When you are searching for a local business that will bake a cartoon themed cake or sell you flowers how do you find it? You pull up your favorite search engine for a little online research, of course!
Your customers are no different! When they are in search for a service or a product, they go online to find it. According to studies, 50% of consumers who do a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day.
However, how do you compete when there are hundreds of stores out there selling the same product in the market?
Here’s a solution – A Local SEO Strategy!
Local search is a method for search engines to provide the most relevant results to users, which are calculated according to location factors. After all, you are searching for a flower shop nearby and not miles away, right?
If there is one thing that’s consistent about Google, it’s the fact that it’s always modifying. Google’s move from seven to three listings in the local pack has created a fiercely competitive environment for local businesses. Suffice it to say, if you wish to rank in that three pack and beyond, your local SEO has to be 100% on point!
A strong local SEO strategy is the key to driving more people to your store, whether you have one storefront or hundred. Local SEO helps your business to stand out in the SERP’s.
6 ways local SEO services can help you attract new customers!
- Local customers are turning to the internet to find local businesses on desktop and mobile
- Highest conversion levels of all local advertising channels
- Local search marketing is highly targeted and timely
- 88% of local consumers trust online business reviews
- Only 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing
- Local customers rely on the internet to find information about your business.
But, the bar for local SEO has been raised. Wondering why? If everyone is doing the basics to rank, you need to somewhere rise above the basics, don’t you? Let’s see how to use local ranking features to rise to the top of the organic results and even get featured in the carousel! We have also selected some quality resources and features that deserve particular attention in the Local SEO Game!
Project overview:
- Work completed
- Keyword progress
- Impact on traffic
- Goal completion/sales
- ROI figures.
Local SEO Reports:
Local SEO reports examine the vital SEO factors which affect your website’s ability to rank high up in search engines. With a clear explanation of the SEO factors, one can easily pinpoint the SEO issues the business faces.
It gives you a clear picture of what actions need to be taken to improve the SEO level. Local SEO Reports greatly assist in improving your search engine ranking and thus your ability to be found more by local customers.
A Local SEO Report must contain the following elements:
Citation Building Status:
Citations are defined as the mentions of your business on the web. It is any combination of your company name, phone number, address, zip or postal code, and website address.
Citations are a prime factor in local SEO ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. They assist in identifying the relevance and popularity of your business while improving rankings within Google Places and other local listing directories.
Directories are a good place to start with when you are building citations. The following directories are a good place to start:
- Google Places for Businesses
- Bing Business Portal
- Infogroup
- Neustar Localeze
- Yelp for Business Owners
- Yahoo Local
- Best of the Web Local
- Here PrimePlaces
- Hotfrog
- Yellow Pages
- Superpages
- Citygrid Media
- Foursquare
- eLocal
- Factual
If your desire is to rank higher in organic search results for your local business, claiming and optimizing citations is a necessity! For example, there are multiple tools like TribeLocal and GeoRanker that helps you to claim your listings on Google and 100+ Directories.
When it comes to your company’s physical location, leveraging its power and boosting your findability is vital to get more in-store customers over your competition!
Keyword Rank Tracking:
Keyword rank tracking is one of the most emphasized metric to measure the success of an SEO campaign. You need to ensure that keywords are regularly tracked for website positions.
Delivering an increase in the targeted traffic is the ultimate aim of an SEO campaign. The more keywords your website ranks for, the higher the potential you have to drive massive numbers of targeted visitors!
Keeping track of the keywords is all part of an equation! Ranking on page 2 may produce restricted results as compared to ranking at the top of page 1 with targeted keywords.
Also, to measure your Website’s performance, your primary focus should be on KPIs that are vital to reaching your website’s goal. When using Google Analytics or any other analytics tool, you will see dozens of reports showing various data. How do you know which KPIs are important for your website? This guide on Google Analytics Metrics will help you tracking.
You will have to achieve first page rankings if you want to be visible to everyone that will need your service. That is the ultimate goal, isn’t it?
Reputation Reputation Management:
Reputation Management is utilizing communication channels to monitor what is being said about you – online and offline.
Reviews are like prime real estate in search engine results! Good reviews certainly help you to rise to the top and create a perfect instantaneous first impression for your business. A positive mention is worth its weight in gold whereas a negative mention can be disastrous and erode the trust value of your business.
Just as we trust the advice of others, others will trust your business’s reviews more than anything. To keep a track of your online Reputation, you can go for a tool like TalkWalker, which helps you in tracking what everyone is saying about you.
75% of internet users never navigate past the first page of search results. Therefore, 75% of the time your online reputations is a reflection of your brand on that single page!
Website Traffic:
When you gather data from the right sources and know where you stand, it then comes down to getting local website traffic. Optimizing your website and landing page gathers the much-needed website traffic you had always desired for!
The important elements to look for gathering traffic to your website are:
- Creating the right NAP (Name, Address, Phone) on your landing page
- Mobile-friendly site structure
- Website content
- Meta title tag
- Meta description
- Embedding a map on your landing page
- Customer reviews
- Site load time
Google My Business Optimization:
- My Business if Google’s one-stop shop to manage how your business will look and perform in the search engine. It is an essential tool to find out and adjust how your site shows in Maps, the Knowledge Graph, Google+, and organic search results. You can easily manage your business listing by adding NAP details, opening hours, photos, reviews, and much more. Take advantage of this effective tool and make sure that local customers are finding you quick. Don’t ignore the power of Google My Business!
- Google My Business is the biggest driver of local SEO success, with quality links coming in at a close hand!
The bottom line is, if you have a business that can cater to local customers, you need to be optimizing for local search!
The key takeaways are:
- Local SEO reports examine the vital SEO factors which affect your website’s ability to rank high up in search engines. It greatly assists in improving your search engine ranking and thus your ability to be found more by local customers
- Citations are any combination of your company name, phone number, address, zip or postal code, and website address. They assist in identifying the relevance and popularity of your business while improving rankings within Google Places and other local listing directories
- Keyword rank tracking is one of the most emphasized metrics to measure the success of an SEO campaign. The more keywords your website ranks for, the higher the potential you have to drive massive numbers of targeted visitors
- Reputation Management is utilizing communication channels to monitor what is being said about you – online and offline. 75% of internet users never navigate past the first page of search results
- Optimizing your website and landing page gathers the much-needed website traffic we desire for
- My Business if Google’s one-stop shop to manage how your business will look and perform in the search engine. Google My Business is the biggest driver of local SEO success, with quality links coming in at a close hand!
- Google’s move from seven to three listings in the local pack has created a fiercely competitive environment for local businesses. If you wish to rank in that three pack and beyond, your local SEO has to be 100% on point!
- A strong local SEO strategy is the key to driving more people to your store
Tell us in the comments below which feature do you think is more beneficial to you to advance in your business.
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