Did you know that 4 out of 5 customers found local services through search engines? Most of these are smartphone users looking for nearby businesses. What are they searching for? Hopefully, your business!
Local SEO refers to any techniques to put your business in front of nearby searchers. These are individuals who want to find specific products or services in a zip code or by street address. To get in front of these users with local SEO, businesses need to do the following:
- Update your Google My Business profile
- Build up a site map that links to each location’s page
- Put your address and contact info in your mobile ads
- Customize your ad’s messaging by location
- Use geo-targeting bidding around zip codes or important demand markets
- Build up content around local keywords
- Check that all social media and review site profiles have the right information for your business
- Perform a local review reputation check (Tips below.)
Read on to see a few more tips and what matters when it comes to ranking for local SEO.
What is Local SEO and What’s the Perfect Way to Achieve It
Local SEO or local search optimization is a technique used by search engine marketers to increase a local business’ traffic from SERPs (search engine results pages). Basically, if you want to get in front of customers in a certain zip code, a professional local SEO company can offer effective ways to do it.
However, if this traffic is that important, then there must be other reasons that local SEO matters for your business. In fact, there are a ton of ways that a local SEO strategy can improve your revenue and customer acquisition:
- Pull leads in from local customers searching for products
- Generate more qualified leads for your sales team
- Build more trust and reputation with your brand
- Don’t have to spend much to get a lot back
Yes, local SEO is great for lead generation, brand authority, and building customer trust. However, you have to be able to check website ranking on Google and appear first, and if you haven’t built a plan for local yet, you’re missing out on all the business.
In fact, if you haven’t already, you should get your marketing stakeholders together and create a local SEO plan right now. We’ve got the perfect guide for 2020 SEO marketers who want to get ahead with this strategy.
2020 Local SEO Guide: Is There a Perfect Way to Get Local Traffic?
Yes, but even if you had a Google profile in the past, it could be tricky to rank for popular keywords in your city. After all, Google’s ranking signals are so wide and varied nowadays that only the businesses with the best ratings, most links, and highest shares on social media seem to get onto the first page.
1. Set Up Google My Business
Google lets you simply add your business to their search engine using a tool called Google My Business. You can find it here: www.google.com/business.
2. Build Your Local Listings and Profiles
There are a few sites that you should have profiles on for local SEO. These include:
- Citysearch
- Manta
- TripAdvisor
- Yellow Pages
- Yelp
Some of these pages will take some time to set up and create, but to get started, you simply want to check that you have the following on each of your profiles, as applicable to the directory or social site:
- Updated logo and brand name
- Accurate street address and contact information
- Updated for 2020 description and website address
- Other accurate business information such as store hours
- Add new photos and videos
- Management replies to any recent reviews or comments
Just doing these two steps will improve your local SEO. The goal is to maintain a consistent brand image and contact information across all online media assets.
3. Check Your Reviews
Online reputation matters so much to today’s digital users. If you have any negative reviews, it’s important to reply and take the conversation private by offering an email address or phone number for a resolution.
In addition, you need to get more reviews for your business. We suggest sending an email and asking for customers to review products. However, Google recently said that they don’t want businesses to re-route negative reviews or offer incentives for positive reviews. If caught with fake reviews, it could mean big problems. Many businesses have found out the hard way.
4. Add Local SEO to Your Site Map
While this part is a bit time-consuming if you have more than one location or even a franchise across an entire region, local SEO company content really helps you rank up when customers are looking in a specific area.
If you have multiple locations, these pages should have local store information with an address, specific products, images, and other content that relates to what these customers are looking for.
In addition, you want to create local content through events, articles, news, or community-driven posts that will engage your fans, followers, and customers together.