The online search is a crucial point in the consumer decision making process when thinking about buying a product or hiring a company to perform a service. Whether someone is ready to make a purchase now or doing research so they can make an informed decision in the future, it is important for your business that you show up in the search and create visibility around your brand to stay top of mind. In this blog, Web Geeks will talk about some effective ways to grow your business through local search marketing.
Optimize your Content for discovery through Search Engines
Web Geeks is a SEO services company in Windsor that can help clients optimize the content on their websites to appear in searches for their main keywords. To start, you’ll need to identify what keywords and phrases you want to rank for. This can seem simple to start out, with obvious keywords including your brand name, your main service or type of product you sell. It gets trickier as you start to try to rank for those also need to be conscious of the location and areas you serve.
Plan for Long-Tail Keyword and Phrase Searches
The shorter the search phrase is, the more competition that there is! Especially when you want to rank for local searches, you want to have content that includes the name of the areas that your service. For example, when searching for “Web design” there is a massive amount of results as many resources come up in search, but a search for “Web design in Windsor” and “Responsive web design in Windsor” are much more targeted and will bring up more relevant search results. Depending on the product, service or industry, you can go even more specific with the phrases, or even word your content in a question and answer format to answer the questions that people ask Google. A long-tail phrase is a very specific string of words that searchers use to narrow down their search results, and these are exactly the type of searchers you want to land on your website!
Use every element of on-page SEO
There is more that goes into getting your page to rank in search results than just including your keyword in your page title and repeatedly stuffing it into your content! You must be sure to fill all fields in ways that are relevant to the keyword you want to rank for and are also user-friendly for people to read. These elements include using page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, alt tags on images, link to other pages of your site and relevant offsite content as well, while using relevant anchor text for the hyperlinks.
Directory Listings and Backlinks
In addition to optimizing your website for search, having backlinks from reputable websites that link to your site will help increase your authority in Google search. An effective way to create good backlinks is to submit your business and website to online directories, including your keywords in the business descriptions and linking your website URL. One of the SEO services our digital marketing agency in Windsor offers to local businesses is directory optimization, where we draft accurate business listings that are keyword optimized for local search and submit them to multiple directories, providing valuable backlinks.
Use Google Ads to drive traffic to your site from people searching for your services
For immediate results, Google Ads is a great option to drive traffic to your website. The text-based ads are triggered by someone in your local area searching for keywords that you determine, and you can write different ad copy to specifically relate to each keyword. The ads are served on a PPC (Pay-per-click) basis, so advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked, and someone is sent to their site, so the impressions are essentially free to build local awareness. These ads are very targeted as someone who is searching for your keywords are usually in-market and ready to buy or they are on the path to make a decision of who to buy from, it’s a great advantage to appear at the top of the search results in this case!
The most effective strategy for local search marketing is to use a multi-pronged approach: optimizing your website for local search, creating new content that follows SEO best practices, while also running Google Ads to drive interested traffic to your website. As a digital marketing agency in Windsor, Web Geeks helps our clients to reach new audiences of potential buyers through local search marketing. If your business can use some help in building awareness to grow your business, schedule a meeting and let’s talk about how we can help you.