Small businesses should make marketing one of the top priorities. Marketing practices have evolved significantly in the last quarter of the century. Many companies used to rely almost entirely on word-of-mouth to reach new customers. While word of mouth is still important, they should also use digital marketing to expand their reach.
Search engine optimization is an important element of a digital marketing strategy. Smart business owners will have a complete SEO strategy to reach as many potential customers as possible through Google. However, only 49% of small businesses actually use SEO. You will stand out from the competition better if you leverage it yourself.
Here are some crucial guidelines to help improve your local SEO strategy. If you have trouble developing your SEO strategy on your own, then you thought of going to consult with an expert. You can even find strategists who are specialized in your industry alone, such as dental SEO specialists.
Make sure that you are targeting the right keywords.
Many businesses have a very comprehensive SEO strategy that involves getting high quality backlinks, carefully organizing their pages and performing other important SEO tasks. But, unfortunately, they make the mistake of targeting the wrong keywords. If you don’t focus on the right keywords, then you won’t receive quality traffic even if you do everything right.
You need to make sure that you choose keywords with decent search volume and relevance to your target customers. You also need to make sure that they are not too competitive for rank.
You should consider the following mistakes that were made by other businesses, so you don’t do them yourself:
You cannot afford to choose the wrong keywords. Use Google Keyword Planner and other keyword research tools.
Make sure that all of your contact information is accurate.
E-commerce businesses and other companies that do not focus on local marketing take a different approach to offsite optimization. They are usually interested almost entirely on building links to their website.
Links are still very important for local businesses as well. However, they should also focus on other offsite ranking factors.
Google sees references to your website in other parts of the Internet. If you have already mentioned your business on another site, then it will consider your site more prominent. This is especially true if you submit your contact information and address on this platform.
Unfortunately, these references won’t offer you nearly as much value if you don’t make sure that your information is consistent. If you use different addresses in your own directory and site, Google will reduce the likelihood of ranking your web pages.
It’s best to review your address and contact information on different platforms regularly. In addition, you should always update everything if your company address or phone number changes.
Use local websites properly when building links
As mentioned above, links are still very important for search engine optimization. Therefore, you need to build the right links to improve your search engine rankings.
All the same thing, Google seems to place a higher weight towards links from other web sites in your area. However, you need to use it appropriately. For example, you don’t want to participate in link exchange programs with completely different websites and industries.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t get backlinks from other small businesses on different verticals. However, it is better if you make sure that there are some contexts that make such a link sensible. For example, if you partnered with another small business at a charity event, you could get them to mention it on their company blog and link back to your site.
You should also consider utilizing local directories and news sites. These can be some of the best places to get links as a local business.
