If you imagine the internet as one big shopping mall, it’s easy to see why SEO is so important. Millions of competitors and millions of prospective customers all in one place. The vast majority of those customers search via Google.
If your local business isn’t ranked on that first page of results, it’s highly unlikely any of those prospective customers will find you. If you’re a local business, you have the same problem just on a smaller scale.
Here are some top tips for local SEO for your small startup.
1. Claim Your Business Listing
When you create your business, your business listings will start to appear all over the web. It’s imperative that you track these listings down, claim them and remove ay duplicates. This improves your local SEO.
Finding the listings can be difficult. Thankfully, there are now tools that can aid you in your search. Moz Local is a great tool that can help you to do this quickly. Simply enter your business name and Moz will find all your listings.
2. Add Location Web Pages
Google crawls your website looking for the information that best matches people’s searches. One way to improve your local SEO ranking is to build specific location web pages into your web design.
For example, if your business sells printers and you’re based in Los Angeles you could create the web page “Printers for sale in Los Angeles”. The content of this page would include information about your business, products, and ability to provide said prodcuts in Los Angeles.
When Google crawls your website it picks up on this location page and suggests it to the searcher on Google.
3. Improve NAP
NAP is your business name, address, phone number. These must be consistent throughout all your internet presence. Getting them consistent improves your local SEO performance.
Makes sure your NAP is the same on all your web pages, social media accounts and any other business accounts you may have. Pay attention to all the details including spacing and capitalization.
4. Google My Business (GMB)
Your GMB account is vital to your local SEO success. Using your GMB account you can ensure your NAP is correct, add a short description of your business, link to your business website, and include any opening hours.
Set your profile pic to your business logo. Add lots of high-res images of your prodcuts and place of work. All of this allows customers to find you easily on Google and make you look professional and trustworthy.
Businesses with blurry images and a lack of information are quickly ignored by internet users.
5. Keep on Top of Reviews
When customers leave you a review online it is imperative that you respond. Don’t just ignore the bad reviews either they are the most important to respond to.
Keep on top of your reviews. Thank those who left positive reviews and apologize to those who left negative reviews. How you respond is important. Nobody wants to see a business argue with disgruntled customers. Be polite and offer a resolution.
Customers are looking for businesses with 5 stars. Successful handling of reviews can improve your SEO, clickthrough rate, and conversion rate all in one go.
