Many small businesses’ success is based on whether or not their business is attracting enough attention from the local customers, which could be in the region, state, county or even town. The business website might be pulling in traffic, and it might be users from around the country or even the world, but those users could potentially be a waste of time and resources, based on where your business is located. In most circumstances, you simply can’t follow up with what these users need. But the good news is there are a handful of possibilities to help make your website become more valuable, and able to pull in more of the visitors in and around your area.
The first step in getting your website to come up on a local based search is optimizing your site for geography-specific keywords. Depending on the geographic region and industry, your business might have to compete for a spot to start ranking among various keywords that local shoppers are using in Google, Yahoo and Bing, but this a quick and easy way of getting your business out there. To help do this, make the page title, URL, H1 tag and page content of your website include your geographic keyword phrase, and be consistent across components.
The next step to take is writing a blog. This is an excellent way to get the word out about your local services and obligation to your local market. While blogging at your business, make sure to include work that you have done and success stories of past work in each town, city or county. Also make sure to use customers – they love being in the limelight – in your blog as an opportunity to showcase them and highlight your significant work. Don’t forget to use the geographic location in your blog title and URL to help with ranking in the local searches, and try and promote your blog to produce inbound links.
Though not as critical as the first two steps, communicating with local bloggers and city specific websites is a useful tool, as well. Engaging local bloggers allows you to share your knowledge and expertise, which in return will establish you as a good resource and expert in your field. This should get a lot of recognition for you and your business, and putting them in front of local readers can help develop relationships with distinguished bloggers, who in turn may do a feature story about you in the future. Also, involve your business in conversations with different local companies to further get the word out about your business website. Just look what’s in your local area, and start interacting.
The last step to take is signing up for accounts on rating and review sites. More and more consumers are using these rating and review sites to start their research for local vendors, handymen, doctors, car mechanics, and other services. You want to make sure that your business is on all the major sites that provide rating and reviews for assorted services. Here are a few that you should check out:
Google Local is a free service that requires you to register your business online, and then verifies if you’re the owner by calling or sending some snail mail to your address. Once you’ve finished registering, your business has a great opportunity to appear in the local business results for a given search term, but your site will only rank if you have done your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work.
Yelp is another free rating and review site that has been around for several years. This is a great place to get customer feedback. If you receive negative feedback, it provides a great chance to engage those consumers and turn their experience around with a follow-up, addressing their complaints and helping to turn their feedback around.
Angie’s List is an aggregator of sorts that pulls in reviews of local businesses and contractors. Angie’s List attempts to evade fake reviews by charging consumers a monthly fee in order to browse their listings and review businesses. You should check it out and see if this, or any of these, are the right fit for your business.