Small Business SEO: Local Focus
So much SEO advice that you find on the internet is directed toward the large, national or international business – with a budget to match. But what about the small, locally based business? Will the street-corner cobbler ever rank number one for shoe repair? The answer is yes – if small businesses are willing to focus their efforts on local SEO rather than take every piece of advice from the big SEO blogs.
Being a small business in the SEO world feels like a redux of the David vs. Goliath story – but just remember that David killed Goliath with a single stone and slingshot. Today we’ll look at a few smooth stones to load up in your small business battle against the national guys. These SEO strategies are ready to implement on the small business scale and will boost your rankings and grow your business.
NAP Uniformity
In the SEO world, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. It is the basis that Google uses in its local ranking factors. Keeping your NAP consistent and uniform across the internet sends signals of reliability and trustworthiness – a strong sign that your business is well established in your local market. And so, ensuring that you have accurate and up-to-date information about your name, address, and phone number is a critical first step.
The obvious place to start is on pages you control – your company’s website and any social media accounts you have (especially Google+). But that’s just the start – from there you need to check business directories, review sites, blogs, and news outlets. It will take some grinding, but one of the best ways to ensure NAP uniformity is to do a Google search of your business name and compare any results you find for consistency issues.
Getting a uniform name, address, and phone number is the best way to establish a strong base-line with Google. Just cleaning up your NAP should bring up your business a few spots and prepare you for a more traditional SEO improvements.
Website Quality
As with any SEO effort, local SEO relies on having a strong, properly coded website. This is just SEO 101 and I won’t go into great detail – there is no shortage of SEO advice readily available on the internet. And if your website was built by a professional designer, then there shouldn’t be too many problems. But if you’ve built your own website (or hired your nephew’s roommate’s friend) then it’s worth running an SEO audit on your site to make sure everything is technically correct.
Local Content
This is one place that local businesses truly have an advantage. When it comes to creating fresh content, you can keep a laser-focus on relevant, keyword rich content that appeals to your immediate audience. Rather than creating for a wide demographic across cultures, a local business can craft content that focus on local issues and local concerns.
A great tool for creating local-focus content is a company blog. By focus on community events, news, and other local-related content, your blog can be a source of local keyword-rich content – with the added bonus of regular, fresh updates to your site.
SEO Experts – Local and National
There’s a whole other host of issues that affect your SEO rankings – both nationally and locally. Things like your site’s age, authority, backlink profile, and coding all affect your SEO – so while a DIY approach will help to grow your local presence, consider hiring a professional SEO firm to help you climb those rankings.
Fusion Group USA offers full service SEO packages – with a range of options that fit any business from local to national. We will help with both the technical and creative sides of SEO to ensure that your business is getting the type of exposure that matters. Contact us today to learn more about our custom SEO services.
