Search engine optimization is crucial if you want to be present online. Google needs to know about you first, and then everyone else will know about you too. The higher you rank in their results, the better your life will be, and you will have a ton of profit. So, the main question here is, how do you do SEO if you’re a small local business, and you don’t want to compete with the big sharks.
The answer is simple. You’re not going to try to get to the top of all the rankings in the world. You’re going to try to be number one in your area. That’s a thing called local search engine optimization. However, this doesn’t only limit your store to Google. You’re going to establish a presence on Yelp, Maps, Bing, and Yahoo. Click here to read more.
Should you opt to be in the snack pack, or the organic results?
Now, you might be wondering what snack pack results are. If you’re searching for something along the lines of “restaurants near me” you always get a map along with a few suggestions and their reviews. Below them, you get the organic results for the keyword itself. Now, both those areas are pretty good to rank on, so which one should you focus on?
The answer is both. It’s been measured that a third of all people who use those kinds of searches click on the snack pack results, and another third go for the organic ones. The best way to show up in both these searches is to focus on getting new positive reviews. This works best if you are running a restaurant business or a coffee shop.
You could create a strategy to boost your rankings, and it will work pretty fast. For example, a restaurant business could create an online campaign where everyone who posts a review after their meal or drink can get a discount. The optimum discount could range anywhere from 10-20 per cent, and all of the servers can compete to get a prize.
This way you will be boosting employee morale. They have a bit of competition between them, and you’ll be promoting your business in the meantime. The same strategy can work in a coffee shop. There, people could get an extra cup of coffee or a dollar off. This way, you will organically boost your ratings while giving back to the people you serve. Another way to do it is to hire an agency such as Decrypted SEO Agency Baton Rouge, which can help you in getting better results.
Have a mobile-friendly site
Whenever people search for you, they will use their phones. When they are on the go, they have no other choice. No one is carrying their laptop with them wherever they go. And, if people were to leave you a review, you would need a mobile-friendly page. Google already has a tool so you can check if your site passes this criterion.
Apart from that, either update or delete old posts and old looking plugins. Make sure that you don’t have anything that runs on Flash because that would be unprofessional. Next, make sure that all of the buttons and pages work, and the entire website is easy to navigate from a phone.
Consistent data
The info you give search engines needs to be correct on every single platform. That means your phone number, email address, physical location, and business name need to be the same—no extra letters or hyphens or apostrophes. If you mess this up, the engine gets confused and puts your business in lower rankings. View this link for more https://www.seroundtable.com/google-local-ranking-update-29409.html
Links are important
Putting links in your blog posts and pages is a great way to rank higher. You can do that while helping the people who are reading your content. For example, if you run an electrician business, you can make short posts about changing a socket, a specific type of lightbulb and but a link of a YouTube video of how it’s done.
Those are small things that create a lot of value and build trust with your audience. Apart from that, if you have a good relationship with someone who also runs a small business in your area but is not your competitor, you can put some of their content as a guest post. They can do the same with you, and you can reach more people, and rank higher for a specific keyword.
A few final words
The SEO game is a long one, and it should be played carefully. The key to winning it is to start small and locally. As soon as you are the first in your town, you can expand the area a bit more. Step by step, you will notice that more customers will come, and you will have an established brand. Try to rank on both the snack pack and the organic results, and you’ll be good to go.
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