You’ve most certainly heard of Local SEO (search engine optimization), but do you understand its importance to your company, by making your business easier for potential local customers to find online? Let’s take a look at how to improve Google ranking with local SEO.
SEO, the process of helping a potential customer connect with a company’s product or service online, is an essential part of any company’s digital marketing plan. Local SEO helps get your local business in front of a local customer in real-time (right when the local customer is searching for your type of local business).
To help you better understand how you can improve Google ranking with Local SEO, let’s first discuss some key points about Local SEO, and the benefits to your company when you successfully master the art of Local SEO.
When a customer looks for a specific type of local business or service, there’s a high probability they’re using Google for their search. After typing in their desired keyword(s), they’re shown a list of businesses that match their query, as well as Google Maps locations for those returned results.
Why is Local SEO so Important?
Currently, Google returns only 3 featured local business results to a customer’s keyword(s), so it’s imperative to improve Google ranking with local SEO, so your local company will appear higher in the local customer’s search results.
To better your company’s chances of appearing higher in the Google results list and corresponding Google Maps for local businesses in your category, it’s crucial to utilize “Google My Business” (GMB). Google My Business affects local search results by acquiring and verifying local business information, so ensure that all the information you enter is correct and consistent.
Here are some website tips and GMB steps to follow, in order to improve Google ranking with local SEO.
First, you’ll need to sign up and verify your business at https://www.google.com/business/. You’ll need a physical street address in the area you’re targeting customers. If your potential customer base does business in a certain location or part of town, the physical address of your business should be located in that specific area (or as close as possible). Note: With any future change of address, the verification process will need to be repeated.
Next, complete the “Google My Business” (GMB) form to help customers find you no matter what device they use for their search. The location you list for your business must be owner-verified, and the specifically-targeted city should be mentioned in the landing page title. The categories you choose to identify your business must be consistent with the product(s) or service(s) you offer, and they should align with a more extensive search category. Here you’ll also be able to update your website, phone number and business hours.
The business name, address and phone number (NAP) you input into the GMB form should be consistent with those details of your actual business, including as found on your website and anywhere else these details appear online.
Speaking of your website, you should have a map to your physical location, as well as some important supplemental information on the contact page of your website. Additional information that will be of great importance to your potential customer includes days and hours of operation, social media links, phone number links for ease of one-touch direct calling, etc.
In Google My Business, you’ll have the opportunity to add members of your staff, who you can assign as owners and managers, who will then be able to assist with various responsibilities associated with maintaining your listing. You can also share photos and respond to customer reviews. You can track your listing performance, and expand your online presence with online advertising.
Google My Business is a wonderful tool for maintaining and maximizing your digital presence. However, as you can imagine it could be an extremely time-consuming venture to maintain all your data on just this one platform. And very importantly GMB is only one of the dozens of platforms available to business owners. LOCALSYNC allows you to take advantage of not only Google My Business’ platform, but also the 60+ additional trusted data platforms we monitor and update on your behalf.
Fortunately, business owners are not left to their own devices when they want to improve Google ranking with local SEO. All business owners already have plenty of tasks to accomplish in a day’s work, and populating multiple online business directories with your company’s detailed information is one time-consuming task that you won’t have to worry about if you partner with LocalSync.
LocalSync works with your business to place your location data on more than sixty online directories, and to lock down this data to ensure that you as the business owner are in charge of if and when any location data changes are made.
LocalSync tailors individual marketing plans to traditional “storefront” businesses that wish to expand their local visibility and potential customer base. Contact LocalSync’s experts for more information on how we can help.
Call today at (954) 210-7800 for more information. You can also email us to schedule a free consultation to find out how we can help you build your brand.
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