If your business is located in a brick-and-mortar community store, you may find it extremely difficult to place your business on the map and have a proper web presence. Making sure you have the right 2020 local SEO strategy can be imperative to your business success. If you are not being found when someone locally searches for your product or service you are missing majority of the online market.
The majority of users today are looking up businesses online before they step foot in a brick-and-mortar location. Google is no longer an aspect of marketing that a brick-and-mortar business can ignore. Luckily there are a number of opportunities for local businesses to optimize their pages and the local data to improve online visibility to their local community as well as gather more foot traffic for their business.
In this article, we are going to share some top information on how local businesses can see more success by optimizing for local search engine results:
The Feeding Process
Google contains a wealth of data and it’s important to have information on your business on this massive network as well. Google currently has around 90% of the search engine market share globally and this means that many local residents are likely searching on Google for your business or businesses just like it.
The amount of data that Google pours over in order to find more about your business can be incredible. Local businesses publish on a number of platforms including social media, business listings and directories, review sites and more. All of this data can go into your company profile online as well as enhance your local SEO.
In order to start generating more search engine results about your business, you need to produce content. This can mean collaborating with other local websites, working to generate website content, signing up for directories, publishing descriptions of your products, services and brand and more. More mentions for your online brand can mean sharing things like social media content, video content, image content and more. Just starting a Facebook account and regularly publishing to it can enhance your search engine ranking over time.
Begin with a solid foundation of content by feeding information into your website, social pages and more. As you start to build your presence online make sure that you have a Google my business listing and a platform where your customers can organically review your products or services. Making sure you set up your Google My Business page correctly is important. Make sure that you’re able to monitor and respond to your reviews as online reviews can often dictate foot traffic for your business.
The Fight
The process of ranking in Google does also come with a bit of a fight. You will have to face off against some of your competition in the local market. Even if you’ve done your due diligence and fed Google a wealth of local information, there’s a chance that you could gain some negative press or even face some competition when you are up against other similar businesses.
Two main things that can quickly sync your Google search engine results include negative reviews and product issues as well as severe suits against your brand like protests and litigation. Working to address some of these top issues can be imperative to your brand success.
A quick resolution for a customer complaint or being the target of a negative attack online with a quick response can be important for maintaining your quality of business. These are often factors that are difficult for you to control, but quickly addressing them can improve your standing online.
Ongoing monitoring can be taxing but it’s often a necessary requirement for many local businesses that depend on these reviews to acquire foot traffic.
The Flip
After you’ve finished feeding and fighting against negative press, it’s important to optimize and flip the entire system to your advantage. Having a proper strategy in place for optimization will make sure that your business will be constantly growing and able to compete against others in your industry.
Building your own blueprint is never easy but there are some strategies that you can use to help your business succeed when improving your local SEO results.
Listening to your customers and publishing content that they are interested in can be a fantastic first step. Getting better with your customer service and offering customer surveys can make sure that new content and products you produce resonate with your customers.
Over delivering on your services when customers arrive at your location can also lead to extremely positive reviews. Offering something revolutionary like consumer centric electronics or point-of-sale systems can make the entire process of visiting your location a much more customer focused experience.
Participating in your community and appreciating your local community is also important. Publish local content, go to local events and work at finding your way into local business organizations and newsletters. As you become a more ingrained aspect of the community, this can lead to brand recognition in your local area.
Consider some of these top ideas as you are working on local SEO strategies. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, contact us today for a free consultation with an SEO expert on how to rank your business #1 locally!
