6 Simple Ways To Get More Visibility to Your Local Business
Being locally visible on Google is everything. If you don’t appear at the top of local search results, your potential customers can’t find your website, and you can’t get much traffic and revenue for your company. According to this research, 53% of people are searching for something local once per month. In other words, there are a lot of local searches happen on Google.
Every local business needs to grow online visibility. Whether you offer exclusive services, sell products or run a brick-and-mortar store, your local community can be a valuable asset as a direct purchasing or a referral source.
Local SEO is an important thing for your small business to become locally visible online. These are the simple hyperlocal tips that everyone can follow.
- Manage Online Reviews
Everyone knows that online reviews help small businesses increase revenue and stand out from the crowd. According to this survey, 75% of customers trust and consider reviews before making a purchasing decision or visiting any store. It’s very important to build reviews as they help businesses increase credibility and visibility online.
If you want to get positive reviews about your business, you need to provide excellent customer service. That will give you a great chance to receive good reviews. You can also add social media buttons to your website to review your business. You can also ask and encourage customers to leave reviews instead of free shipping, special offer or discount. Just keep your tone synced.
It is also important to reply to negative reviews as it shows other clients that you care about your customers and want to solve their problems. It also proves that it’s easy to deal with your company. Here is how Yeargan & Kert, LLC manages their reviews on Google:
2. Optimize Your Google My Business Page
The best way to increase your visibility online is to create and optimize your Google My Business page. This page helps you rank higher in local search, generate more traffic to your site, and appear in the local 3-pack. Once you create your GMB profile, you will get better control over online presence in Google.
Make sure to claim ownership of your business listing and optimize your profile for maximum online visibility. Try to provide the most important and accurate information like contact details, review, opening time, address, website link, and services to potential customers. If you run multiple business locations, each Google My Business page must include a unique name, address, and contact information.
3. Keep NAP Consistency
Local businesses need to consider the importance of having consistent NAP information as people and search engines are smart enough to detect the right NAP data among different addresses, names, and phone numbers.
Make sure that inaccurate NAP information can make people frustrated, and you can lose valuable customers. Moreover, Google pays attention to your NAP to decide whether your business is legitimate enough to build trust among potential customers.
Many small businesses underestimate the importance of NAP consistency. It helps you rank higher in local search results, enhance sales for your business, and increase the SEO value. Ensure to include your NAP data on every single page of your website. Here is a good example from Zavodnick, Zavodnick & Lasky, LLC:
When updating your listing, make sure whether your business name, address, ad phone number are consistent with the same information as on your website. If you have some changes to your NAP information, update it regularly everywhere your business is on the web.
4. Create Local Content
In the world of local search, you need to consider how important to create high-quality content with a hyper-local focus. You can create content that includes articles about your services, local events, local news, or stories. You should find and write content based on location keywords, services or products you offer.
The more detailed your keyword phrases, the higher the chance of appearing in Google for those search queries. For keyword research, you can use the SE Ranking Keyword Suggestion Tool or Answer The Public. These tools will show the right keywords with detailed stats like CPC, KEI, search volume, competition, suggestion bid, and SERP rankings for each selected keyword.
Make sure to optimize your content with local keywords in the title tags, anchor text, meta description, URLs, and body copy. For example, Hasner Law adds long-tail keywords to website pages and blog posts like “Car Accident Lawyer in Atlanta”, “Savannah Personal Injury Lawyers”, or “Atlanta Bus Accidents”.
5. Stay Active on Social Media
Today’s online shoppers prefer to engage with local businesses through their social media profiles. According to Sprout Social, 57% of customers want to buy from brands they follow and interact with on social media. So, if you want to increase your local presence, make sure that your local business has social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Your social media presence should be a priority whether you interact online every day or weekly. It’s very important to actively engage with your audience, reply to their requests about your business, share your local content, and say thank you for being with your brand. Every day social media is picking up momentum. The wider social media presence you have, the more successful you will be.
6. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
One of the most important factors for local businesses is to make your website mobile-friendly. According to this research, 88% of people search for something “near me” on mobile. Searchers are using mobile devices more than ever before. Google wants searchers to get useful answers to their questions.
So, if you want to increase online visibility on Google, you should have a responsive website. Ensuring your website shows up well on mobile is an important factor that affects your search rankings and local SEO.
Bottom Line
With the advent of the Google RankBrain algorithm, search engine results become more targeted and hyperlocal and more focused on user intent. The only way to reach success in the local search is to take a proactive approach to improve your local visibility. I hope that the six tactics mentioned above will move your local business to the next level.
