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Local SEO is essential for smaller businesses and also extremely useful for larger businesses that have local branches. Local SEO focuses on search results in a certain local rather than SEO that mainly meaning national ranking keywords.
Optimising for Local SEO often is crucial for increasing your business presence for people who both live in and are visiting the local area. The rise of Google’s map pack and voice search means local search cannot be ignored if you want your business to be successful.
They’re many factors into how you can improve your local SEO, this article will cover some of the key ones and offer advice on how you can generate more local leads via search.
CREATE AND OPTIMISE GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Google my business offers a way to “beat” the SEO results and have your business rank highly on the search engine results and appear to local potential customers. When Google users enter a search such as “clothes shop near me”, after Google Ads the first thing they’ll see is a map with a blue dot indicating their location and loads of other red dots which indicate businesses Google classes as clothes shops.
Below the map, you’ll see businesses names, reviews, phone number and address. If a user clicks one of these businesses more options will appear such as website, directions and photos of the business. All this information is taken from Google My Business profile having an optimised profile will both ensure your business ranks higher for these local search queries and has a more professional look.
GOOGLE MYBUSINESS REVIEWS
“90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business”. Having no reviews is an issue when people see your business in the listings as it can be deemed untrustworthy, asking current loyal customers to review your business is a good start. A simple way to do this is to ask via email after someone makes an order. Tip (offering 10% off their next order once they have submitted a review is a great way to build a good portfolio of reviews)
Another issue with reviews is if your business has a low review score. This can make your business look untrustworthy and doesn’t paint a good image for potential new local customers. Bad reviews shouldn’t be the end of your business and can however be turned into a positive the key is how you respond. The worst thing you can do with a bad review is to simply ignore it. A quick search for your brand name will show various business directories and listings where you have reviews. Replying to these reviews in a professional and polite manner offering to resolve the issue can actually increase the reputation of your business.
