Win Search Visibility by Focusing on Local Marketing Fundamentals

Local search visibility is vital for your business's online presence and new customer acquisition. With so many other channels to manage, businesses are often surprised at what little local marketing improvements can do.

Win Search Visibility by Focusing on Local Marketing Fundamentals

Local search visibility is vital for your business's online presence and new customer acquisition. With so many other channels to manage, businesses are often surprised at what little local marketing improvements can do.

The foundation of your local optimization lies in making sure your local business listing is complete, accurate and optimized. Here are a few of the fundamentals to review and take action on to drive the highest online traffic from local search:

1. Ensure consistent and complete data.

It seems like this would be an obvious and easy fundamental to tackle, however with so many directories and apps out there that show business listings, maintaining accurate information can be a little tricky.

Business name, address, phone number (NAP) consistency across online directories is what search engines rely on to establish trust in the existence and location of your business. This includes a key ranking factor of entering and keeping hours accurate—including holidays and special events when users are more likely to be searching on mobile devices for local information.

2. Verify your location(s).

Owner-verified listings are viewed by search engines as more accurate and complete. Furthermore, verifying and optimizing your Google My Business Listing will help your company gain visibility within search results and will allow Google to acknowledge the legitimacy of your business and it's locations.

3. Build citations.

High-quality, authoritative back-links and citations are one of the most critical factors in competitive local search rankings. These are the mentions of your business and address on other webpages. You can build these citations through data aggregators, local blogs, local directories, or industry-specific blogs or directories.

4. Include photography.

High-quality photography and visual content is considered more appealing, relevant and impactful for customers and therefore helps your content rank higher in search results. Google even allows businesses to include photos across 13 different categories.

Show guests you have what they're looking for. Be sure that your photography shows the products and services that your local business offers in a creative and fun light. Customers want to know that they are choosing a business that isn't just providing a great product, but also a unique and enjoyable experience. Your photography is a great way to convey that your business is the one they should choose to receive just that.

5. Respond to reviews.

As you well know, it's important to manage and respond to guest reviews, positive and negative ones. The rewards of doing so are still increased guest engagement, customer sentiment and an increased likelihood of guests returning.

Because Google suggests that high-quality, positive reviews from customers will influence ranking, it is critical that you respond to positive reviews to thank customers and encourage them to come back. Furthermore, it is just as important to respond to negative reviews. If there is the opportunity to take a negative experience and turn it into a positive one, take it! This could increase the likelihood of that customer returning to your location. It also gives you a chance to encourage the customer to leave a new, more positive review in the future.

Boost your online presence and improve local search results with optimized local marketing efforts. View your local business listing with Vizergy's Business Listing Lock. Contact us to see how we can sync and optimize your business listing across 60+ online directories and mobile apps.

This article originally appeared on Vizergy.

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Source: Win Search Visibility by Focusing on Local Marketing Fundamentals