Unique elements required for a service-based business to rank well in search engines.
While large multinational companies employ SEO strategies to gain customers and clients from all over the world, a small business dealing only with clients in their geographic region only wants local leads.
This article looks at what you should have in your SEO strategy if you’re one of those smaller businesses and you’re trying to gain visibility with local customers.
1. Your website
Take a look at their website and see if you can tell where their business is located and who they serve.
Your target area should be prominently featured in your home page copy, your contact page, as well as in the footer. You can even incorporate it into your business name or URL.
The idea is, of course, to make sure that when someone comes to your website looking for what you offer, they are also told that you provide services in their area.
Put these terms in your META data as well. Make a difference when it comes to reaching local customers by conducting searches specific to your city or business service area. Also, when creating individual pages for each service you provide, include the locations served in the headlines and copy.
2.Google My Business
If you haven’t already, you need to create a Gmail account for yourself, so you can easily sign in to all Google apps and products.
Google My Business is one of those freely available tools that puts your business on Google Maps, and if Google sees the right signs, it will also show up at the top of local results. Local ranking results are those results you’ll see when Google has understood that your search query is specific to a location.
Try typing ‘plumbers near me’ into Google and you’ll probably see some ads and some localized listings before you see organic search results. This could be 1-3 ads or 3-4 local listings depending on how competitive the market is.
Those local listings are valuable to your business and by creating and verifying your business with Google, you will have at least started the steps necessary to appear in those local listings.
Once you have the account, fill in as much as you can. Provide photos and use your service and location keywords in the description and anywhere else you see a real opportunity.
3.Local quotes
Local citations are when your business is listed in local directories. You will probably only need to do this once and it is very easy.
Simply search for your location with the word ‘directories’ after it. There are some obvious ones like Yelp, but you can also find some niche directories for your location and service.
Never pay for these as Google will have already flagged those paid directories when they review your site. Paying for links or citations will always hurt your ranking efforts.
4.Reviews
When it comes to local customers, reviews are gold. They are testimonials that other potential customers can trust. Soliciting them from previous clients is totally fine; however, falsifying them is not.
Don’t have them log into their Gmail account from their computer to leave a review, or Google will see that all your reviews come from the same IP address and the reviews won’t help your ranking.
There are plenty of other things you can do as well, but those 4 points are basic to any local SEO strategy, and if you’re a service-based business, you’ll need them to get the right traffic.
Of course, if you’re looking to really dominate the ranking results and make sure you have a solid strategy in place, you’ll want to hire someone who provides professional search engine optimization. They can take things further and actively maintain the necessary efforts to let Google know that they provide what they do, where they do it, while spending their time providing their service!