Local SEO is about getting well-known in your town or city from offline popularity that drives search results online. But how can local businesses increase their online presence?
Being a local hero doesn’t mean being active online, or posting to social media all day. It can simply mean being a strong pillar of the community, that points their existing customers to their online profiles to like and share.
Getting your existing customer base to like and share your online profiles, optimising them for SEO, search results and map pins, will assist Google, Facebook in differentiating you from the crowd of businesses in your local area.
Not only that, gaining traction in your local area online will prompt the search engines to branch your content out further and further. Seeing if more and more people are interested in your business.
This article is about how local businesses can increase online presence.
Boost your Businesses Online Presence with these SEO Tips
Local ranking considerations are critical to your success as a small business. They make it easier for people to find your services online by ranking higher in web searches, hence raising exposure to more potential clients.
Business location, popularity, and content relevance are all important ranking criteria. To optimise local rankings, ensure that your Google Business Profile has accurate information and that your listings in other directories such as Yell or 118 are also up to date.
Other important things to keep up to date:
- Social Media Contact Information
- Business Opening Times
- Business Phone Number and Email
- Website URL
Another excellent strategy to improve local SEO is to include service keywords on your website pages and blog articles. Search engines will look for these keywords and phases in your profile, making you more apparent to potential customers.
Reviews, Reviews and More Reviews
Reviews are the most important thing that will drive search results to your website or social media profile. Also, reviews will effect how well your content ranks for local search rankings.
Google understands that internet reviews properly represent a company’s trustworthiness and popularity; responding to reviews also helps boost your engagement, even if the review is negative it may assist you in enhancing your online profile and building trust with customers and boosting your search ranking. Local SEO is all about appealing to the local community, so having an interest in your customers opinion is vital to your success.
Location, Location, Location
This is a simple one…
Location will massively affect where your search results come from. If you only have your head office as your location on your Google Profile, Google will only show your services to people in that area. Even if you service the entire country as a remote contractor, Google will only see that you work out of Hull.
Developing separate pages on your website for each geographic location you service will help you achieve the best results in local searches. Include a Google map extension showing exactly where you can work, and even a radius of where you can travel or service.
When all other factors such as a fast-loading website, pleasant customer journeys, sitemap optimisation etc are equal, you are more likely to rank higher using the following tips as your customer experience is better.
How to Optimise your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the first thing your potential customers see when they find you on the worlds largest search engine. So it better look, sound and feel good!
We are obviously trying maximise the amount of eyes on our profile, so firstly we need to maximise visibility.
When picking search results to show, Google knows the significance of proximity. You should use local citations for your company name and frequently address them to boost your chances of being featured in your area.
Your primary category for your Google Business Profile should reflect the main service your company provides, otherwise, choosing the wrong category may reduce your company’s visibility in local search results for that specific service. Adding keywords to your company name or tagline will increase local ranking elements for maximum exposure, and success in search results. Mentioning your city or county on your website or social media accounts will also help your ranking in your local area.
Linking your Website to your Google Business Profile
Ensuring you are the most relevant business in the search results will drastically improve the visibility of your company on Google.
The relevance is all about the links you post on your profile. Hence your website needs to be relevant to search term you want to rank for. If your websites relevance to the users search is high, and your distance from the user is minimal, you will most likely receive a high ranking rating for that potential customer.
Also, make sure you’re prominent… Meaning people in the community know who you are and what you do. This will make your content more likeable and shareable.
How Important is Local Business Schema for your Website?
Local business schema markup makes your website more attractive to search engines. It is helpful for increasing click-through rates and creating a good user experience. Furthermore, this markup assists search engines in determining that your business is a credible source of information.
Local business schema structured data should be included in your web pages header or body section. Testing and monitoring are recommended for this structured data with Google Search Console to spot issues or alerts.
Once everything is in order, you may use this local business schema markup on your website.
For your content to qualify for rich results, it must include all required local business schema properties. In addition, ‘About and Same As’ schema properties can help optimise its semantic structure, connecting it directly with Wikipedia or Wikidata entries to resolve ambiguities.
This helps prevent errors and manual penalties. To assist Google and other search engines in comprehending the primary address, and serve it in a machine-readable manner.
What Impact do Facebook Reviews have on your Local Businesses Online Presence?
Google has gotten smarter at ranking search results over time. It continues to prioritise personalised search results for each search based on their location, device, and browsing history.
As a result, to rank higher in the local pack and organic results outside, your business must be optimised in all of the categories indicated above. Customer reviews are vital in telling clients that your business is dependable and worthwhile. Reviews may also assist in promoting it across social media platforms.
Encouraging consumers to submit good reviews on your facebook business page in an excellent approach to improving your online reputation. This will help with attracting new clients, and raising your Facebook exposure.
