When attempting to build your online presence, local search management is a vital component to consider. At its core, local search management creates a valuable opportunity for businesses to market to local customers and prospects. This is extremely important, particularly if you have a business with a brick-and-mortar store, or one that provides a service in a certain area. Properly managing local search ensures that your business is discovered online by local users searching for your goods and services. These also include searches with certain geo-qualifiers, such as city, state, zip code and even “near me” searches, where Google detects the geo-location of the person and delivers search results from that area. Read on to learn how local search management can impact your business as well as some best practices.
Rank Higher in Search Engine Results
Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, only generate local results that are relevant to the desired search term and geographic vicinity. Hence, if your business’s local information isn’t present, search engines will overlook your business and move on to ones that effectively manage their local search optimization. By updating your business information and distributing it to third party directories, search engines will reward this behavior by ranking you higher on the results page.
Gain Qualified Leads
A large majority of people who perform local searches end up visiting the business location on the exact same day, ready to make a purchase decision. Local search management provides potential customers the power to take this action and in turn provides your business with a qualified lead to convert. If your business deals with face-to-face transactions, you’re losing a notable number of qualified leads by not properly listing your business information in local results.
Capture Mobile Users
With the growth of mobile search, people are searching for a business at the exact moment they need it. This makes local search management even more important since you’ll want to capture mobile users who are near your location and interested in your services. Being present in map listings is huge for attracting mobile traffic, allowing you to lead users right to your business as soon as your offerings enter their mind.
Best Practices
To thrive in local search management, there are few things that you should keep in mind. This is for location-based searches, so your business’s address should be updated in online directories so it will show up when a customer performs a local search. You’ll also want to improve your on-page and off-page search engine optimization, focusing on local results. If you’re new to local search management, here are a few best practices that can give you a head start.
Optimize Meta Data
When creating content and landing pages for your website, optimizing URLs, title tags, headers, meta descriptions and even the content itself will enhance your visibility in local search results. When your business produces a piece of content, optimizing it for search engines by using geo-targeted keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description and body will increase your chances of local users finding your business.
Add Location Pages
Creating updated location pages for your business will also improve your chance of ranking for location-based searches. Location pages supply viewers with important business information including addresses, store hours, promotions, testimonials and other geo-targeted data. Adding a Google Map listing to each location will also contribute to your chances of ranking high on the results page. If you have a single location for your business, search engines will appreciate a locally descriptive About Us page.
Use Consistent NAPs
Your client’s NAP (name, address and phone number) is a very important element of local search management, but it is rendered useless if the information is not precise. In order to see improvements in local search results, your NAP information should be consistent and up to date. Business names, addresses and phone numbers can change over time, so your online listings will need to be updated on a regular basis. This will help to increase local rankings on the search engine results page and ensure customers have the correct information.
Automate Your Local Search Management with Strategic Marketing
Local search management requires time and attention, especially when managing your business’s information across hundreds or even thousands of directories and websites. Strategic Marketing offers a cost-effective and time-saving solution for managing your local search optimization. SmartList is a local search management tool that makes your business visible in crucial times when prospective customers are actively searching in your area. SmartList manages your business’s information across thousands of publishers, including search engines, third-party directories, maps, consumer review sites and even GPS systems. To learn more about SmartList, contact us today by visiting our contact page or calling (561) 688-8155.
