The Internet allows you to reach billions of people around the world, but if you are a small or local company, world domination is not about you. Your business is done by the local community, the city, the region, the region.
Today, consumers have a choice as to where they can get their products and services. Can you be sure that they will find your local business in the first place?
You can bring your site to the top of the search engine rankings! There are tools for this: from optimizing the site to creating incoming links on social networks. Here’s the final guide to optimizing your site for your local search, which allows you to dominate your search.
What is local search marketing?
Local search marketing is a process and tactic you use to reach your local audience online. This is the type of marketing that small businesses use to reach out to potential customers online.
Any type of business with a shop window or a specific area is a local business, including small, medium and corporate brands.
Local search marketing is about increasing brand awareness in a particular area. This can be done with organic SEO or paid methods.
Why optimize for local search?
- About 3 billion searches each month contain local terms (source: comScore).
- 70% of online search engines will use local search to search for offline business (source: Kelsey Group).
- 30% of Google searches are looking for local information (source: HubSpot).
How to optimize your local search
1. Invest in content
Each new blog entry is a new indexed page for your site, a new page where you can set a geographic search phrase, and a new opportunity to get results found in the search engine. If you’re having problems with geo-content, consider highlighting customer success stories and practice examples.
2. Write about additional local services
If you sell screwdrivers, talk about someone in your area who sells screws. This will allow you to write useful content about your geographic region in the appropriate way so that you don’t encounter a keyword spam that Google’s algorithm is punishing. In addition, it forms good relationships with local companies that can recommend you to their customers and possibly in the future will lead to an incoming link.
3. Optimization of 5 key SEO elements on the page
This means that the title of your page (see picture below), THE URL, page headers, internal links, and page content should be optimized with keywords. Here’s an example of a page that is well optimized for local search.
4. Variations of keywords with a long tail
If you sell unicorn costumes, you might want to close the demand for unicorn costumes in Detroit, unicorn costumes in the Detroit subway, and unicorn costumes in southeastern Michigan.
Cover all the ways people can refer to your city in your keyword research. So you can benefit from all the different ways that people find you online.
You can do keyword research in Google’s Keyword Tool, or if you’re using HubSpot, use HubSpot’s Keyword SEO tool to find options you may not have thought of before.
5. Pages with location information
If you are a franchisee, for example, it is important to let users know that you have multiple locations. One way to do this is to have a unique page for each location.
6. Tell people where you are
Add your brand name, address and phone number on your contact page. And on the “About Us” or “Contact us” page.
7. Write about local and industry news
Stay up to date with what’s going on in your area and in your industry to get the topics for your blog. This will bring you great points in SEO, as Google likes when the site appears new pages with useful content. Even if nothing happens that is directly related to your industry or location, look for local topics about industry trends and comment on how local events can affect your industry.
8. Mobile optimization of your site
Local search and mobile search go hand in hand. Some of the most common ways to use your site in a mobile environment are to search for feedback, find directions to your location, and find contact information. Make your website mobile friendly.
How to optimize local search outside of your site
1. Register your business with Google My Business
Google My business gives local companies a good opportunity to appear in local search results based on a given search term. Here you’ll find everything you need to know for this.
2. Add yourself to other lists
The more local directories you place your site to, the more opportunities you can find and get more links. Make sure your company’s name, address, phone number and website match up in all of them.
3. Get links online
The more people in your community (both online and offline), the more they will talk about you. Be a guest blogger, connect with other people in your industry (of course, positively!) and act as a resource provider for the community. If you are actively involved in community conversations, the noise in the form of incoming links, the growth of social networks and media coverage around you is growing.
4. Get local links
Start with your own personal network, which can include the Chamber of Commerce, Business Improvement Areas, Licensing Bureau, Trade Associations, Resellers, Sellers and/or Manufacturers and other affiliates.
5. Post your content on social media, especially on Google-owned business pages
Google believes that content that is published on social networks is more important than ever before. And now that Google owns YouTube, it’s a good idea to appear on this platform. The most important thing for local businesses is that Google’s business messages are starting to appear in local search results.
6. Guest messages
The more places in which your business is cited organically, the better for your SEO. This means that the articles you post on various relevant blogs can help not only to have other people write about you, but also to keep you up to date with the latest developments.
7. Get feedback
77% of online shoppers use reviews to make a purchase decision. If your customers are looking for opinions about you, make it easier for them to know how great you are by accepting your presence on online review sites.
Ask customers to post information about their experience with you. Yes, some negative reviews may leak out there, but wouldn’t it be better to be an active participant in achieving a positive online reputation than to play a passive role?
8. Check out your ads
Using GetListed.org as an accuracy report gives you a great opportunity to see where you can add additional ads, approve ads, and update or add missing content, such as your site’s URL. Guys, there’s no point posting an ad if there’s no URL.
Local business does have the power to have the best presence in the search, but it’s hard work.
Use these tactics every month and your site will take off in search!
