It’s a dog-eat-world in the business landscape, especially in a digitised time wherein online marketing runs the world. SEO strategies play a massive part in providing world-wide visibility, but it’s different for small businesses who are trying to catch up with the top dogs in the industry.
Small businesses often operate on a regional level, which means directing your focus on local SEO is the best choice. This allows you to prioritise your visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in specific locations, which means gaining value proposition is the name of the game if you want to keep up with bigger brands.
Local SEO largely depends on marketing your brand, products, and services to local leads, which means that your focus should be on producing more website traffic, leads, and conversions. With that in mind, the tried and true tips below should help you get one foot in the door:
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that is designed to put your brand on the digital map in SERPs. Think of it as an online business card that manages your online presence, which can make a world of difference in helping the local audiences find your business.
Optimising your GMB by including high-quality photos of your establishments or products can improve your chances of coming up as part of Google’s local three-pack results. Meanwhile, having positive reviews and helpful posts can also improve your relevance to local searches.
Citations make a significant impact on local SEO campaigns as it helps generate traffic to your website. This is because modern consumers rely on reputable review sites like Angie’s List or Yelp to look for a business that meets their needs, so having your business name, address, and telephone number cited in reputable sites can exponentially boost your local SEO.
Google My Business is an example of a citation site, along with other authoritative names like Bing, Apple Maps, and Yellow Pages. It’s best to jump between different citation sites as having your business come up consistently can help build a stronger online presence. You can use citation building services like BrightLocal or Whitespark to build citations for your business.
Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) play pivotal roles in enhancing your local SEO. Ensuring that it is readable for viewers and easily accessible all throughout your citation sites, social media platforms, and the website is key to solidifying the legitimacy and credibility of your channels to search engines.
It also contributes to the optimisation of your on-page SEO, which is an important aspect of boosting local SEO as your title, description, and alt text can directly influence the queries with local search intent.
Focusing on local SEO can do wonders for small businesses with limited resources. It can get the ball rolling as you gain traffic and customers by establishing an online presence for a local market.
With that in mind, the surefire tips above should help you optimise your local SEO and improve your visibility to potential customers near your business. If you’re looking for more professional tips and help, we’re a Cornwall-based digital marketing agency that specialises in SEO services for local businesses in the county – get in touch with us today to see how we can help.