For any small business owner looking to increase the visibility of their business in the local area, local SEO can tick all of the right boxes. It is always beneficial to understand what a successful local SEO campaign entails though and below we will outline the building blocks required to ensure your local SEO campaign is put in the best possible position to succeed.

Ensuring Your Website is Clear & Accessible

There are 3 steps to ensuring that your website is clear and accessible.

1 – Time spent by your developer or local SEO provider to ensure that your website uses a simple, flat hierarchy of pages with the most important pages linked directly to the homepage is one of the most important aspects required to put your website in a position to succeed.

2 – Filling your website with informative, well written and perhaps above all, unique content, has never been more important in regards to effective SEO than it is now. Recent changes to Google’s ranking algorithm have made this critical to ensure that your website ranks well. Lots of content describing the services available from your business along with the locations within your catchment area are an equally important part of a local SEO campaign.

3 – Once someone has taken the time to visit your website, make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch with you. By prominently displaying  your contact details on each page, you will ensure that your customers do not become bored or disillusioned due to an inability to contact you. A contact form is always helpful and if you operate from a physical location, a link to your Google map can be very helpful. This will help to reinforce the location of your business whilst leaving Google in no doubt whatsoever about where you’re located.

Targeting the Right People

Whilst it could be argued that attracting any visitor to your website could be a good thing, it is of obvious importance for any business, and in particular any small business, that you are able to attract visitors to your website who are in a position to benefit from your products or services. This is the fundamental aim of a local SEO campaign.

People are consistently looking for places, products and services which are located in and around their local vicinity and the question this inevitably leads to is, what are you doing as a small business owner to capitalise on this?

Trying to corner the SEO market for the keyword “electrician” can prove to be exceptionally difficult. But targeting the keyword phrase “electrician in Bristol” is significantly more achievable. As well as being an achievable goal, you have the added incentive of knowing that the person making this search is highly likely to be in a position where they will try to secure your services. By targeting the right people, the opportunity to convert visitors to customers substantially increases.

Don’t Be Shy!

Spread details about your business far and wide. The internet is all about information so why shouldn’t that information be about your business? There are a huge number of online directories, most of which are free to register with, which will allow you to enter details regarding your business such as your business name, postal address, phone number, description of services, photos, working hours etc.

Having your correct business details widely available to view can be absolutely crucial for a successful local SEO campaign by ensuring that you are able to take advantage in the increase of the use of smart phones.

Google is now believed to be offering more and more value towards ‘social votes’ for your business (e.g. tweets, retweets, Facebook likes, Facebook shares etc). Therefore take advantage of the social networking options available to you. These options are again free and can provide massive benefits when used correctly. 

Continuing the theme established by making it as easy as possible to contact you, make it as easy as possible to share your information. By making sure that you have prominent share and twitter on every page of your site, you can encourage your customers to follow you on twitter and ‘friend’ you on Facebook. You may even want to consider offering small perks such as special deals which are exclusively available to your Twitter followers or Facebook friends.

Bio – Mark Gillam I work for a company called Max Your Web which has been created to share best practice on local SEO for small businesses, to pass on knowledge, and to help you make money from your website. Over the past few years and before entering the world of SEO I worked on a number of websites with varying degrees of success! The websites I launched did not attract enough traffic and did not make enough money, to be more honest, they LOST money! I tried to learn about search engine optimisation, I tried to utilise the services of local SEO companies, but to say the results were patchy would have been very generous. Still intrigued by how to get websites to actually MAKE money I accepted an employed position as an SEO consultant, and saw first-hand lots and lots of small local businesses driving ALL their business from the internet and making lots of money. Max Your Web has been set up to share best practice on SEO for small businesses, to pass on knowledge, and to help you make money from your website.

Mark has blogged 1 posts here.