Most small businesses can’t afford to employ a full-time marketing team or even the services of an independent consultant. Most potential customers go to Google to look for what they need before they do anything else. If your business has physical premises and your marketing budget is either very little or nothing at all, how do you make sure that your business shows up at the top of local Google searches so that new customers in your area can find you? The following methods cost nothing other than a few hours of your time but will transform your online visibility in local search results.
Google My Business Verification
Google My Business offers much more than other online directories. You should sign up for this free service and get your business verified. It’s not just another place for your business to have an online presence (although a listing is an attractive and information-rich website in its own right and is well worth having anyway) but offers a range of ways to boost your business’s position in SERPS (search engine results pages).
Once your website is verified, you have greater control of how your business appears in local search results and you can make it easier for customers to understand your UVP (unique value proposition) and access your products or services by including a snapshot marketing message together with location and contact details, and even reviews, right in the search results without the customer ever needing to click through to your website.
Go to the Google My Business dashboard and sign up. Follow the verification process, filling in as much information as you can. Once you’re verified, craft the exact presentation of your business as you’d like it to appear in local search results, and you’re done.
List Your Business in Free Directories
Getting your business listed in free directories may be a boring task, but it only takes a few minutes and is well worth your time. One of the many factors Google algorithms consider when deciding which results to push to the top is “authority.” Authority is an analysis of your business’s presence. The more often other web pages cite your business and link to it, the more authority it’s deemed to have.
Hundreds of free business directories exist. The more directories that list your business, the greater your visibility online. If you have little time in the day, just add your business to one or two at a time. After a few months of spending just five minutes a day doing that, you’ll see the effect as your company climbs higher in local searches.
Search Engine Optimize Your Business Website for Local Search
Even if your business doesn’t trade online, a website is essential if you want to be discovered these days. But just having a website isn’t enough. You must optimize it to show up in local search results if you want people to find you online. There’s nothing obscure about SEO (search engine optimization). Follow these three simple steps, and you’re done:
- Make sure your business’s name, location, and contact details appear on every page of your site. You can do this by putting them in a global sidebar, in a header banner, or in the footer. Add a Google map with a pointer to your “About” page. You can either code it in yourself if you know how, use a plugin if you build your website on WordPress, or pay someone like me to do it for you.
- Make sure you fill out your website’s metadata (titles and descriptions) to mention your location and the services or product you offer. If you’re using WordPress I quite like to use the free version of Yoast SEO, which will add a box to the bottom of all your pages and posts with extra boxes to easily enter your titles, descriptions, etc..
- Create location-specific content pages. Google search algorithms look not only for authority but also relevancy when pushing results to the top. To dominate local search results, make sure you build your website out with several pages of high-quality content that mention your business’s location.
- Remember, there are other search engines than Google, they don’t get as much traffic to them, but it’s worth making sure your ranking and listed on them.
Get More Reviews
Positive reviews and plenty of them act as “proof” of the quality of your services and products and make a huge difference in how your business appears in local search results. Get your business listed with review sites such as TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, Facebook, and, of course, Google My Business. Add a widget to your website that lets customers leave reviews. And don’t just hope people will leave reviews, ask them to do so! Put a CTA (call-to-action) on your website, on your social media, and in your physical office or store.
Get Social and Build Your Tribe
Never underestimate the power of engaging with your customers on social media. Build a page for your business on all the main social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. Post content, offers, photos, product reviews, relevant local news stories, and run competitions, question-and-answer sessions, and anything else you can think of to engage people with your business. Not only will you increase your business’s visibility, but your active social media presence will also boost your business’s position in local search engine results.
Those are five free ways you can dominate local search results and get your business discovered. Each requires a little investment of time, and you may encounter a learning curve, for example, if you don’t know yet how to update your website’s metadata. But you need only do a little each day and, in time, you’ll see your business climb to the top.
