Local Presence with SEO Strategies

Building a Local Presence with SEO Strategies

A local company needs to reach the market in which they operate. This task is a dilemma for most local companies when it comes to their online presence. How do you tailor the online searches to your target audience? Companies need to look at their key search words and online presence consistently. The company must refine and improve their SEO strategies to help capture their local target market.

As you work towards increasing your local presence, you will want to make certain that your content is useful to that market. Your content and search words must reflect the needs and wants of the market you are in. Understanding the utilized words or phrases in the area will help you grab potential customers in the searches.

Useful Titles and Short Descriptions

Have you ever gotten frustrated because your searches are not giving you the results you want or expect? Well, as a business, you want to make sure you are not one of those companies that cannot be found or are frustrating to your possible customers.  To guarantee that the search results capture your audience, you need to ensure your titles, and short descriptions relate to your customers.

Search engines look at the titles and short descriptions to find the closest match for a person’s query or request. So to increase your local presence means you need to include words and phrases that relate to the area. Therefore, there is an importance in choosing useful titles and short descriptions to increase the traffic on your website.

One tip to increasing your local presence is to include keywords in your title and description. The keywords should appear at the beginning of the title. Placing keywords at the beginning of titles allows the search engines to find the information faster and include the website in the results.

Another tip for increasing your local presence is the use of the complete short description for your company. The short description or Meta description is a summary that best describes your company’s webpage. These descriptions show in the search results and allow the users to further narrow down their choices in choosing a website. So, you will need to make sure the short description is accurate and useful.

Utilize Online Listings

Many times companies do not utilize the full potential of online listings. Online listings are probably one of the fastest ways to increase your local presence. Companies often miss the mark on this item. Sometimes the online listing is not complete, and important business information is missing. The missing information causes the search engines to struggle in finding your company’s data. Incomplete information also creates inaccurate and inefficient searches. So if you would like to increase your local online presence, complete the online listing applications.

The online listings are an important part of capturing the local presence because many people use searches to find a particular service or product in the area. For example, when you travel out of town, and you are looking for a restaurant, you will search for restaurants in that city’s area. Now if the results only show a partial address, the likelihood that you go to that business is slim because you do not have all the information you need to get there.

Use Google My Business

 Google My Business is an important search feature. This feature places your business in Google’s search engines. Claiming your Google My Business and completing the verification process allows Google to confirm your businesses legitimacy. This legitimacy tells potential customers that your business does what it says it is going to do.

Google My Business provides your customers with assurances. This addition helps increase your local presence because if people know they can trust your site, they are more apt to visit and purchase goods and services from your company.

When your company has Google My Business, people will respect and use the business more. You have more opportunities you bring in the potential customers.

Another tip for using Google My Business is to make sure you:

  • Are exact when you write your description of your business.
  • Choose the correct business category.
  • Include your business hours.
  • Include your logo and pictures of your business.
  • List the payments your business accepts.
  • Begin using Google Posts.

Encourage Customer Reviews

Customer reviews help with increasing your local presence. The reviews bring about trust for customers and tell others about their experience. The reviews can influence a potential customer’s decision to visit your store if the reviews are positive.

First, if you have someone unsure of visiting your business, positive online reviews can help them make the decision. The reviews provide trust for uncertain customers. Those customers can see that your business provides the service or product they are looking for, and other customers are happy. How many times have you searched and then saw bad reviews about a business? You probably kept looking for another place and went elsewhere.

The customer experience is a powerful tool. As a company, you want to show your appreciation to your customers. Responding to their review and writing to thank them for taking the time to write a review and visiting the store shows them your company cares.

Adding Local Content

A company increases its local presence by including local content. You want to make sure that your local customers find your information useful. The searches mean that people are looking for something. So if you provide the answers to what those customers are looking for and where they can find it, your website becomes more valuable to the users.

Do not just add content to make your site look full. You need to make sure what you add is useful for the users. If your site is full of fluff, your customers will leave because they need to sift through a large amount of data which takes time. You need to provide the information directly, so it does not waste your customer’s time.

Another tip for the addition of local content is to review and update the material often. You want customers to return to your site. So if you keep the same information up all the time, they do not have a reason to come back. Make your site useful for them, so they return and hopefully inform others about the site and company.

Creating a Mobile-Friendly Site

Since many people are always on the move, the importance of mobile-friendly websites is even more necessary. The ability to search for information on the go helps you to plan. If you should happen to have to change or adjust your agenda, a mobile-friendly website allows you to do so easily.

If your website is not mobile-friendly, your potential local customers may get frustrated and try to find something else. A customer does not want to spend a lot of time searching on their mobile device. If your site is mobile-friendly, your local presence will increase and continue to rise.

You may also want to consider using an application. Creating an application allows your returning customers to keep your business at their fingertips. Just think of places like Starbucks, the online app makes it easy for customers to choose the location, place their order and pay. All the customer has to do is walk in the store and pick up the order. The application allows the business to stay visible to their customers and provides easy access to the products they want.

Remember if you are looking to increase your company’s local presence, you need to provide useful information to the customers. Providing that useful information comes by making sure the information is current, helpful, and complete. The search engines only provide the information you enter. So, the company must make sure to review and update the information in the data searches often. Your company needs to include keywords in the titles and descriptions that will help the search engine narrow down the selection results. Also, do not forget to utilize your listings because many customers start their search from a list.

A company’s local presence is important. But, it is not enough to be there. Your company needs to make the customer feel that it is providing a valuable service and product. You want to make your customer feel like they can rely on you and you can help them with what they need.

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