It’s tough enough with millions of websites out there selling the same products and services, and for the small business it can be a nightmare if they don’t have a great local SEO battle plan in place. It doesn’t take rocket science, but it does take some solid common sense and a knowledge of what is going to work in SEO and not, especially if you’re on a small budget.
First things first, look at your budget and see if it is bringing in what is necessary regarding your local SEO goals. If you’re spending $500 a month and you’re still wallowing around in the mud, then it’s time to step up to the plate and get busy. You may have to get a new SEO professional to handle your campaign. You may need to rethink your basic procedures to see if you’re keeping up on your end of the bargain regarding your SEO professional’s guidelines. A brief assessment will let you know realistically where you are and what you need to do to improve.
Now that the assessment is over, you’ll know your strengths and weaknesses. You can see where you need to improve and you had better get busy quick. The basics still apply regarding what makes a website great, but no longer are keywords and links the foundation of SEO. What is happening now is that Google is rewarding competent, honest, and relevance, as well as engaging content. It’s due to Google moving their software to better evaluate via contextual algorithm. It’s what your site is about and does than just its names and claims.
Your site has to be useful to the surfer. Google looks at the metrics as to who visited, how many times, satisfaction, reviews, social media engagement and anything that says your site is of value to enlightening and educating and providing a service to the surfer and humanity overall.
If you’re using a SEO service, then get as much transparency out of them as possible. Visibility is the key. You want to know what they’re doing, when they’re doing it, and why. You need to be on top of things. SEO isn’t done by magical elves living in a tree or via divine intervention. It’s done with knowledge and diligence and dedication to make sure results, any positive results can be gleaned.
Get creative.
You really want to stand out from the rest of the local businesses in your niche, and the same old tactic of grabbing attention still works. You have to get creative on your site. Put up content that makes people want to come back or share it. Use local venues to your advantage. A great tip is capturing video of local big events like parades, school events, political rallies, where your products or services took part in. For example, if you’re selling tennis supplies or other sporting goods. Show up at one of these events with your video camera and give away some and video the people accepting them. Those videos you can put all over social media and your site, and tag them to death with your store’s brand name, locations, zip code, names of people in the video. All these show up in the search engines and on social media and you will get the good eye of Google.
Overall, you can do some major improvements regarding your local SEO campaigns but you have to know the latest and strive to be the greatest at what you do and you’ll do just fine.