Does your business serve the local customers? If yes, does your business have local listing? Having a local listing is extremely essential for small businesses to attract more number of local visitors, something which they can hardly afford to miss. Yellow pages have become old school now and have been replaced by search engines, which consumers use constantly for looking products and services you offer. As a result, local search optimization have become a buzz word for online marketers, a fact no-one can risk overlooking these days. The bottom line of local SEO is similar to that of traditional search engine optimization. Both require similar dedication and marketing strategic. However, in local SEO you need to focus more on your niche market.
To begin with, your first step will be to target your local terms the About Us and contact pages. Include your detailed contact info along with your business hours and directions will make it easier for customers to locate your business. Better yet, you can reinforce your location with such information. But make sure you give as detailed information about your business as possible.
Secondly, optimize your business website for geo-targeted keywords. Including the name of your city or town in the title, content, Meta tags and H2 tags of your website will result in better local search ranking. For example, you have a beauty salon in Fork, Washington. Use geo-targeted keywords like “Beauty salon in Fork, Washington” or “Fork, Washington Beauty salon” in your content to make it more and more specific. If you have multiple business locations, create different landing pages for each and every location and optimize them with proper keywords.
Claim your profile on Google Places, if you haven’t already. Also, create your profile on Yahoo Local and Bing Local. It is recommended to fill out all your information in details, including your business address, description, product offerings, photos, videos, and coupons. And don’t forget to optimize the business description with targeted keywords.
Upload your site in the major local sites listing services and do give some good pictures of your business. It could be a picture of your products/ services, a picture of the building where you are located, your interior and your own. Make sure you give more than one picture to create a visual impact on the potential clients. Also, make sure these photos are decent, even if they are not professional, as these images will represent your business.
Online reviews are very essential for any kind of businesses. As a local business you know the value of word-of-mouth marketing. Online reviews are almost similar where exiting customers write about their experience with your products or services. So if you are confident about your products or services, don’t forget to ask the consumers to review you on the local sites. Positive reviews along with shiny yellow stars help to build credibility. Unfortunately, if you receive negative reviews, don’t overlook it; rather, take it as a challenge and try to solve the matter at the earliest and ask the now-happy customer to say something good about your business.
