From the moment of your business’s launch, you’ve likely been studying the benefits to be had from investing in effective search engine optimization, and it’s no surprise why it should be one of your marketing priorities — after all, getting your name out there plays a major role in your venture’s success. But if your business has a physical location, you shouldn’t only be focusing on showing up on general or national search engine results pages. You should also have a strategy in place for local SEO.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is important if some or all of your clients come from your location. You could be a Los Angeles, California restaurant, bakery, Web design company, or pet grooming shop, for example; because you have a physical shop, store or office, having local SEO strategies in place can help you bring more customers to your actual business space.
You want your business to show up in the results when a Web user types in “pet groomers in los Angeles” or “Los Angeles pet grooming.” With proper optimization, these keywords could help your business appear, for example, in the Google Carousel (a photo-rich horizontally scrolled search result featuring the top nine search results), or the traditional Google local results pack, which presents a list of seven local businesses related to the search terms.
What should you do to get started?
Here are important steps you can follow to start optimizing your business for local search:
First, set up your local business pages for the three major search engines.
You need to create accounts for your business with Bing, Yahoo and Google+ Local. This means that you’ll need to fill out important business information such as your business name, address, phone number, and other details.
Next, you need to optimize these local pages that you have created.
Fill it with plenty of good quality photos, a comprehensive list of the services you offer, and your correct hours of operation. It’s also crucial to list your business under the correct category so that search engines will have a better idea of what your business is about (Moz Local, previously known as GetListed, lets you check and fix your listings in top local directories).
Make sure you have accurate local business citations.
Take time to check if all your information on all the listings are complete and consistent (same spelling, same exact phone numbers, same abbreviations, etc.).
If you find your business listed by someone else (this is called a citation), you can claim it. See if there is another business with the same name and location. Use tools like Localeze or Yext to see where your local listings are found online, and then verify that you are the owner of the business (through phone, email or even traditional mail).
Get as many good reviews as possible from your customers, in sites like Yelp.
People will be more interested to learn about your business when they see plenty of good and authentic reviews from actual former customers. Talk to clients that come to your physical location, encouraging them to write reviews about their experience. Affix a button on your webpage that would make it easy for visitors to leave a review.
About Jeremy Littlejohn
I love web design and marketing and have a passion in helping business owners enjoy a results-driven online business. I am a loving father and husband, and legitimate business man with high integrity.
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