Photo by: Merakist
How do people find local businesses online?
Simple.
They break out their phones and run a web search for local business that offer the service/product they need.
And in this age of mobile devices, this is happening a lot.
This means that, if you run a local business, you need to make sure your brand is visible and findable locally.
Right now as you read this post, somebody’s searching for a business like yours. Therefore, you need to look into your local SEO game if you want customers nearby to find your business.
Fortunately, in this post we’d be looking into local SEO tips that can help your business grow.
But first…
What Is Local SEO?
Let me put this simply…
Local SEO is everything you do to make sure your business website is found on local web searches. It helps potential customers find your business online when they perform local searches for things related to your business.
It’s called ‘local’ SEO because the algorithm favours or prioritizes businesses that are close to the searcher.
For instance, if a person in New York searches for ‘restaurants’, he/she won’t want to see a drive thru in Chicago. This is what makes local SEO a big deal for businesses.
When search engine algorithms are looking for local websites to rank, they use 3 main factors:
- Proximity: How close the business is to the customer.
- Relevance: How relevant the business is to the key terms used in the search.
- Prominence: How popular the business is in the area.
To increase your chances of being found locally, you must optimize your website for these factors.
Anyway…
Why Does It Matter To Your Business?
Getting found easily on the web has a ton of perks. The most obvious being that you get more eyeballs on your business than you normal would. It helps more people find and learn more about your business.
Furthermore, it helps them easily find your location (address) so that they can visit. Other information such as phone number and email on your website will be easily found and used by potential customers.
Additionally, it helps to increase sales because 78% of local web searches for a business ends in a sale.
Interested much?
Now, let’s look at the 4 effective tips you can use to promote your business locally:
-
Set Up A Google My Business Page
Ever searched for a business and seen a map show up in the search results?
That, my friend, is the power of Google My Business.
So, what is Google My Business? It is a free online business listing powered by Google. With Google My Business, you can put important details about your business and have them show up in search results.
The platform uses the information you put up in your profile to help potential customers find you. And so, people can find your business’ physical local, phone number, email address, and even photos of your business when they search for terms related to your brand.
You can set up a Google My Business profile in no time.
And best of all…
It’s free!
-
Get Your Website Mobile-Friendly
Most people who search for businesses on-the-go do so with a mobile device.
A report by BrightLocal shows that 77% of customers performed local searches for a business on a mobile phone or tablet.
77 percent is a lot. And if you hope to own a piece of that pie, you need to optimize your website for mobile use. This means that your website will adapt to different screen sizes without appearing weird.
Not only does this make your website easy to navigate, it causes search engines to prioritize your site.
And you know why?
Because search engines actually favour mobile-friendly websites. This gives you a better chance at ranking higher in search results.
-
Include Your Local Address On Your Website
Well, without a physical address, search engines can’t tell where your business is and therefore cannot match you with nearby customers. This makes including your physical address overly crucial.
Before you go on to add your address to your website, here are a few things you should consider:
- If you operate from one location, write your address on your contact page and at the footer of your site.
- If you operate from multiple locations, build an extra page just for locations and add all your addresses there. In addition to that, you can create a page for each location.
- Imbed a Google map in your contact and/or location pages.
- Use local business Schema Markup to add your business.
After doing this, you can go on to…
-
Build Your Online Credibility/Authority
Search engines favour pages with higher online credibility than those with little or no credibility. They also prioritize sites that are popular and trustworthy.
So, how do you increase your website credibility, trustworthiness, and popularity?
Here are a few things you should do:
- You could create listings on national business directories and prominent social media platforms.
- Get your business on local business directories or listing sites. And ensure they link back to your site.
- Get tons of customer reviews on your website and your social media pages. This helps customers and, importantly, search engines trust your business more.
For instance, if you manage a restaurant, you should have your business listed on platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook.
In sum…
Optimizing your website for local searches is a smart and inexpensive way to promote your business. It will also help you increase sales as local searchers are usually ready to buy.
However, you must keep in mind that SEO is an on-going process. The search engine algorithm is constantly updated. And so, you want to keep up with these updates and also look out for newer platforms to list your website on.
And speaking of customer reviews…
One of the best ways to get reviews is using your guest Wi-Fi. Here’s how:
You can have your loyal customers write you a review before they get access to your Wi-Fi network. You only need to provide them with a link to your review page and let them do the rest.
Alternatively, you can have them take selfies with your brand and post them up on social media and tag your business with a caption.
But to do any of those, you need a robust Wi-Fi marketing platform like SpotOn Wi-Fi.
With SpotOn Wi-Fi, you can easily get your customers to leave you a review online by incentivizing them with free Wi-Fi.
In addition to that, SpotOn lets you collect valuable customer data such name, email address, and gender. It also allows you garner other demographic data and data on your customer buying/ behaviour.
This data will prove invaluable to your business as it helps you create more effective marketing messages; thereby, improving your marketing ROI.
I could tell you more about SpotOn Wi-Fi, but it’d be a lot better if I showed you. Go here to request a demo. Or you could just shoot us a message and we’d tell you more.
POSTED ON September 12, 2020Share:
