Local SEO Strategies: What You Need to Know to Run a Successful Campaign
In any town or city, it’s no longer enough that your business is good at running an ad in your local newspaper.
Even a radio ad with a catchy jingle isn’t enough to ensure that you enjoy the lion’s share of your target audience.
In 2018, to be a success you have to get good at local SEO. This is primarily because 4 out of 5 of your customers are now finding you on Google.
But we get it – SEO is hard.
However, it’s important to implement the correct strategies if you want to stay one step ahead of your rivals. Let’s take a look at what you need to do in order to run a successful local SEO campaign.
Add online reviews to your site
Google uses online reviews as a ranking factor, which means that the more positive reviews you have, the higher you’ll rank. Thus, the more visible your business will be on Google.
Not just this, but some review sites – such as TrustPilot – are so trusted by Google that your star rating will show up in the SERPs if you get more positive reviews. These star ratings will subsequently help you stand out.
Aside from SEO, online reviews also help to establish trust among you and your potential customers. If a prospect can’t decide whether to use your business or not, a glowing review from a past customer could be all they need to persuade them to give you a chance.
Not sure how to cultivate more reviews? Most of the time, all you need to do is ask. In fact, as many as 70% of customers say they’ll happily leave a review if a company just asks them.
Optimize meta and title tags
Meta and title tags are there to show our potential customers exactly what our business is all about and what we can do for them.
Not just this, but they also show Google what our business is all about, which helps the search engine to rank your website better.
For example, let’s imagine that you’re a dentist in Manhattan. As such, your meta and title tags might look like this:
- Experienced dentist Manhattan
- Emergency dentist Manhattan
- Manhattan experienced dentist
There are two key things to note here:
- It’s important to use both your service and your location in the tags
- There’s no need to obsess over grammar
For best optimization, keep your characters between 50 and 160 and carry out keyword research.
Don’t forget to add compelling words that speak directly to a prospect. For example “experienced” and “trusted.”
Launch a link building campaign
“Wait a minute, I’m trying to run a small business here. First I’ve gotta launch an SEO strategy and now I’ve gotta launch a link building campaign, too?!”
SEO can be exhaustive, which is why it’s always a good idea to work with an agency so that you’re free to focus on the aspects of your business that you’re good at.
However, if you’ve got the time to do it yourself, it’s a good idea to secure more backlinks. A backlink is an incoming link from one site to another. They’re important for SEO reasons because they pass “link juice” to your website. The more juice you have, the more credible you look in Google’s eyes – and the higher you’ll rank.
It’s key that you secure high-quality backlinks only, which are links from authoritative sites related to your niche. For example, a local business might chase links from the local newspaper or the Chamber of Commerce.
Moreover, when a website like your local newspaper links out to you, you’ll grab more of their traffic which, because it’s locally based, will be highly relevant.
For help with launching an effective backlink campaign, check this article out.
Implement an omnichannel marketing strategy
As this article explains, omnichannel marketing and SEO is becoming interrelated. But what does omnichannel mean?
Essentially, it means giving your customers a seamless and convenient shopping experience, one where they can pay for their items online or offline, wherever they are and whenever they want.
Key to this is a point of sales card reader, like this one from Shopify. A point of sales card reader allows you to sell whenever, wherever, thereby improving the customer experience while protecting their data.
This means that, while a customer might be locally-based, they might want to pay for your services while they’re out of the country, for example.
Conclusion
These are 4 local SEO strategies that will help you run a successful campaign. Don’t delay any longer – the time to start is now.
** About the Author: Michelle Deery is a copywriter for Heroic Search, a SEO agency based in Tulsa. She has a flair for writing marketing based content that both educates and entertains. She has been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur.
