If you own a business, it's important to make sure you're doing everything you can to optimize your website for local search engine results. By following these simple tips, you can give your business a boost in the search engine rankings, helping you to attract more customers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Creating a Google My Business Account
Accurate Contact Information
Asking for Customer Reviews
Online Business Directories
Staying Active on Social Media
Making Your Website Mobile Friendly and Responsive
If you are a small, regional business looking for more customers, website traffic, and a way to compete with bigger businesses in your area, you have come to the right place. To maximize exposure to your business, you will need to know how to boost your local search engine optimization (SEO). Elevate Media Group is here to help businesses thrive online!
However, before boosting your SEO, you will need to know what it is. Local SEO are the potential customers in your business’s area of operation. It consists of ways that advise your local customers the best businesses for the service or product they need, by building your business’s search engine rankings. When people search businesses near them, you want your business to be one that pops up. Without local SEO it will be hard to reach future customers.
As a small business it is important to know how to boost your SEO to be able to compete with bigger companies in your area. Bigger companies have more funding to advertise and win over new customers, but with a local SEO, you can have the advantage to even the playing field.
In this article, you will be exposed to 6 ways that you can boost your local SEO.
1. CREATING A GOOGLE MY BUSINESS ACCOUNT
In order to boost your local SEO, it is important to have a Google My Business profile. Having a Google My Business profile lands your business on google maps and gives your business a place on the search engine. For example, you are on vacation, and you want to look up restaurants in walking distance from your hotel. You type in “restaurants near me” and Google will give you a list of restaurants, along with each restaurant’s phone numbers, websites, and reviews. This information comes from the business’s Google My Business profile. Without a Google My Business Profile, your business is missing out on local exposure.
A Google My Business Profile is free and only takes about 20 minutes to create. Once your profile is created and verified, you are officially on the map. When setting your account up, remember to include accurate information and make any updates to information when need be.
Here are some ways to optimize your Google My Business Profile:
Make sure to verify your business
Include information you would want your customers to see when they first click on your listing
Logo
Hours of operation
Lots of images
Services /products
Encourage customers to review your business
Respond to those reviews
Use Google Posts feature to keep customers updated
2. ACCURATE CONTACT INFORMATION
The next important step in building your business’s local SEO is making sure your contact information is accurate and up to date on both your Google My Business Profile and your website. Make sure that your Name, Address, and Phone Number are the same on each account to prevent Google from thinking your information is inaccurate and lowering your search ranking. Both your Google My Business Profile and Website should be accurate and consistent.
When adding contact information to your website, make sure it is easily accessible for both your customers and Google. If your contact information is in image form, Google has a hard time finding that information and will have trouble verifying your business.
3. ASKING FOR CUSTOMER REVIEWS
Along with accurate information on both your website and Google My Business Profile, it is extremely important to encourage reviews from your customers. Reviews from customers and your response to those reviews can be the piece that separates your business from your competitor. These reviews will optimize your Google My Business, boost your customer pool, and build your business’s credibility.
Unfortunately, you have to get your customers to review your services and products first. There are three ways to do this:
In-person
After closing a sale, ask the customer to review your service or product online.
Give customers a receipt with the link to your review page on it.
Email
Send an email to customers that have purchased your services or products asking if they will write a review on your Google My Business Profile. Send them the direct link so they have easy access directly to the review page.
Phone call
Call your customers after they purchased goods or services to ask if they would be willing to give your business a review.
After asking your customers for reviews, make sure you respond to those reviews in a professional way. Thank your customers that enjoyed your service or product and apologize to those customers that are not as satisfied. Getting reviews will be a long, slow process but over time will give you an advantage over your competitors.
4. ONLINE BUSINESS DIRECTORIES
Another way to boost your local SEO is to get included in online Business Directories, some include Yelp, YellowPages, or Superpages.
In your business listing, you should have:
your name
address
phone number
link to website
a detailed description of your business
Make sure that your name, address, and phone number is the same as your Google My Business Profile and your website. If it is not the same, your information will seem inaccurate and your business’s credibility could be affected.
5. STAYING ACTIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media is a great way for you to boost your local SEO. With the rapid growth of social media, it is the perfect platform to get your business more exposure.
Like every other platform mentioned in this article, make sure your business’s social media has accurate and consistent contact information. Also make sure your social media account includes a link to your website, and various other links to your services and products.
Social media is also the perfect place to showcase photos of products and services to entice customers to check out your business. You could also contact local social media influencers to help promote your product. Need help? Look no further!
6. MAKING YOUR WEBSITE MOBILE FRIENDLY AND RESPONSIVE
Having a website for your business is a necessity, but is your website mobile-friendly? Studies have shown that people are visiting websites more on their phones than they are on a desktop or laptop. It is important for your website to be mobile-friendly to cater to the people viewing your website on their phones. Adapting your website to serve people visiting your website on a mobile device, will help up your google ranking, bring more customers to your business, and boost your local SEO. Contact EMG‘s web pros to get your website mobile-friendly!
To adapt your website to a more mobile-friendly, try these tips:
Make sure your website loads quickly
Use big fonts to make sure your customers can read your website on their mobile device
Only include information you absolutely need
This is important because people searching on a mobile device don’t have the space for fluff or extra images
Establish intuitive UI for strong UX
WHY IS LOCAL SEO IMPORTANT?
By using these tips and tricks to boost your local SEO you will be seeing new customers in no time. Advancing your local SEO will help potential customers find your business along with giving them the information they want.
It is extremely important to be part of a local search engine because it can increase your website and business traffic tremendously. In a study done by SearchEngineWatch, they found that 70% of people using mobile devices to search for a specific business, used the call button directly from google. Having your business come up in the top search results in google can entice interested customers to use the services or products your business offers and bring potential revenue to your business as well. We hope after reading this article, you see the importance of raising your local SEO and we wish you luck in optimizing your business’s online presence.