Here are some suggestions for getting consumers to submit favourable reviews:
- Provide good customer service, even to bad customers
- Solicit reviews through email marketing or messaging
- Make it simple to leave a review
- Incentivise your customers to leave a review with a discount code
- Reply to feedback on Facebook to gain higher engagement
- Highlight positive reviews on your page
- Fulfil Facebooks review incentive criteria
Prominence can also help your business rank higher. This aspect assesses how well known your business is in the local area. Those who rank high will receive more searches owing to criteria such as the number of citations, review quantity & quality, and velocity ratios.
This is the number one way local businesses can increase online presence
Best Practice for Optimising Title Tags for SEO
Title tag optimisation is essential to search engine optimisation (SEO). It may assist in enhancing your websites search engine ranks. Here are some best practices for SEO title tag optimisation:
- Include relevant keywords
- Keep it brief
- Use distinct titles
- Include branding
- Utilise modifiers and synonyms
- Use vertical bars or hyphens to separate keywords
- Prevent duplicate title tags
- Think about the users experience… What are they search for?
These recommended practices help you optimise your title tags for SEO and increase the visibility of your website and brand in search engine results.
Relevance-focused local ranking criteria are critical to building and sustaining your small businesses digital presence. Producing high quality content relevant to your target audience can enhance organic click-through rates while increasing SEO rankings.
Keyword rich titles and website pages that use them effectively show search engines that your material is relevant. Creating separate web pages for your company’s locations is an excellent method to maximise local ranking factors and improve each element.
Online directories and citations function like todays Yellow Pages. Listing your company’s name, address, and phone number on these sites establishes trust while reinforcing accurate contact information to search engines.
NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency (ensuring that various directories/citations provide the same information for your organisation) can also assist search engines in determining whether your business is nearby and worth checking out.
What is the Benefit of Local Directory Listings for Small Businesses?
How can local directory listings help small businesses increase their online presence?
Local directories are web directories that identify businesses serving a specific geographic area. Yelp, Google my Business, and Yellow Pages are examples of local directories. Local directories may greatly influence local SEO. Allowing businesses to rank higher in local search results and offering NAP consistency, backlinks, and reviews.
You can enhance your visibility in local search results, bring more visitors to your website, and improve your online presence by listing your business within these directories.
Local directories are an efficient method to list your company. Ensure that your information is updated as soon as possible, keeping up with any changes that may affect it such as:
- Name
- Address
- Opening Hours
- Phone Number
- Service Provided
Check all local citations for consistency (e.g. ‘Street’ instead of ‘St’ or putting ‘Ltd’ after your company’s name instead of ‘Limited’). When creating results for its local pack and localised organic listings, Google uses proximity as one of the key ranking criteria. Its relevance has progressively risen throughout 2022 and is anticipated to be an important indicator in 2023.
Using tools like Rank Flux to monitor your rankings will help you track any changes in local SEO rankings.
Increase Online Presence by Creating Linkable Content
Attracting natural backlinks will massively improve your rankings in Google. If other businesses or blogs are linking back to your content for reference points. Google will see that you had the original thought.
The practice of obtaining backlinks from other websites to your own is known as linking building. It is an important aspect of SEO and can have several advantages for the traffic and exposure of your website.
These advantages include higher search engine ranks, website traffic, online exposure and brand recognition. Link building is an important aspect of SEO. It may help your business increase online presence.
How can you Build Backlinks Easily that Increase Online Presence?
There are several ways to construct relevant, high quality connections to boost your local search rankings. One method mentioned above is to join local directories, allowing your business to be vetted while offering links to your content.
Another method is advertising locally using social media sites like Facebook. These platforms may get people talking about your product or service while raising online presence for your business.
Maintaining correct and consistent NAP data on your website and local business listings online is vital. This will help Google better understand your service area and offer appropriate proximity-based results for your company.
Boost Local Online Presence by Engaging with Local Influencers
Social media advertising may benefit your SEO in your local area. But what people really want to see is you engaging with people they know from the same area.
By identifying and reaching out to these local influencers, your business could see massive influx of interest in that particular area. These influencers don’t have to be people… They could be other businesses, sports teams, friendship groups or community centres.
You need to make sure that you relate with the influencer that you choose, as not all services will be right for all influencers. Which is why this typically works on a business-2-business basis, where one business gets recognition for helping out another local business.
Conclusion
Generally, achieving local relevance is one of the primary drivers of your ranking. Use on-page optimisation tactics that mirror what searchers enter into their searches. This allows Google to match up more relevant results in either the local pack, or organic search.
Another important part of local SEO is proximity to searchers, so provide your firm name, location, and phone number on every website page you have in the footer.
Online reviews are like gold dust. The most critical part of local SEO that will have the highest impact on your rankings for local search terms. Online reviews play the biggest part in telling the search engines if you are reliable, trustworthy and popular with people who seek your service.
Once your business has increased its online presence, you can focus on your Marketing Cycle.
