If you’re a small business, your local community is your main support team. That’s why ranking on search engines for your local area is incredibly important when it comes to selling your product. While breaching the digital marketing world may be scary, with trying to navigate SEO for the first time and building a custom website, there has never been a better time to jump right in.
The first step is understanding what local SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is used to help bring internet traffic to a company’s website. Local search refers to any online search relative to a specific area, such as “great restaurants in my area.” Local SEO, then, is the process of helping your business appear and rank higher in local searches.
There are many ways to rank higher on search engines using local SEO, and in this article, we will discuss five of them.
1. Maintain Your Website
When a customer clicks onto your custom website, you only have seconds to convince them to stay. That’s why having a premium web design is a must for any business looking to bring in new customers. Another huge part of this is enhancing your mobile site as well. There are over 63,000 searches every second on Google, and a large number of those are done on a mobile device. If you want to attract customer’s attention and get them to stay on your custom website, you have to make sure it is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
2. Utilize Google My Business
Google offers its own special feature to help businesses manage their online prevalence. Having a Google My Business account allows you to add information, such as hours of operation, a logo, and images. All of the information you provided will then be displayed on local Google search results and Google Maps.
You might not think that just adding information can help you rise on Google, but it’s an incredibly helpful tool in the world of local SEO. What you’re really doing by setting up a Google My Business account is creating a free business listing for your company.
3. Interact With the Community
Another great way you can improve your local SEO is by getting involved in your community. By publishing content surrounding local news, events, or charities, you’re getting your company’s name out there and tied to the area.
Adding a blog to your custom website is a great base to create content about your community. You can publish articles as often as you like, which is a great way to continuously update your website and interact locally. A blog is also a great way to try out link building, which brings us to tip number four.
4. Link Building
Link building is a more technical way to boost your local SEO. Link building is exactly what it sounds like, which is adding links to your custom website that point to other websites and vice versa. For example, if your company is based in New York City, you might add links to relevant local websites. You can also do outreach to acquire links from local business sites.
The purpose of link building is the same as writing blog posts and interacting with the community. By creating more online connections between your company and the local area, your local SEO will be boosted.
5. Outsource to a Marketing Team
One of the best ways to ensure that your local SEO is going in the right direction is to hire experts to help you. Many companies offer different SEO plans, including ones focused on local SEO rankings.
An example of this would be our Enhanced Local Listings Plan. We will take a deep dive into optimizing your local Google listing with up-to-date information on your company, as well as using the link building method described above to help your company’s local SEO listing.
Whether you decide to use a full-service marketing team or boost your local SEO on your own, there really has never been a better time to start. With the abundance of resources out there, you’re sure to find a way to improve your business’s local listing and get more leads.