Local business SEO is the best place to start when you want o get more calls, traffic, and sales from your web presence. Building a solid foundation of search and mobile marketing strategies empowers your organization to reach the next level of success.
These days, the groundwork for success contains four critical components. How well these components are integrated help to determine whether a business has favorable online visibility.
The Basics To Building a Lasting Online Presence
Website – A secure website is the first step that all companies must offer to attract online traffic. Insecure or broken sites will fail the test.
Social Media – Maintaining an active and engaging social media profile is a sign that a company is doing famously in business.
Reputation Management – Reviews matter more than ever. Companies that deal with customers across multiple channels need to ensure timely responses.
Relevant Business Citations – Being listed in the web’s leading directories provides citations that help SEO Local Rank and provide direct traffic.
When all of the marketing puzzle gets put together, attracting new clients comes more naturally. Accuracy and consistency across multiple platforms is the key to maintaining a robust presence. The advantage is that customers who are searching in any hundreds of websites or apps will find your business. They are likely to convert into customers, or at the least, place a phone call or make an appointment.
It’s never been this easy to initiate local business SEO and mobile marketing tactics to build the soundest foundation for your digital future. Start right from where you stand and implement the strategies that help businesses get found.
Accurate NAP Information Means Everything
Keeping NAP information accurate is now a vital task for anyone who wants local traffic. NAP is an acronym for “name, address, phone number.” By providing accurate business information, maps, and search providers can show this critical data in their search results.
In recent years, the volume for ‘near me’ searches has skyrocketed. And, according to Statistica, Google dominates organic mobile search, with 95% of overall organic search engine visits in the United States.
When people are in their car, they are mobilized to become your next customer. Don’t let them drive on by without a second thought!
The Power of Local Business SEO Listing Sync
These days, there are more platforms than ever before to list your business and your corresponding website. It’s hard to keep track of multiple entries across numerous websites until now. Having the power to sync your business listings puts you in control across various channels. If you need to update an address, add a phone number, or adjust the business hours, you can do it with ease. Save the time and frustration of manually adjusting your information everywhere. Even better, changes start updating immediately. Don’t leave your customers hanging. It’s not their fault they were searching online, found your Google My Business Listing, and you have the wrong hours posted.
Nobody has time to keep hundreds of NAP listings online in sync by hand. That’s why elite companies, and savvy small businesses, choose to use powerful tools to handle the work.
Get Represented At Google My Business
Google My Business offers company owners a dynamic tool set to establish their local business presence. With straightforward profile management, the app provides keen insights into local presence.
The profile management is direct, and the app provides insights that let users peer under the hood to see how their business page is faring.
Users who delve into Google My Business should define what is most important to their success. When advertising, phone calls, website visitors, or in-store visits are all options available.
Knowing your goal helps make choosing and sticking with a marketing strategy easier. Having a defined plan in place makes it more likely to close visitors or callers.
For example, if phone calls are the objective, it’s crucial to have call-tracking set up to ensure the ads are profitable. If the goal is sending more website visitors, using Live Chat or using an Email opt-in helps to capture more information about the visitors while they are there.
Either way, a decision tree unveils itself when you start with a precise goal for your marketing. Without one, chances are high; you’ll end up unhappy with the results.
Show Up in Maps for the Best Results
High visibility in Google Maps and other mapping systems is the ideal way to acquire new customers. Any business with a physical location seeking new customers through their doors shouldn’t overlook the mobile marketing capabilities that mapping systems provide.
People using their vehicle navigational system, GPS, or Smartphone can find your company – and get directions!
As of April 2018, visitors searched on Google Maps a staggering 154.4 million times!
Businesses that ignore that whopping figure do so at their peril. These are mobile buyers currently in the market for what you’re selling. They’re motivated to do whatever they need to do.
Stay topically relevant and gain local authority to put yourself well ahead of the competition! Maps literally “drive” traffic to your doorstep. You increase your business immediately.
Optimize Your Mobile Map Listing
For best results, taking steps to optimize your listings helps position you better on maps. You want to assure accuracy in your hours, address(es), and phone numbers.
Other information you’ll need to include in your listing are the products or services you offer. You’ll also have the option to provide accepted payment types, service areas if applicable, and other pertinent business details.
Remember, accuracy pays. Don’t make mistakes or omit information because you’re in a hurry. Set aside a block of time and answer each question. Fill in each section in detail. Don’t forget to add relevant keywords! (If you need ideas, check out Google’s Keyword Planner to brainstorm.)
Don’t forget to pick the correct category for your business type.
Add Photos to Your Maps Listing
Pictures make your Google Maps listing stand out. They are engaging and entertaining. Exciting photos are beneficial for enhancing your listing and giving a bit of marketing polish.
Keep in mind that optimizing pictures is an art and requires a bit of study. It’s worth perusing this article to learn more about best practices for optimizing your images.
