What Local Search Services Do I Need?
For many business owners, one of the hardest parts of digital marketing, is figuring out what local search services you need. Determining which digital marketing services will benefit your business goals requires a thoughtful analysis of your competitors, your keywords and your business goals.
Many business owners are simply unfamiliar with all the digital marketing options that are available for local search. They are unsure which services will move the needle to help their digital assets rank for the keywords that will generate lead flow for their business. If this is you, then this Local SEO Guide is here to help.
Common Local Search Services for Small Businesses
Many small business owners want to rank rank higher, get more leads and improve their brand awareness through local SEO. Yet, they may not be sure what services they need, how much they should budget, or how to manage the expectations of local SEO services. That’s perfectly understandable.
SEO is complicated and digital marketing is becoming more complex everyday with evolving technologies, methodologies and marketing platforms. We’ll cover what is essential for business owners to dominate their local rankings. Generally-speaking, these are the most common local SEO services for small service-based business necessary for higher Google rankings.
Website audits are not glamorous, but they are a necessity. These audits help local SEO professionals understand the state of your website. It’s similar to getting a physical for your work.
Audits can take many forms. It all depends on who is performing the audits. They evaluate:
- What you are doing well digitally.
- Which of your competitors are surpassing you and why.
- What opportunities exist to outrank your competitors.
- What can be done to improve your website.
- Identifying gaps in your location/niche digital market with a better local SEO strategy.
People seek local services for a variety of reasons. These “near me” searches have grown exponentially over the past few years. Google generates maps of nearby businesses that they consider relevant, prominent and proximate to meet the web searchers’ needs.
Local search optimization helps you rank higher when web searchers seek the kind of services that you offer. The most common local SEO services include:
- On-Page Optimization (On your website)
- Google Business Profile Optimization (Google My Business Optimization)/ Google Maps Optimization
- Building local citations on directories
- Optimization of existing NAP-W citations (name, address, phone number & website) consistency
- Building local and niche-specific back links
Technical SEO refers to server and site improvements that make it easier and more user-friendly for search engines to index, store, index, and access your website. Search engine spiders (bots), should be able to locate and navigate to your site as quickly as possible. The following are some of the most common technical SEO services:
- Google crawls your website to verify that it is accessible
- SSL certificates are set up for security as well as user experience.
- Make sure your entire website is mobile-friendly
- Create a sitemap listing all web pages of the website
- Optimizing sitemaps already in place
- Resolving HTTP status code problems
- Optimize Website speed performance
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for Google and readers to increase their quality. This will help you get more organic traffic. This involves reviewing existing pages, fixing them, and creating a plan to optimize new pages once they are published. Services for on-page SEO include:
- Optimizing the page to match searcher’s intent
- Optimizing headings and other visible HTML elements
- Optimization of internal and external links
- Image optimization
- Ensure that URL best practices are observed
- Optimized feature snippet
- Schema optimization
Your website’s foundation is the basis of a content marketing strategy. High web page rankings are dependent on publishing optimized content that matches the intent of searchers. Your content marketing efforts must satisfy two audiences: potential clients and search engine spiders.
By providing consistent, optimized content, your website will be deemed trustworthy to provide expertise on topics that are relevant to your business. Google will understand your website’s purpose over time and reward you with higher rankings. Services in content marketing include
- Keyword research & analysis
- Good website architecture
- Long-form content such as articles regarding primary & secondary services
- Topical Clusters of content to reinforce primary services
- Blog posts regarding points of interest, news and information regarding your industry, company, services, etc.
- Engaging tools like calculators
- Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
A backlink is a website linking to another website. Google considers backlinks votes to show that a page is trustworthy. Google trusts you more, which makes it easier to rank higher.
These services are known as link building.- Guest post blogging
- Standard outreach (to get others to cite your site as a relevant resource).
- Content-led PR (e.g. A data study about car crashes statistics can be created
SEO strategies require careful consideration of the local market and your goals. SEO agencies that specialize local search start with research about their clients and then investigate the local market to create a customized strategy. SEO strategy services can include:
- Digital Market analysis
- Competitor Analysis
- Buyer profile research
Website optimization involves providing a well-structured, user-friendly website that is beneficial for both website visitors and local search engine bots.
Your local website should be optimized for your brand name and local, commercial keywords. Particular attention should be paid to optimizing your service and location pages.
Additionally, you will want to make contacting your business super easy by emphasizing your contact information and including numerous conversion opportunities such as contact forms, click-to-call or text buttons, website bots, calendaring features, etc.
Click on the titles below to learn a little more about each type of local search service that we offer.
My Business Is Basically Invisible Online
If your business has limited or no online visibility, then your digital assets are seriously under-performing. To develop your online presence, build and optimize BOTH your Local Website AND Google Business Profile. Thereafter, depending on your budget, goals and timeline, you’ll then want to add citations, social media assets and back links.
Local Optimized Website
For local service-businesses, the hub of your digital marketing is a well-optimized website. A well-optimized website means you need a website that is well-designed, well-structured, easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly, has useful content and optimized for your location and services.
Your website presents your brand, provides a communication portal for prospective clients, generates leads and increases your conversions.
Once your website is built and optimized, then you can connect all other digital assets to it such as social media, citations, back links, videos, etc.
