Regardless of how big your business is, it’s important to make local SEO a part of your digital marketing plan. Doing so allows you to create a personalized experience for a customer, which can increase conversion rates and reduce your client acquisition costs. Let’s take a look at the various steps that you can take to implement an effective local SEO digital marketing plan.
Use Google Maps to Make Your Company More Visible to Your Target Audience
Making use of Google Maps SEO strategies can boost your company’s visibility without having to spend a lot of money. For instance, you can use the free Google My Business tool to register your company’s address, phone number and other identifying information. When a potential customer enters the name of your company into Google, that data will be showcased prominently in search results. This tool also allows customers to leave a message seeking more information about a product, leave a review or otherwise interact with your firm.
It’s also in your best interest to target keywords that your customers are most likely to use when creating a Google Maps listing. For example, if you are a law firm, you might want to target phrases like injury attorney, criminal defense lawyer or similar phrases.
You’ll also want to optimize your listing for phrases such as the specific community that you serve or the region where your target customers live. Again, if you were a law firm, you might target phrases such as lawyer in Sydney or criminal defense attorney in Perth.
To make the most of Google Maps SEO marketing efforts, be sure that the information presented to customers is accurate. If your company’s phone number changes, make sure to change the number on your My Business profile. If your company’s address changes, make sure to record that change on any online properties that your business owns. Otherwise, you’ll be spending time and money on a marketing plan that merely confuses those trying to learn more about your organization.
Digital Marketing Is About More Than Just Targeting Keywords
Targeting keywords that are relevant to your company is an important part of optimizing content for search engines. However, it is not the only component to a successful local SEO digital marketing plan. Ideally, you will try to grow your following by posting content to social channels such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Having a robust social media presence allows you to have conversations with both current customers and those who may be at an earlier stage in the sales funnel. Instead of making a hard sales pitch, you can focus on educating consumers, which helps to gain their trust.
It can also be an effective way to get your brand in front of people who may have friends, family members or colleagues who want or need what your company has to offer. According to a comprehensive study released in 2015, consumers trust the recommendations of friends and family significantly more than they trust the words of advertisers.
Therefore, a robust social media presence can help to increase organic mentions of your company from actual consumers in your community. Ultimately, this can help to increase the return on investment from each dollar that you spend on a digital marketing campaign.
It’s worth noting that search rankings for a given keyword are influenced by the number of mentions a company earns on social media platforms. Therefore, investing in a social media presence may help to increase visibility for your brand’s other properties and drive extra traffic to its primary website.
Hire an SEO Agency to Help Your Company Meet Its Goals
Let’s say that your target market consisted of people who lived in Sydney. In this hypothetical scenario, it may be in your best interest to hire an agency that knows how to do SEO in Sydney. At a minimum, this type of service provider will know how to determine which keywords have the highest search volume and how competitive they are.
A good local digital marketing company will also be able to analyze the keywords that your competitors are using to learn from their mistakes or piggyback on their successes. Furthermore, this type of company will know how to track the performance of any campaign that you have started in the last few days, weeks or months. This can help to ensure that you aren’t spending money on ads that aren’t helping your company become larger or more profitable.
As a business owner, it’s important to be aware of any opportunities that you have to make a personal connection with your customer. By combining local SEO tools with traditional optimization strategies, you can boost your brand’s visibility within the community without going over your digital marketing budget. If you need help creating a marketing strategy that meets your company’s needs, don’t hesitate to hire an outside service provider. Doing so may make it easier to increase your company’s brand reach and revenues in a relatively short period of time.