Today, it’s far more common to hear about someone finding a local business online rather than from a personal referral. In fact, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. What was once a simple and direct journey has now become complex, multi-channel, and multi-device, with near-endless touchpoints. On average 73% of engagement people have with your business happens off your website.
It’s certainly a Google world. Of all the major search engines, Google leads the way, accounting for 90% of search. While there are no definitive guidelines to follow from Google, we do have a strong sense about what works and what doesn’t in terms of increasing local search visibility and reaching more customers within a designated service area.
Let’s discuss key local search ranking factors and a few levers you can pull to increase your local search visibility.
Why Invest in Your Online Presence?
Investing in your online presence helps you build a closer relationship with your customers. One of the greatest benefits of building your online presence with local marketing software is the gift of time. You don’t have to spend time logging in and out of dozens of websites and applications to manage your online presence. That gift of time by extension allows you to spend more time with your customers. Whether that means more time for phone calls, responding to an email, writing replies to your online reviews, and so on.
Local Search Ranking Factors
If you can work towards meeting these 5 ranking signals, you’re well on your way to building a strong online presence for your small business.
- Recency
- Relevance
- Proximity
- Prominence
- Availability
Recency
The more frequent you’re able to publish new content to your website, social media, Google My Business, and other business listings, the more Google is going to trust your business and rank your business more often. Google and other major search engines want to show the best and most up-to-date information possible.
A blog article that was published or edited last week is going to carry more value than a blog article published two years ago and hasn’t been edited since.
Relevance
The more valuable and specific your content is, the better. Try to think about the questions your customers are asking, and create content that answers their questions in detail. The more information you can provide, the more valuable and relevant it’ll be for your audience.
A blog article that talks about how to set up an email newsletter at a high level isn’t going to be as relevant as one that dives into all the details, such as recommended tools, writing styles, personalization tips, sending times, and how to measure performance.
Proximity
For a local business, the closer your business is to the searcher’s location, the better chance you have of ranking. That means building local schema and your location into your online presence. Online reviews play a major role in increasing your search area online.
If your online presence is not structured properly, you could be showing up in all the wrong places.
Suggested Reading: This Mobile App Will Get Your Local Business Into New Areas
Prominence
Does your website have a high authority score? Meaning, do others in the industry see your business as a source of knowledge and expertise? The more others are willing to link to your content, the more it says to Google that your business and information can be trusted.
Availability
Is your business open at the precise time someone is searching for your services? Google and other search engines will show businesses that have their open hours set ahead of those that don’t display themselves as being open. Make sure your website, Google My Business listing, and Facebook page all have your open hours set.
5 Levers to Increase Local Search Visibility
Leverage Search Engine Marketing
Online advertising can be a great and quick way to get your business in front of the right prospects…if you have a strong strategy to guide your efforts. Otherwise, it could drain your marketing budget overnight.
Activities to pull the Search Engine Marketing lever:
- Launch optimized paid ads on Google, Bing, Facebook, and Yelp
- Add location filters to further optimize your reach
- Advertise on Nextdoor
- Continuously track and monitor results to identify new areas of improvement
Optimize Your Website
Your website is still a powerful tool to educate potential customers about your business. Your website, along with your business listings make up a core part of your online presence and determine the visibility of your online reach.
Activities to pull the Website lever:
- Add local schema and structured data to your website
- Get reviews on your website
- Add photos and videos to your gallery
What is structured data? It’s a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, the ingredients, cooking time, temperature, calories, and so on. Structured data is a foundational element of your online presence.
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile helps your business get found on Google while giving you control of the information that customers find about your business in local search results.
Activities to pull the GBP lever:
- Ensure your NAP information is updated: Name, Address, Phone Number
- Add the Zip Codes you service as your service areas
- Create a services offered list
- Add photos and videos to your gallery
- Publish Google Posts
- Get reviews on Google
Maintain Your Business Listings
Now, more than ever, people rely on being able to find accurate, up-to-date information about local businesses online. When your business information isn’t managed, it could mean missing out on opportunities to reach more local customers.
Activities to pull the Business Listings lever:
- Ensure your business information is updated across all listings
- Add photos and videos to your gallery
- Add your business to all relevant listings for your industry
- Edit and make changes to all your listings
Leverage Social Media
People will always seek out connections within their local communities and that presents a great opportunity for your local business to tap into.
Activities to pull the Social Media lever:
- Claim and set up your profiles
- Get reviews on Facebook
- Share content such as photos and videos
Learn more about best practices for marketing your local business on Google with Surefire Local’s Google Local Marketing Workshop.
Improve Productivity and Create Transparency with Software
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into building a strong online presence for your small business, from creating geotagged, fresh, and relevant content to maintaining accurate information your website, social media, and business listings.
To improve productivity while creating transparency of marketing spend and ROI you’ll want to power your business with the best software and automation tools available today. The Surefire Local Marketing Platform is powered by the digital tools small businesses rely on every day. It integrates, interacts, and communicates with tools you may already have, like Salesforce, Quickbooks, Google Analytics, Facebook and so much more. You can manage your marketing all in one place, while capturing necessary data, like the lifecycle of a prospect or the traffic that you’re getting to your website.
There are so many capabilities within the Surefire Local Marketing Platform that will help digitize your business. The platform was built for small businesses to have everything they need in regards to their online presence, at their fingertips, all in one place. There’s nothing stopping your business from thriving when you have the ability to access your leads, analytics, content, and more from any device.
