May the search be with you: how to boost local SEO in 2018
Local SEO involves a range of tactics to market your business at the same time customers are searching for a company like yours, and specifically in your neighbourhood. Spending some time understanding and developing a local SEO strategy may lead to significant additional business, with recent data from GO-Globe showing that 46% of all searches on Google are local. By leveraging local SEO, you can promote what makes your small business special to your community in a timely fashion. Here we’ll look at the latest for this ever-growing small business marketing trend.
Claim your business in Google
The first step in executing a local search strategy is to claim your business listing on Google. Having a Google My Business profile that includes detailed information about your company will help provide your existing and prospective customers with the details they are looking for.
Once you have your local business profile set up you must maintain it to ensure all details are up to date. Responding to reviews that your customers’ post is essential, as it shows you are committed to reading and caring about their feedback. It’s also a good outlet for encouraging your loyal customers to share their positive comments about your business.
According to Bright Local’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2017, 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking for a local business online every day. They also found that positive reviews make 73% of consumers trust a local business more.
Outside of the Google My Business profile, you should also think about other review sites where you can further promote your business, such as Bing Places and Yelp. Also, look for ways to earn new links to your website to further boost its authority. Add structured data markup to your website, so search engines better understand the content that is on the pages of your site. Structured data is a very simple piece of code (HTML) that annotates information for search engines.
