Beat The Giants With Our Local SEO Tips
The way businesses market themselves is evolving and small companies now more than ever should be focusing on search engine optimisation (seo). An internet presence is no longer a novelty reserved for the high street giants and virtual companies, its now the number one way to connect with your customers and pretty much every business has some kind of online presence. The consequence? everyone is competing for the small number of positions on the first page of search engine results!
Fortunately rankings aren’t based on size, reach, time established or who has the most content. Its all about relevancy! who is most likely to provide the searcher with what they are looking for.
So how are you, a small business or one man show without access to the resources that larger firms have, going to compete with the online giants?
I’m going to show you now with our top seo tips for small businesses.
Use Geo-Targeted Search Results To Your Advantage!
Smartphones and tablets are taking over, chances are most of your customers will find you using a phone or tablet. This website receives over 75% of its traffic from mobile devices. What do all these devices have in common? GPS! Search engines now more than ever have the ability to no exactly where a user is searching from and in turn provide results relevant to that.
What this means for you is less competition and the ability to reach customers relevant to your location. Being the “best plumber” in Croydon is much better than being a “good plumber” in London.
Tailor your content to the specific areas your business operates in to narrow down those results.
Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!
Reviews have now become an essential part of local seo, websites with a larger number of positive reviews rank higher than those with less or negative reviews…fact. Easier said than done? There is a number of ways to collect reviews on a number of platforms. Google, Facebook and Yell amongst others all contribute to your score. Avoid using any service that promises you positive reviews, large numbers of non-genuine reviews will not help and could possibly hurt your efforts, instead focus on providing your customers with a top notch service and remind them how much you would appreciate the positive review. If a customer is happy with service you have provided its likely they wont mind spending a minute letting other people no it!
Jack Of All, Master Of None
As a small business you may think its a good idea to cover a large number of services to increase your search area. An example would be if you was a roofer, but you also offer a number of other home related services such as guttering, windows and doors etc… you’ll be able to appear for any of those keywords in search results. The problem with this is your relevancy for those keywords will be low. If you focus all your effort on one or two keywords you’ll be able to achieve much higher relevancy and in turn higher ranking! If you are a roofer, focus on being the best roofer.
Social Media Engagment
The larger and more active you are on social media, the higher you will rank on Google. Update people on your new services or products, show off projects you are working on, respond to comments and messages regularly. All these things will boost your presence and help your seo. As a small business you have the advantage of being able to offer the human touch, use this to your advantage to build a bigger following.
The Conclusion
Its dog eat dog in the search ranking world, but there is things you can do to get ahead. Although there is no shortcut to the top, using our tips along with some great content overcoming the big guns is possible! Give yourself the best odds by increasing your location specific targeting and slim down your focused keywords. Although you may not rank top for as many keywords as the big brands, you can be the best for your chosen location and specific services.
Need more help or have any questions? Get in touch we’d be happy to help!
We specialise in helping small businesses grow and succeed in the digital world. Our clients are dominating the search engine rankings for their chosen keywords in the business capital of the world London! What are you waiting for? Join them now
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