SEO can be complicated and convoluted. Most business owners do not want to become SEO experts.
Instead of giving you a list of a lot of things to do, this is what you need to do to have the greatest, immediate impact on your business and your local SEO. So what should local businesses do if they want to grow?
SEO For Local Businesses
The goal of SEO for local businesses is to make sure people in your area who are looking for the service you offer can find you, figure out what you’re about, assess your service, and become a customer. These tips will be focused on the top things you need to do in order to make sure you get found by the people in your area.
Optimize Your Google My Business Page!
Google My Business is Google’s version of the Yellow Pages; it allows local businesses to show all of their important information to people who want it. If you want to use Google My Business for your business’s location, you will need to claim your business’s profile. To do this, go to Google My Business, log into your account, and follow the directions given.
Why use Google My Business? Well, it’s the quickest and most Google-friendly way to get on Google immediately, it allows your business to be located on Google Maps and, if Google is able to verify that your business is legitimate, shows your business on local search rankings on the top of the search results. Not only is this free, but it’s how Google gives that highly coveted sidebar space.
How do you optimize your Google My Business page? Follow these simple steps.
- Claim your business listing, if you haven’t done so already. You’ll have to verify your phone number and/or your street address.
- Make sure that all your information is correct. Your contact info, your hours, your photos, your location, your product offerings, your category, your website link, all of it must be true and accurate. If there’s a typo, a mistake, or some old outdated information, this is going to hurt the customer experience and prevent people from using your listing to start doing business with you.
- Utilize photos intelligently. The photos you’re going to want to have are your storefront, photos of the inside, some photos of your offerings (especially if you’re a restaurant), and possibly some team photos of staff at the location.
Get customer reviews and utilize them to the fullest!
The reality of the Internet today is that there’s so much information for people to take in that they don’t know who they should trust. There are so many authorities and celebrities willing to give their word, and it’s easier than ever to get people to say what you want them to say. As a result, it’s hard to figure out who to trust. Because of this, online reviews from real people are one of the first resources people go to in order to figure out whether or not they should do business with a company.
People care deeply about reviews. But it’s very easy to fake reviews. Google’s reviews have an air of legitimacy, as they’re user submitted, reviewed, and if they’re inaccurate they can be taken down.
So what should you do? Get satisfied customers and ask them to leave a review on your Google My Business page. It’s simple: they just need to go to your profile and leave a review + share their experience. It would be much better if they also left photos, as people trust those as legitimate experiences.
Read How to Get More Reviews for Your Business?
The Local Business SEO Experts
Still need help with your website’s SEO? Are you learning about keywords and meta tags and you just want someone else to take care of it for you?
At SEO Guru Atlanta, we help businesses that operate in small geographical areas grow their online presence using tried and true techniques, creating excellent content specifically for people in your area and optimizing your site to show up in the local SERPs. Call us today to schedule your consultation!
