As we usher in the new year, it is essential to revitalize your business and be on top of your game. Boost your online presence by comparing notes with our tips and implementing them.
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What is SEO?
SEO is search engine optimization. Local SEO focuses on increasing your business presence on search results to help you capture the local market. Local SEO tremendously benefits both businesses with physical locations and people offering their services within a specific geographical area. Local SEO involves putting your business in business directories, using local keywords, using local landing pages, using backlinks, optimizing your website for mobile use, and many other strategies.
5 Ways to Improve Your Small Business SEO in 20211
1. Set Up Google My Business
Creating and optimizing your Google My Business profile is the first step to having a great year ahead. Claiming your business on GMB will help you establish your presence on the search engine and Google Maps. Optimized Google Maps appearance significantly boosts traffic to your physical stores.
Going a step further and verifying your business on GMB ensures your business will appear in google searches. Your business profile should include accurate info, logo, hours of operation, acceptable payment methods, and images and videos of your products and shop. Once you have a solid profile and are getting conversions, you should encourage your customers to review your business online. As a business, you should strive to respond sincerely. Creating posts such as new offers and events generate plenty of views and drive attention to your profile; thus, it grows. Regularly uploading images and videos gives your business a fresh new look and connects with your customer base personally.
While managing your online directories, you must remove any duplicate listing created overtime. In addition to that, ensure the listing information is accurate and up to date. The tons of online directories allow you to give a detailed description of your business. Online directories also help you gain quality backlinks to your website. Setting up your profile in industry-specific directories gives you a competitive edge among companies in your industry.
2. Get Regular Reviews from Customers
Nothing gives you more confidence in a product or service than good customer reviews. Get regular positive reviews from your customers to optimize your GMB presence and increase your credibility. Random users on the internet will have more trust purchasing from you after reading through the positive replies.
There is no harm in asking your customers to leave a review. You can ask them in person after completing a sale for them to leave a review. Additionally, you have the option of asking them to leave a review on your business by sending them a text message or email. It is professional to respond to existing reviewers by thanking them for choosing you. Everything in life can’t always be perfect; negative reviews will pop up once in a while. Reply to negative reviews in a professional, positive manner to showcase your business professionalism.
Reviews help you cover more aspects other than reputation. Reviews will help you tackle the three significant conversion categories: ranking, click-through rate (CRT), and conversion rate optimization (CRO). The main aim of SEO eventually is converted sales.
Get your social media pages in order. It is an excellent way of interacting with your customers. People can easily share your offerings on social media as well as reviews. Social media enables people to post instant reviews of your product both in picture and video format. A visual appraisal has more impact than a written critique. Don’t leave social media to chance anymore.
3. Use of Local Keywords and Localized Pages
Keywords are what you need to make your content discoverable on search engines. In terms of local SEO, you should use relevant keywords for your local consumers. Insert the keywords into the website’s meta content, copy, and URLs throughout the website.
Getting the right keywords is a challenging task. Employ the use of professional tools to find location-specific keywords. Google keyword planner tool is one good example. Google keyword planner will help you research the keywords that have the highest search and lowest competition. Moreover, it will also help you find similar terms that your audience is searching for online. Using keywords with a low such volume will increase your content’s chances of not being discovered on search engines.
It would help if you were strategic when adding the keywords to your content. Avoid spamming your content with keywords at every opportunity you get; use them sparingly. In addition to keywords, include mentions of region-specific landmarks and hotspots in your content.
It is paramount for businesses with multiple locations that you open different website landing pages for each site. Multiple landing pages help search engines locate your listing and deliver the appropriate place to the searcher. Creating multiple landing pages shouldn’t be the only thing you do; create unique content for each page with the relevant keywords. Ensure you put the correct details for each location in the various online directories and listings. The content for localized pages may use terms often used in that region.
4. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
Mobile usage is topping the charts worldwide, and most people usually have phones with them. More than half of all search volume results come from smartphones. Anyone would be a fool to ignore the positive growth that mobile phones will bring to your business.
Ensuring your website’s quick load times on mobile phones is the first step in optimizing the mobile experience. Use larger fonts that are easier to read without straining. Huge fonts are irritating and hinder the usage of the website.
Avoid filling the website with irrelevant information due to the short attention span by many mobile users. People want to be able to get vital details fast without scrolling for long. Use images sparingly to help you declutter the website.
Optimize your website to fully take advantage of phone features such as GPS tracking and the camera. Location features on the phone can automatically help your website shift to the localized landing page when a customer is in that geographical location. The camera can help your customers leave reviews with images on your website. Images give a more detailed description, and it is beneficial in assuring your customers the state of goods after they are delivered.
5. Get High-Quality Backlinks
High-quality backlinks are essential to your local search campaigns. You’ll need link signals that are backlink pointing to your site. When it comes to backlinks, quality is more important than quantity; you’ll want high-quality backlinks that help with organic search results and brings new users to your website.
Were you wondering where to get backlinks? There are several ways to acquire quality backlinks. Create quality content that people will want to share or link to your content, especially in blog posts and vlogs. Social media has a significant influence on this method.
If you are a skilled blogger, you should consider that guest blogging on reputable sites with a high domain authority will help backlink building. We all need to adapt to changing times, engage with local influencers on social media to backlink to your website, and create awareness for your brand.
Establish a relationship with local websites related to your industry. They will give you backlinks by reviewing your business or by acknowledging you as their partners in the industry. There might be a possibility that you might have sponsored an event or organization or partnered with them at some point in the past, kindly request them to offer a backlink to your website if they are comfortable with it. Avoid creating your backlinks or many, to be precise. It will water down the credibility of the other backlinks.
Get Professional Help and Guidance
Let 2021 be your year of prosperity. With these five great tips, there is no excuse you should offer for failing to improve your SEO. You never know; maybe this small effort you make will change your status from a small business to something bigger. Let our professional marketing experts be by your side to help you get the most out of these five tips.
At BizIQ, we care about helping small businesses improve their SEO. Nothing makes us glad like seeing a small business prosper and grow. Our team comprises highly skilled marketing experts that have a vast wealth of experience in small business marketing services. We’ll help you keep up with all the current trends in the industry. Get access to your data to see the value of your money and our efforts. Start your optimized SEO journey.
Call us today at (888) 416-9800 and schedule a time to talk to our marketing experts.
