5 Ways to Kill it with Local Search
You, know it’s awesome that your business can be found for what you sell around the world, but in reality, if you are serving a local market and you’re not effectively showing up in your local search results for your main terms, names and products, then what does it matter?
Since 1 in 3 searches in Google is now local in intent, plus some 70 percent of searchers are for offline services, it’s clear this is critical to your business. There are a variety of ways you can start to dominate your local search results.
5 Tips for owning your local search results
- Your Google+ Local Page – A Google+ local page for your business is a quick way to help your local search rankings. Not only does it help with indexing your pages nearly instantly, but it’s a functional aid for anyone wanting to find you.
- Claim Citations – Citations are listings for your business on search engines and within social media which include your name address and phone number. They can include more or less and are typically found on Facebook, Google, Bing, Yelp, and FourSquare, in addition to a variety of other sites.
- Reviews – Reviews are great not just for social proof, but also for boosting your ranking in the Google local search results. Getting reviews to your Google+ local page is among the biggest things you can do. Ask your customers for reviews and offer them a link to where they can post it.
- NAP – This means name address and phone number, and is a vital piece of your local optimization. Citations that include this information are worth more, both in Google’s eyes and in practical terms.
- Mobile – Studies are showing that three out of four mobile searches initiate follow-up actions, whether this means an actual store visit, social sharing or telephone call. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile, so you can make the most of where so many people are headed in local search!
