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The 7 Best Ways to Gain Popularity


Online searches are often not the starting point for local consumers to find nearby products and services.

In fact, 78% Use the internet more than once a week to find information about local businesses in their area – 21% search locally every dayaccording to BrightLocal’s recent local consumer survey.

If you want to be found, you must be visible in local organic search results and map package search results. You then have the opportunity to convert those searchers into in-store traffic, appointments, or other types of paying customers.

In this column, you’ll find 7 of the most effective ways to use SEO to build local visibility.

1. Check for technical errors that may affect the index

This is baseline SEO. If search engines can’t index your site, you won’t be found.

First, learn the basics about How search engines crawl and index your website. These basics will help guide your SEO efforts forward.

You might think technical SEO issues like indexing are too complex to manage on a running business basis.

If so, at least you’ll understand what you’re hiring an SEO agency or consultant to do for you.

On the other hand, you may feel confident researching indexing issues yourself, in which case these resources can help:

2. Create extraordinary content

Content is the tool to deliver all your messaging, offers and calls to action to your audience.

However, your small business isn’t just competing in search results with other businesses like yours.

You are also faced with media publications, informational sites, big brands, local review sites, and various other sources for creating content related to your products and services.

The bar is high, which means your content has to be different to stand out.

Before you put your feet in and start writing a blog post, take a moment Create a local content strategy This aligns with your business goals.

make sure you include Different types of local contentand optimize each piece of search using These Proven On-Page Local SEO Best Practices.

3. Incorporate local link building into your SEO strategy

Links are the currency of the web. They are an important signal of trust in search engines like Google and suggest that others endorse your content.

John McAlpin explains: “Local links are designed to show that others who are locally relevant trust or support your business.”

his worksWhat is Local Linking and How to Find More Local Linking Opportunities‘, part of our Local SEO Guidelinesis a great starting point for your local link building strategy.

From there, I highly recommend reading This column by Kevin Rowewhere he shares 50 types of links and what you need to do to attract each link.

4. Organize your Google Business Profile

No local search strategy is complete without an optimized Google Business Profile (GBP).

While Google obtains local business information from various sites, directories, and networks on the web, it does treat its own profile as a single source of truth about any local business.

Formerly known as the Google My Business program, these profiles have become richer and more interactive in recent years. With these updates, they’ve also become more useful to local searchers.

Today, GBP not only provides key business information such as your location and contact information, it also enables you to:

  • Help searchers understand their experience with your business with a variety of high-quality photos and videos.
  • Showcase offers, events, and more google post.
  • by interacting with customers messagingQ&A, and replying to comments.
  • Proactively share differentiated features, health and safety information, payment methods, and more Attributes.

Sherry Bonelli provides a great guide to sterling optimization here.

5. Make sure your local listing is accurate

Google values ​​the searcher’s experience above all else. Therefore, inaccurate, outdated information that negatively impacts the searcher experience is a liability and can greatly hinder your local visibility.

No matter where searchers come across your business listing online—whether it’s on social networking sites, local directories, the Yellow Pages, or on review sites like Yelp or Trip Advisor—the information they find there should give them the ability to seam conversion.

For example, listing the wrong phone number, address, hours of operation, or other business-critical information could result in searchers showing up in a closed store.

Or be sent to your previous location by their GPS system.

Seeing various versions of critical business data on the web makes it difficult for search engines to know what’s real.

Given that Google wants to give every searcher the best answer, you don’t want an algorithm to question whether your business information is trustworthy.

Tracking listings manually is time-consuming and difficult because data aggregators and directories may be scanning for business information and updating their listings.

This is how misinformation or outdated lists proliferate, and the wrong address, URL, or time can spread very widely.

Small businesses can Use local SEO tools like Moz Local or samlash Automate the process of scanning business listings and monitoring their accuracy.

6. Monitor and respond to local comments

Reviews are a powerful part of the local search experience, and by 2021, 77% of local consumers say they always or regularly read reviews when searching for local businesses.

Google’s local ranking algorithms are more arcane than their organic counterparts.Google publicly tells us that there are Three main local ranking factors: Correlation, distance and significance.

Reviews are part of the standout factor, with Google stating:

“Google review counts and review scores affect local search rankings. More reviews and positive reviews can improve your business’s local rankings.”

Jeff Riddall’s comprehensive overview of how Google reviews affect organic and local search rankings here.

Check out Matt South’s ‘Where and how to get the right reviews for your business‘ understand more.

7. Use the relevant local mode

although not a ranking factorSchema markup is structured data that makes the job of web crawlers easier and helps search engines better understand your web page content.

Anything you can do to help Google match your pages to relevant queries more efficiently is a win.

Schema markup can help trigger rich results, highlighting additional information such as breadcrumbs, reviews, FAQs, and sitelinks on search results.

Applying the schema correctly and then testing and validating your markup is essential, as mistakes can disqualify you from these rich results.

Chelsea Alves wrote a wonderful Local Markup and Enriched Results Guidelines This can be your starting point for adding this strategy to your local SEO strategy.

put it together

Running local SEO as a small business can seem daunting. You may not have a dedicated marketing department, and it’s not uncommon for business owners to feel overwhelmed by the administrative and marketing tasks that come with being an entrepreneur.

I hope this guide has provided you with enough information and resources to determine what you can address in-house and what you might need to outsource.

It’s fine to use an agency or consultant to enhance your in-house skills – but you must have a healthy understanding of what you’re asking these professionals to do for you.

Remember, local SEO is not a one-off, “set it and forget it” campaign to check the list.

It’s an integral part of your marketing and often intersects with customer service.

To learn more, download Search Engine Journal’s eBook ‘Local SEO: The Definitive Guide to Improving Local Search Rankings.

More resources:


Featured Image: Shutterstock/Deemka Studio





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