Google Business Profile Optimization
Every local service business MUST claim and optimize their Google Business Profile (GBP) (formerly Google My Business). Your Google Business Profile serves as a second website and provides web searchers a way to access your business directly from the search result pages.
Google Business Profile provides you the opportunity to include information about your services, location, contact information, FAQ, events, etc.
I have A Website But It's Not generating Any Leads
If you have a website and wondering why it may not be ranking, it’s usually because it is not optimized. By optimization, we mean it could be technical optimization, on-page optimization or off-page optimization. If you are not ranking at all, then it might be one or more of these three issues.
We’ll want to first make sure that your website is being discovered and properly indexed by Google through a local SEO audit. Once the technical issues are addressed, then the next step is to look at your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in terms of search results, and how website visitors engage with your website.
Many business owners who have a website are perplexed as to why it is not ranking. Optimization acts like a magnet for relevant web searches for your services by helping the local search engines understand your website in order for Google to rank it in response to relevant search queries. A website without optimization, especially in a competitive niche, will not operate like a magnet to attract web searchers who can become leads.
Usually, the problem is on-page SEO. This means that the content in your website is not set-up to match what searchers are putting into the search engines. The way we find that information is through keyword analysis and competitor analysis. This helps identify the right content to create on your website pages so that it ranks and can be easily found.
Once the right keywords are identified, then content is developed to attract web searchers that are seeking your services. The breadth and depth of your services should be covered to fully capture the universe of keywords that are related — inch wide, mile deep. The more that you specify your services, the better your content optimization. The more web pages that rank, the more we increase your brand and website’s visibility.
You want to make sure that your services content is well-researched, provides useful information, answers questions and reflects your expertise. Additionally, your website design should be user-friendly to make the user-experience (UX) appealing.
Additionally, you will benefit from conversion optimization. This involves identifying conversion opportunities to link throughout your website such as click-to-call, contact form, calendering, a welcome bot, etc.
Finally, you will also want to claim and fully optimize your Google Business Profile. A good strategy is to basically mirror the content on your website with your Google Business Profile. You’ll also want to turn on messaging on you Google Business Profile to make it easier for prospective clients to connect with your business services.
I Have A great Website But It's Not
Generating Enough Leads
First things first. We’ll want to make sure that your website is being discovered and properly indexed by Google through a local SEO audit. It’s important to make sure that there are no barriers to your website being crawled and your web pages being indexed.
Once the technical issues are addressed, then the next step is to look at your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in terms of search results, and how website visitors engage with your website. Where are your web visitors going on your website? Which pages do they abandon (bounce rate)? Do they continue to the contact page?
Once we understand how visitors navigate your website, we can then determine if the issue is that your not getting enough visitors in which case we increase traffic through local search optimization. We’ll want to make sure that your essential keywords match with your service page offerings.
If your traffic volume is good, then we look at conversion optimization. Do we need to increase the contact features on your website to make it easier for prospects to contact you, such as contact buttons, welcome bot, click-to-call buttons, etc.
You’ll want to create the right offer that helps your business stand out. Looking at your typical buyer profile, you want your offer to ease their pain points, such as whether you offer financing, no-down payments, or guarantees, or free estimates, etc. The idea is to create the right offer from your unique selling proposition (USP).
Additionally, it’s important to promote the right offer. You’ll want to promote your offer everywhere such as on your website, blog, Google Business Profile (as well as other business listing sites), relevant social media platforms depending on your targeted demographics and paid ads, if needed.
My Website Generates Leads But Not Enough of The Kind Of Leads That I want
If you have a well-designed and optimized website but it’s not generating sufficient leads of the kind that you want, then you will want to bolster your website’s content to focus more web pages on the services that you want to generate more leads. You can aggressively focus on your preferred services through content optimization.
This involves looking at your preferred service and then building additional content through topic clusters in order to generate additional relevant traffic. Content clusters shows your company’s command of the services that you offer and makes you stand out in comparison to your competitors. You’ll want to cover the universe of local and niche terms pertaining to your services.
For example, if you are a roofer and specialize in a few different types of roofs such metal roofs, you’ll want to cover the topic of metal roofs with sub-webpages. These sub-webpages will bolster your primary metal roof service page by answering questions and providing nuanced information based on relevant keyword phrases that show prospective clients’ concerns, interests, and how they evaluate whether to proceed with services such as cost analysis.
You will also want to increase promoting your preferred service offerings through your blog, Google Business Profile, social media, paid ads on either Google and/or social media and press releases.
The right platform depends on your offerings and your targeted demographic. Looking at successful competitors to reverse-engineer their promotions can also help create a blueprint on the kind of promotions that will get your business more of the kind of leads that you want.
Finally, do you have sufficient favorable reviews? Prospective clients want to see 4-5 star-ratings and positive reviews of your services for the kind of purchases that they want to make. Reach out to former happy clients and request reviews. It makes a huge difference in converting new leads.
No Matter Your Situation, Contact Digital Muzes For
All Your Local SEO Digital Marketing Needs
Whether you are just starting out, need full local search optimization, or improve your lead generation, contact Digital Muzes today. We have the kind of services that can help your business grow and thrive online. We look forward to connecting with you to help you reach your digital marketing goals.