In competitive local industries like construction and home services, a well-executed SEO strategy can be the difference between more leads than your competition.
Think of it as investing in your digital real estate: if you’re not seen online, how will people pick up the phone to call your business?
To help you boost your visibility and stay ahead of the game, we’ve put together this ultimate local SEO checklist just for small businesses.
With these tried-and-tested tactics outlined below, we guarantee that you’ll have a better shot at of beating your competition.
Local SEO – What It Is and How It Can Help You
You want online traffic and more leads and customers, right? Then let me introduce you to Local SEO – a powerful tool that can help you attract nearby customers who are looking for businesses just like yours. Local SEO is all about optimizing your online presence to show up in local search results.
Essentially, it’s a way of telling search engines exactly where your business is located, what services it offers, and what makes it unique.
The results? Your business gets more visibility, more traffic, and more revenue. With local SEO, you’ll be able to reach people who are ready to buy, which means you can tap into high-converting traffic and grow your business in no time.
For several of my clients, this is their main source of traffic. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started with Local SEO today!
Guide to Setting Up Your Google My Business Profile
If you’re looking to expand your online presence and improve your local search rankings, setting up your Google My Business (GMB) profile is a must.
This free tool lets you manage how your business appears on Google, including information like your address, hours, and reviews.
By optimizing your GMB profile, you can make it easier for potential customers to find you online and get the information they need to contact you.
But where do you even start? In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to set up your GMB profile and make the most of this valuable marketing tool.
Choosing the Best Business Category for Google My Business
When it comes to optimizing your business for local SEO, choosing the right category is important. Not only does it help search engines understand what your business is all about, but it also helps potential customers find you.
But with so many categories to choose from, how do you know which one to pick? Start by considering your primary service or product. Are you a general contractor, a concrete contractor, or a construction company?
Once you have a specific category in mind, look for more specific subcategories that fit your business even better.
By taking the time to choose the right category, you can improve your chances of showing up in relevant local search results and attract more customers to your business.
Optimizing Your Website for Maximum Reach
To truly maximize the reach of your website, it’s important to optimize it for search engines. This means focusing on factors such as:
- Performing keyword research and targeting those keywords
- High-quality content creation
- Building links to your web pages
Additionally, optimizing your website can improve its overall user experience, making it easier for people to navigate and find the information they’re looking for. With so much competition out there, optimizing your website is a key step in expanding your reach and growing your business.
Citation Management for Local SEO Power-Ups
One thing that can greatly enhance a local business’s online presence is properly managing its citations.
Citation management includes ensuring that a business’s name, address, and phone number are consistent across all online directories and platforms. This not only helps improve a business’s search engine rankings, but it also ensures that people can easily find and contact them.
Finding the right directories and those that your competitors are in is an important part of local SEO. Implementing citation management strategies can provide a significant power-up to a local business’s SEO efforts.
Technical SEO Audit to Ensure Everything is Ticking Along
An SEO audit evaluates the technical aspects of your website and ensures that everything is working correctly. Technical SEO audits can include a variety of factors, including:
- examining your website’s code
- analyzing your website’s navigation
- checking for broken links.
- ensuring you are maximizing your potential to rank for keywords
- Evaluating your website speed.
- Optimized Internal links
By conducting a thorough technical SEO audit, you can ensure that your website is optimized to its fullest potential and that it ranks higher on search engine results pages, driving more traffic to your site.
Schema Markup for Local SEO
Schema markup is a code that search engines like Google use to understand the information on your web pages.
By using schema markup for local SEO, you can provide search engines with more detailed information about your business location, operating hours, contact details, and customer reviews.
This added information can help search engines better understand your business and show it to potential customers who are searching for your products or services in your local area.
With the right schema markup in place, your website can rank higher in local search results and attract more qualified leads.
Online Reputation and Review Management
In today’s fast-paced digital age, your online reputation carries significant weight. With a simple Google search, potential employers, leads, or clients can easily find information about you.
This means that your online presence can either make or break your personal or professional success. Your online reputation is essentially your digital fingerprint, and it’s crucial to be mindful of what you post and how you engage online.
Even if you don’t want to have much or any presence online, having no reputation is looked at poorly as having a bad reputation. Gaining feedback and reviews is an important part of reputation management.
With Local SEO, the higher-ranked competitors typically have more reviews and a higher review rating than those lower. This makes reputation management a key part of the local SEO campaign.
Taking control of your online reputation and online reviews can lead to greater opportunities, trust, and respect from others. So, don’t underestimate the power of your digital footprint – it’s time to take control and showcase the best version of your business online.
How to Use Review Management for Local Business
Managing online reviews is critical for any local business looking to establish a prominent online presence.
Proper review management can make or break a business, so it’s important to get it right. Your customers want to feel heard and respected, and addressing their feedback publicly can demonstrate your commitment to excellent customer service.
Additionally, effective review management strategies can help you identify areas for improvement which can ultimately lead to a better customer experience. With so much at stake, local businesses must be diligent in monitoring and responding to online reviews.
By following some simple tips and implementing effective review management strategies, any local business can create a flourishing online reputation.
How to Manage Reputation by Engaging with Customers on Social Media
In today’s digital age, social media is an essential tool for businesses to manage their reputation. Engaging with customers on social media is not only an effective way to build relationships but also to demonstrate excellent customer service.
By responding quickly to customer inquiries, complaints, and feedback, businesses can show their commitment to customer satisfaction. With so many social media platforms available, each with its unique features and nuances, it’s essential to choose the ones that best suit your business needs.
You do not need to choose all of the social media platforms, but just one or two to start.
Whether it’s monitoring brand mentions, creating engaging content or collaborating with influencers, social media provides businesses with myriad opportunities to boost their reputation and build trust with their customers.
Don’t solely focus on Google Reviews. Be sure to work on other review sources such as Yelp.
While Google Reviews may be the biggest player when it comes to online customer feedback, it’s important to remember that they aren’t the only game in town.
Yelp, for example, is a hugely popular source for the younger generation of reviews for all sorts of businesses, and ignoring it could mean missing out on a lot of valuable feedback. Additionally, Yelp is the reviews that are shown through Apple Business Connect and on Apple Maps.
But why limit yourself to just these two sources? Every platform has its own unique community and audience, so branching out to places like TripAdvisor, Facebook, Angi, or even industry-specific review sites could give you even more valuable insights into your customers’ experiences.
Don’t put all your review eggs in one basket – diversify and conquer!
Rank Tracking and Measuring Results
Rank tracking and measuring results are essential for any business to stay ahead of the game. It allows you to see what works and what doesn’t, giving you insights on what you can do to improve your search engine performance.
With the ever-changing landscape of the internet, it’s crucial to make data-driven decisions that will impact your bottom line positively. By leveraging tools and software that can help you measure and track your rank, you can adjust your strategies and identify patterns to improve your online presence.
Keeping track of your ranking and measuring your results is crucial for success in today’s digital age.
Get Started on Your Local SEO
Everyone wants their business to stand out from the competition, and you can definitely achieve it if you reach out to your local audience.
With a proper Local SEO strategy, the local SEO checklist includes setting up a Google My Business Profile, choosing the best business category for local SEO, optimizing your website for maximum reach, citation management and more, you can engage with customers better and reach out to more prospects.
And with the right combination of online reputation management practices, like review tracking and strategically engaging with customers on social media platforms, as well as rank tracking and measure results practices, you can ensure that your Local SEO performance beats your competition.
So get started on your Local SEO today and take the first step toward more leads and customers! Contact us today to get started.
