Best Local SEO Strategies for Smaller Businesses
How does your business compete locally online? In today world everyone asks online sources like Alexa or Google where the closest Italian restaurant or rock climbing gym. This is why optimizing your website and local listing is imperative to effectively marketing your business as the best in its area. Here are some tips and techniques to help you increase your business's search engine rankings and online visibility.
Google My Business
When it comes to local SEO, your Google My Business listing is incredibly important. You’ll want to actively logon to your account to make sure that your business listing information is accurate and up-to-date—physical location, hours of operation, methods of payment, etc. Google allows the public to suggest edits to local listing information like open times and address so it is important to check in with your listing periodically.
Above is the local listing for Brave River Solutions. You can see that it shows our location, hours, and contact information—all of this is current and accurate. Our logo also is shown in our local listing, which adds to the overall attractiveness.
Image Optimization
Optimizing your images is equally as important as optimizing text. When including an image on your webpage, make sure that its file name isn’t generic—give it an individual, specific name that clearly describes what it is so it can be found in related queries. You’ll want to make use of the alt text and title tags for your images as well. When bots crawl your webpage, they aren’t completely able to recognize an image for what it is. Adding optimized alt text, title tags, and file names help google understand what is being show.
You may want to consider doing a little bit of keyword research so you can actually reach the people who are searching for content relevant to yours. Answer the Public is a helpful tool you can utilize to find out what your target audience is searching for, so you can fill out your alt text and title tags accordingly.
PPC Ad Campaign
In addition to hosting an amazing website that embodies your business, you’ll need to market your content to a larger audience demographic. Especially on mobile, pay-per-click advertising can set your business above your competitors in the SERP, or search engine results page. If you haven't, consider starting a PPC ad campaign to promote your products/services. With PPC you can target a location radius which will help promote your local business to users close to you and not across the country.
As you can see above, listings that look like these are PPC ads. Also notice that these ads take up a lot of the space before you even begin to see organic search results (non-paid listings, not ads). Another great strategy for local advertising is to use Google My Business and AdWords to advertise on Google Maps and Local Listing Packs like the one you see above. This allows you to show above all other local listings even if you are not in the immediate area.
Customer/Client Reviews
Reviews and personal testimony are both great for attracting more business. Why? We all do it on Amazon! We want to hear from someone who has used the product or service and learn about their experience. The more highly rated reviews a product or service received, the more comfortable we are spending our hard earned money on it. You can think of it as a friends recommendation or referral.
Having great reviews from your current clients can dramatically affect your future client base. It could be beneficial as well to include a call-to-action button on your website to get your clients to review your business, help you optimize your local listing, and further enhance your business's reputation.
Search Engine Advertising
Advertising your business online can be difficult, but it is important to not get discouraged. Today’s market is becoming increasingly more competitive; therefore, it is critical to be showcasing your business and how your services are worthwhile.
The marketing specialists at Brave River Solutions can effectively and efficiently help your business be discovered online via Search Engine Advertising. We will optimize your business listing on the SERP and so much more—just give us a call today at 401-828-6611, we can’t wait to work with you!