Get Google Reviews
Having excellent reviews is a way to increase visibility in Maps. Google wants to send its users to businesses that maintain excellent reputations for customer services. Earning stellar reviews is the way to do that and pushed one listing in front of the next.
Getting reviews is challenging because 93% of online consumers now say its a factor in influencing their purchasing decisions. Since buyers are using them as a primary factor during their online research, there’s no valid reason to ignore their importance.
Most customers won’t automatically provide a review, even if they’re happy with the service. Most companies that get lots of reviews cultivate them through software or existing business relationships. Many people will leave one, especially in exchange for an incentive or just because someone asks politely!
Reputation Management A Top Priority
Since search engines are placing more importance on the presence of reviews, especially from trusted sites, monitoring online rep management is crucial to sustained success.
Reputation Management tools make it exceptionally simple to stay on top of multiple online activities. They provide the backbone to keep a watchful eye and an open ear on channels. They save time by streamlining multiple channels for professional management and oversight.
Don’t Underestimate The Value Of High-Quality Content.
It’s worth mentioning that high-quality website content remains a core foundational piece for digital success. Without an excellent website and concise information, customers will not enjoy their customer experience. Give them the best, and the results are improved CX and higher revenues.
It’s not an easy process, and it taxes the skills of the world’s leading teams, but the takeaway is more customers and a smoother onboarding process. With an optimized conversion in place, traffic from content continues to astound inbound marketers with its high ROAS.
Once you understand the importance of content marketing, you’re now in charge of two burdensome tasks. First, you have to handle media and content creation on an ongoing basis and an editorial schedule. After that, you need to distribute the content to the ideal audience.
That task is getting tougher every day as companies continue to invest heavily in organic search. Content creation is a crowded field. Anyone with a phone can make videos, so it requires crafting and implementing a marketing strategy to stand out. It’s because of these extra steps that many businesses outsource content development and social media marketing.
Setting A Budget
The most egregious and common mistake for small businesses is not having a well-defined marketing budget.
Without an exact budget in mind, it’s harder to shop for marketing services. Knowing a top-line limit will let you and any potential marketing agencies to determine which services are most cost-effective based on your specific needs.
A key metric you need to know is how much you earn per conversion. Armed with that information, it becomes simpler to create a strategy. Higher ticket items always offer room for marketing, whereas lower priced items don’t have as much margin.
Is Your Sales Funnel in Place and Your Pipeline Optimized?
It’s common to find local businesses paying for ads but are without an optimized landing page. While every campaign is likely to get some results from an advertisement, a poorly thought out landing page can drain your budget.
Landing pages without a way to capture lead information (with an optin form) or newsletter capture, have no way to retain any value from the digital ads. If the visitor doesn’t take your desired actions and leaves, they are gone forever.
Most customers don’t usually purchase on a first visit. Without a system in place to turn them into prospects, they never correctly enter your sales funnel. That’s a costly mistake, and it turns many people off to digital advertising.
Checklist For Your Landing Page
- Do you offer a way for visitors to purchase directly? If so, be sure to add it!
- Can customers call to ask questions? If yes, be sure to add to your page!
- Is a live chat operator available to answer questions? They help close sales!
- Make a great offer. People can’t resist!
- Are you collecting Email? If not, you should be.
Without the basics, prospects flee, and your ad budget doesn’t earn returns. Start from the beginning and build your digital success with an optimized sales funnel before you start running paid advertising. If you don’t feel comfortable managing yourself, leave this aspect of your business to professionals.
Today’s modern ad systems are always changing. People who work exclusively to maximize results for clients are well-suited to build and manage a winning campaign.
Stand Tall With A Solid Marketing Blueprint
A solid marketing blueprint helps your digital presence stand the test of time. Changes will continue to be the norm, so staying relevant in the search trends is imperative to success.
The basics prepare your business for the next stage of digital marketing, which is exponential growth. There’s no way to get there without putting in the requisite time and effort. It takes a lot to get all the minute details perfect.
Internet marketing is primarily setting appropriate budgets and using technical expertise. With a proper budget, the technical side is never the issue.
Efficiency and technical details are what separates sites that convert from those that languish. Your website builds a bridge to your sales team that provides them with a steady stream of qualified leads.
Don’t become discouraged or overwhelmed at the idea of how far you have to go. With expert guidance, the process is not as lengthy or as confusing as you might think.
If you need immediate and courteous assistance for your mobile marketing, maps, or local business SEO, give us a call at 1-877-830-3318. Let’s discuss your objectives.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.29.3″][et_pb_column _builder_version=”3.29.3″ type=”4_4″][et_pb_code module_class=”myoptin” _builder_version=”3.29.3″ saved_tabs=”all” _i=”0″ _address=”0″ global_module=”8171″]Get your free local SEO report!
Subscribe to the newsletter and get your report.
Call now or enter your email to receive your comprehensive local presence report.
[/et_pb_code][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]