If you’re falling behind your competition online, you need to strategize different avenues to leverage your brand. The best way for your business to earn more clients and market your brand is through organic search, but that’s not all you should be focusing on. It could take months, even years to leapfrog your competition organically, so you need to be taking an interactive and integrated approach to reach more consumers.
How can you get more local search traffic?
1. Claim Your Directory Listings & Profiles
For all major search engines and directories, claim your business profile. Make sure all information is consistent across the web so as not to confuse any platform. Of course, the big local profiles will always be:
- Google My Business
- Bing Places for Business
- Yahoo Small Business Listings
For Google My Business, your listing will be placed into the Knowledge Graph on the side of SERPs, including all relevant information. This includes business hours, phone number, maps for those looking for directions, address, and reviews.
Additionally, your Chamber of Commerce or local organization may have listings that include the information of local businesses. Think of sites like Yelp, Facebook, Yellow Pages, Yext, and more.
It doesn’t take long to complete, and having your business information listed accurately across the web helps your business stand out more to potential consumers.
2. Manage Online Reviews of Your Business
When we’re looking for local businesses to contact for their goods or services, we want to be sure we’re working with and talking to a company we can trust. Reviews can make or break your business, and play a large role in the perception of your brand.
Your online reputation is everything. Encourage your customers to leave a review on sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, and more. Monitor and track your business’s reputation, and respond to all feedback.
On your profiles, you’ll have options to respond or report a review that you believe to be spam or false. The more positive reviews your company attains, and the more proactive you are with managing your reviews, you’ll be shown in a better light.
Even if you’re looking to make amends with a not-so-flattering review, if you’re responding and trying to right a wrong, potential customers will see that you care about customer service.
3. Revamp On-Page SEO Factors
Start winning online with an on-page SEO strategy that properly optimizes the key pages of your site. From new research for search queries that will have a positive effect on your business to restructured meta titles and descriptions, your business can be found for dozens or hundreds of additional local search terms.
The goal is to structure your website around relevant, optimized content, but much more is taken into play. Think about the meta descriptions, mobile experience, site speed, technical issues, link profile, and more.
Looking at your on-page efforts, how appealing is the page? Is it dull and boring? Where are the call to actions? Understand what is displayed on search engines and what users will see before they click through to your website.
Here, users can see that we offer content marketing services that generates results. It gets the message across and is written to generate clicks through to the website. This is where on-page is crucial. Without hitting a pain point or addressing an area of concern to get clicks through to your website, your on-page strategy is failing.
Every page of your website should have a dedicated and unique meta description and title tag. Make sure your pages feature a call to action, reminding prospects and potential clients to reach out to you or follow you online.
4. Social Media Marketing & Advertisements
Social media plays a large role in brand awareness to garner new business. While some local businesses are using social media as their main marketing method, it can be a key contributor and complement your other marketing initiatives.
Your audience is on social media. You should be too. With social media marketing, there are many different platforms you can be taking advantage of. From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, Snapchat, and even LinkedIn, the advertising opportunities help get your brand in front of potential customers.
Think about your target audience and the platforms they frequent. Use live video or video segments to get your message across. We’re living in a visual world, and video marketing on social media can transform your funnel.
Always be consistent, always engage with your audience, and always speak to your target audience.
Advertisements and sponsored posts help you reach your target demographic. It leads to engagement and building a brand loyalty for your audience. Set a particular radius and reach users in a specific location at a specific time. Remarket on social platforms at a limited cost and help drive traffic and conversions.
Social advertising can work wonders, helping bring attention to your brand and traffic to your website. If you want to start a paid or social media marketing campaign, reach out to us. We’ll help improve the social presence of your business.
5. Email Marketing With Special Deals & Promotions
Start a relationship or keep the conversation going through targeted email campaigns. Email marketing is still the most effective form of communication for business owners trying to reach a new audience.
Make your emails intriguing and help entice clicks that can lead to conversions. Provide value and deliver a campaign that focuses on connections before selling. Connect with your customers, learn what they’re interested in, and provide special promotions that make them want to do business with you.
Publishing content, and keeping your brand in front of the eyes of your customers, helps to drive traffic and leads to your business. Email is a medium to deliver your message directly to your prospects and customers. Form segmented lists to deliver custom content and drip campaigns to send emails that a subscriber is interested in.
For local businesses, email marketing is a great tool to keep a conversation going.
6. Get Good Backlinks to Strengthen Your Domain
Strengthening your backlink profile will help to increase your domain authority. The more quality links you have, the stronger your website becomes and the more relevant you’re seen for a particular keyword.
Links are still one of the primary ranking factors for Google. The implementation of the Penguin update into the core algorithm shows that sites with spammy backlinks and are seen to be trying to manipulate the search engine can harm their site at any minute.
With a higher number of quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sources, you’ll be driving traffic to your website naturally, building your reputation and brand visibility to your target audience. Building links with great content through guest blogging write for us, or doing a little leg work to send a valuable piece of content and asking to share on their website.
Look for local awards and business contests in your area to get nominated. This usually leads to a quality backlink, or become a sponsor for a local event to get your link on their site. There are many ways to get quality links and strengthen your brand. Find something that works for your company and start earning backlinks.
7. PPC Campaigns Targeted to Your Audience
Spread the word about your products and your services quickly. With a PPC campaign, you don’t have to wait the months it takes to earn rankings organically and can start seeing results immediately. With the ability to target by location, PPC campaigns give you the advantage of reaching customers that are most likely to convert.
With the right budget to start, you can get a leg up on your competition by marketing to a targeted audience. Plus, if your ad copy matches the tone on your landing page and you’re able to answer any questions quickly on the page, you’ll be earning the most bang for your buck.
You just pay when someone clicks on your ads, so if you maintain a high conversion rate you can earn more revenue and more customers with a quality local PPC campaign.
Conclusion
Consistently evaluate your brand identity online, and think of ways you can enhance the online presence of your business. Whether the solution lies in a more active social media presence, a revamped, user-friendly website, or the creation of additional content, ensure you are using best digital marketing strategies for your business to succeed.
Integrating all different tactics into your campaign, from local SEO to paid advertising to social media, email marketing, reputation management, and link building, leads to better results for your business.Start winning online today with local digital marketing that grows your business.
