10 Easy Local SEO & Online Marketing Tips
There are currently 29.6 million small businesses in the U.S. (SCORE). 63% of consumers and small business owners use the Internet to find information about local companies and 82% use search engines (Webvisible & Nielsen). That means there’s a lot of opportunity for local SEO.
Recently I attended GetListed.org’s Local University in Minneapolis which focused on how to optimize web sites for local search. Out of all the excellent information that came out of the event, here are 10 simple things you can do today to optimize sites and content to attract local customers.
1. Claim your profile.
It’s as simple as sorting into Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local and walking through the verification steps which include a phone call or post card to verify your address.
2. Upload Pictures.
The local sites listing services like to provide their users with pictures of your business. To help ensure that they see some excellent pictures, upload your own. They don’t have to be professional photos, but they will represent your business so make sure they are decent.
3. Control information across the internet.
A huge part of local search optimization and marketing involves obtaining information from other sites. Local listing aggregation services search the internet far and wide to find pictures, reviews and any information they can on your company. Surrender your info to services like Localeze & infoUSA.
The downside here is that if something is incorrect on another site, it could find its way back into your local listing. If that happens, you have to go back to the source and question them to fix the issue and then wait while the fix makes its way into local sites.
4. Question for reviews.
Most local sites, except for Yelp, are fine with you telling your customers to review you. So do it. On your contact form be grateful you page, on invoices, on email communications, make a point to say “Hey we’d like it if you gave our business a review on Google/Bing/Yahoo Local.” These reviews, excellent or terrible, make your business more creditable to future customers.
5. Terrible reviews are excellent.
No company is perfect, so when users see all clear reviews, something looks incorrect and they may really choose a uncommon company. Terrible reviews are a part of any business and a few terrible reviews can make the excellent reviews that much better. Obviously, you don’t want to encourage terrible reviews.
6. Add local phone number.
On your website, be sure to circulate your local phone number in text vs within an image or not at all. 800 numbers may be nice, but on their own they don’t give any kind of location suggestion.
7. Have a full physical mailing address on all pages of your website.
Your address is vital and it should be on all pages of your website to re-enforce your geographic location.
8. Reckon like the hunter/customer.
What would your customers place in a search box to find you and buy your products?
Lets say you own an outdoor sporting excellent store; like hunting, camping, hiking and fishing. If a hunter puts place ’shoes’ into a search box, they probably aren’t a excellent match as it’s such a generic term. If they place ‘running shoes’ you’re still not a match as your sporting goods store doesn’t focuses on running. If they place in ‘hiking shoes’ then you want to butt them.
Business owners often get caught up in well loved keywords or keywords that will drive a lot of traffic and forget to focus on less well loved keywords that have a higher probability of making sales.
Remember to reckon like the customer.
9. Multiple locations need multiple landing pages.
Local sites don’t like a business having more than one local listing, but if the business has two locations, than that’s OK. But, you should ensure that each location links back to a page on your website that is all about that location and what it has to offer. Sending both local listings back to the same page, or homepage, isn’t ideal.
10. Treat Customers ‘Righter’
All knows that they need to treat the customer right, but with social media, review sites and the ability for excellent, or terrible, news to spread like wildfire, you need to treat your customers really excellent or “righter”. This includes online and offline customer service.
Local search takes into tab information business owners place in their local profile, information it finds on other sites and information on the business’ website. Even what happens offline can be taken into consideration as customers may bring back those experiences in the form of online reviews.
Local search is it’s own unique entity as no one can control everything that appears on their local listing, but business owners can take steps to ensure that what gets listed is a excellent representation of the company. For more information, here is a list of local SEO blogs that we’ve reviewed in the past for TopRank’s BIGLIST with many, many more tips.
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