Being number one on Google nationwide or even worldwide for your business type and service is always going to be difficult, time consuming and costly and unless you have national reach, will be unlikely to deliver return on investment.
Local makes sense
Even if you do have national reach, it’s easier and cheaper to convert local leads. People like to use someone local even if there is not necessarily any need to do so. For example, someone in Solihull is more likely to choose a web designer in Solihull, than a web designer in Manchester, even though all meetings could be done virtually.
Search engines are increasingly putting locality at the centre of the search results. If I search while in Coventry I will get a different set of results to if I was searching in Birmingham. It’s even more important if, as is increasingly likely, your audience is using a mobile for performing the search.
So getting your local search optimisation right is vital. Here’s 10 things to consider:
- Google+ Page (Places) for your business, with a verified listing
- Bing Places verified listing
- Getting the categories right when listing your business
- Citations (as many as possible) with consistent Name, Address and Phone number (NAP)
- Your website NAP must be consistent with citations, ideally on all pages of your site
- Your NAP needs to be a physical address in the search location, with a local geographic number
- Inbound links which mention place name and service from local sites
- Site content and pages optimised around location
- Build and encourage reviews on directory and places listings, especially your Google+ page
- Geotagging on localised social media activity
Too time consuming or techy?
Then we can help. We’ve launched two “Get On With Local SEO” packages.
For those on a tight budget we provide a toolkit, resources, reporting, support and mentoring package to support you in doing the work, costing £29+VAT per month (12 months minimum contract).
For those who think they may struggle to find the time to do it themselves then we provide a full service package, costing £199+VAT per month (6 months minimum contract).
Call us today on 01676 521444 to find out more, or visit the get on with website to read more detail and pay online.
(Survey results on what makes a difference in local search)