In the digital age, one of the best forms of advertising is to have an online presence. Along with having a website, which is at the centre of your Internet presence, you can use social media to interact with customers, make announcements about new products, and share content from your website.
Even if you only have a small brick and mortar store, it is important to be present online to get the attention of local customers. Using these tips, your website can be optimised for local searches so local customers can easily find your business both on and offline.
Optimise Your Pages
If you already have an existing website, then you need to make sure to optimise it for your local market. This can be done by including the name of your city or town in page descriptions and titles. Try to keep page descriptions and page titles short, with descriptions of 156 characters or less and page titles 70 characters or less.
You should also add the name of your business, its address, and the telephone number wherever your business listing is posted. The contact information, commonly referred to as NAP (for name, address, phone), needs to be listed consistently. Always include the same information in the same format wherever it is listed online without punctuation or spelling deviations.
Use Local Search Terms
Unless you have an e-commerce website, you will need to use local search terms in order to help local customers find your store. In order to find what they want, most people will input their location and the product or service on search site like Google or Bing. To determine the exact terms, or keywords, used by people looking for products or services offered by your business, there are online and website analytic tools that can be used by search marketing specialists based in Manchester.
The discovered keywords can be embedded into the content of your website or in the content or captions on your social media posts to draw traffic to your site. Once on the site, searchers will be able to get your company’s location information and you can use the content to help draw them into your store. If you have multiple locations you should have a webpage for each one, but make sure that information is not duplicated because that can hurt your search engine ranking.
Map It
When you list your company on local directories, include a map with your information to make it even easier for customers to find your business. Make sure to map every location if you have multiple stores so customers can find the nearest location to them.
It is also important that your site is mobile-friendly because an increasing number of people are using their mobile phones to search for local businesses. By utilising these local search marketing tips, people who want the services or products that you provide will be able to easily locate your store. Local search marketing can help increase your business and increase sells.