make sure your profile is as detailed as possible.
Don’t neglect additional directories, either. You may want to add your business to Apple Maps and Bing Places for Business. You should also add your business to directories like Yelp, Angie’s List, or HomeAdvisor. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce to see if there is a local business directory you can add your business information to.
Engage with Customers on Social Media
Connecting with your customers on social media helps you provide better customer service, keep customers engaged with your brand, reach new people, and build new backlinks for your website, as well as generating buzz about your products. Local SEO is as much social as it is technical, so connecting with customers and influencers online can be a powerful means of building relationships with customers and inspiring brand loyalty.
Make Sure Your Business Information Appears Correctly Wherever It Appears
If there are discrepancies in your business information across different social media platforms, forums, and directories, that’s going to harm your local SEO. Your business name, address, and phone number should be correct wherever it appears. If it isn’t, contact the website administrator to have it corrected or removed.
Audit Your Local SEO
You may need to enlist the help of a Phoenix local SEO services agency to perform an accurate and thorough audit of your website’s local SEO. A comprehensive audit can help you see what’s working and what isn’t and what you can do to improve your local SEO. You’ll need to use tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to evaluate how well-optimized your website currently is.
Optimize Your Website for Local Search
An SEO agency specializing in local search can help you with keyword research, content creation, and HTML optimization, or you can do some or all of the work yourself. You’ll need to find the best local keywords for your site and generate quality, locally focused content for your website and blog that uses the best keywords appropriately. You’ll need to go into the HTML code for your website and optimize the title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags.
Put Your Location on Your Website
It seems like a no-brainer, but your potential customers need to know where you are. Make your location easy to find by adding a location page to your website. Make sure to include location and contact information for all of your locations.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Eighty-five percent of American adults now own smartphones, and Google already penalizes websites that aren’t optimized for search. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, you’ll suffer in search returns. You want people who are performing local searches on their mobile devices to be able to navigate your page and either easily make purchases, or find out where they need to go or who they need to call to make a purchase.
Fill Your Site with Plenty of Locally Optimized Content
Brand-new content posted on a regular basis demonstrates that your site is still active and gives users a reason to spend more time on your site, both of which can boost your local SEO. You need to post new multimedia content regularly, and make sure it’s optimized for search.
If you’re running a small business, you need a web presence and a strong local SEO strategy. The right SEO tactics could mean the difference between success and failure for your business, so make local SEO a top priority for your company.
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