One of the most important things when running a small business is optimizing how you advertise in your local area. The reality is that most marketing today is done using digital outlets. Creating your own website is by far the most valuable thing you can do. Still, not every website will rank properly, especially if you are going up against local competition. Luckily, there are things you can do in the realm of search engine optimization that will boost your local ranking. This is how you can get to more of the right people sooner. Here is everything you need to know about boosting your local ranking strategy.
Improve your landing pages
When people are browsing the web what they are essentially looking for are quick solutions or answers to a problem. If you happen to offer specific services you want to make sure that people are able to find you using common sense terminology. For instance, if you are running a sports shop and people search for ‘rollerblading gear’ you want to optimize your landing pages so that this type of content shows up with the corresponding search query. However, many people make mistakes here, and add too many keywords into the textual content on their page. This is usually done with the mindset that “more is better”. However, as with all things, Google penalizes this spammy behavior and there are definitely diminishing returns. Not only that, but your content will simply feel uncanny and very difficult to read. Instead, you should only use the most effective keywords and implement them in the right spot in your copy.
Open up a Google business profile
In addition to creating a well-optimized landing page, it is also crucially important to create a Google Business Profile, this will allow you to convey the most useful information to your potential customers on the fly. This information is directly displayed to the right of the search results on the SERP. It shows key information such as working hours, contact information and even reviews. If all of these are accurate, your potential customers are very likely to come and visit your store.
Research local keywords
One of the key aspects of local SEO revolves around learning how people actually search for your content online. This requires both great empathy but also some technical skills. The two go perfectly hand in hand to deliver the best optimization results for your business. First of all, think of what it is that people might need in your particular niche. For instance, if you are operating a local restaurant people might search for ‘pizza place’. However, this is far too simple to delineate the proper results, especially if you are trying to rank locally. You have to consider all of the different ways that people can reach you and this will require you to use some technical tools as well. You can reliably check local rankings online that will help you track the volume of keyword searches. There you will be able to tell which keywords are most prominently used in your local surroundings. Armed with such a powerful tool you will be able to bring your local SEO strategy to a whole new level.
Retrieve old links
Often times people will go to great lengths to build high quality links but as time goes on and they get sloppy, unused or broken links come back to bite them. These ineffective links are bleeding your online traffic. A user goes to a page with an error 404 and then simply bounces over to your competitors. This is how easy it is to lose traffic. In order to fix this, you should use online tools to help you maintain all of your links and alert you if any one of them stops working.
Feature reviews
While it might seem like a no-brainer, it’s actually pretty rare for businesses to actually respond to customer reviews. That’s bad news because people are on the internet looking for services like yours all the time. If they see that other people have had good experiences with your business, they’ll be more likely to contact you themselves. On the other hand, if someone has had a bad experience with your company, don’t be afraid to reach out and try to resolve their problem. In either case it will show potential customers that you care about their experience and want to make things right. When people see that you’ve got hundreds of reviews and even if they aren’t all positive, they’ll feel more confident about doing business with you. Whether you’re just starting out, or already have a business that’s been around for years, one of the best methods to improve your SEO and digital marketing strategy is by engaging with customers in this way. From a technical standpoint, this helps Google index your page properly, as it favors human engagement and reviews online. This is generally a good practice and it makes the business feel more genuine.
Developing the best local SEO strategy for your business is always tricky, because unlike other instances, here you have to take very specific factors into consideration that are only applicable to your local surroundings. However, you will be on the right path if you: improve your landing pages, open up a Google business profile and feature excellent reviews and keywords.
Interesting Related Article: “The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Digital Marketing Strategising“
