Local search is one of the cornerstones of digital marketing, providing businesses with an opportunity to reach out to new customers, increase conversions and generate revenue.
Optimizing your online presence to be easily found through search requires updating directories and review sites, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor (if applicable), and BBB. This may involve claiming and updating business names, locations, contact info and reviews as necessary.
Google My Business
Google My Business is one of the key local search marketing tools. It enables more prospective customers to discover your business while improving your site’s local search ranking.
Google My Business makes listing your business easy – all it takes is signing up and verifying your listing.
Once verified, you can begin adding information and media to your profile – including a business cover photo, address, hours, hours of operation, attributes (such as “wheelchair accessible”) and attributes such as business attributes (“wheelchair accessible”).
Integrating products and services into your Google My Business profile can help your business rank for more relevant searches. Google considers several factors when ranking local businesses, including relevance and distance.
Local Listings
Local SEO should be part of every small business’s online marketing plan, as it helps improve search engine results page (SERP) rankings so more potential customers can discover, connect with and purchase from your business.
Start by optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing to include relevant keywords for both your industry and local area. Your GMB profile should contain your business name, address, phone number and website link.
Optimizing online reviews is also key for drawing in customers; several studies have revealed that consumers rely heavily on reviews when making purchasing decisions.
Participating in Events
Event participation can help businesses increase brand recognition or strengthen their position in a local market, and gives business development teams an opportunity to connect with current customers while building up potential leads.
Therefore, it’s essential that event listings be optimized and the web page indexed so search engines can crawl, index and show it on relevant local searches and in SERPs callout boxes.
Additionally, it’s crucial that events include their location in Los Angeles as well as keyword research tools to discover relevant search queries that people could be looking up. This will ensure your event appears for both “Events Near Me” searches as well as those for events occurring ‘in Los Angeles.” Doing this will increase its rank among local search results.
Mobile-Friendly Website
As more and more people use mobile devices to search for information, having a website designed specifically for mobile can help increase customer reach and lead to more conversions.
Mobile-friendly websites also tend to improve the opinions of more than 60% of visitors who find your business online, helping prevent people from developing an adverse opinion of it or leaving your pages without visiting further – which could impact negatively upon your ranking.
A good mobile-friendly website should load quickly on mobile devices and should avoid intrusive ads that block user experience, as Google will penalize sites displaying such intrusive advertisements if they hinder the user’s experience.
Local SEO
Local SEO can help any local business benefit from reaching more of its local customers through location-based searches.
One of the first steps in local search optimization is claiming and editing all your listings, eliminating duplicates, and making sure each business has accurate NAP (name, address, phone number). Any discrepancies could mislead customers while negatively affecting search rankings.
Content creation and publication is another crucial aspect of local SEO, from blog posts and videos to podcasts and beyond. Great material helps generate inbound links which play an essential part in local search rankings.