If you operate a local business such as a restaurant or home improvement company, marketing at the local level is essential. As a marketing company that serves local small businesses, VisionPATH would like to share some tips that will help nearby customers find your business quickly and easily.
Build a Website and Make Sure It’s Mobile Friendly
It’s a surprising statistic, but in 2019 up to half of small business owners don’t have a company website. If you are part of this statistic, launching a business website needs to be the first thing on your to-do list. The internet is the first place that people go when looking for information on a business they are considering patronizing. If they don’t find any results, they might conclude that your company is too small to take seriously. Unfortunately, having social media accounts doesn’t make up for the lack of a website.
If you don’t have the skills to create and launch a website yourself, outsource the work to a professional web design company. While it will cost you money upfront, consider another statistic from the Boston Consulting Group that states businesses with a website grow up to 40 percent faster than those without one. Even so, just having a website is not enough. You must ensure that you have optimized it so that mobile users can view and interact with it just as easily as non-mobile users. Google algorithms will penalize you with low ratings if you don’t do this. Again, this is probably a task you will need to outsource.
Claim Your Free Google My Business Profile
Google gives all business owners the opportunity to claim a free business profile called Google My Business. Once you have claimed the listing and updated it with current information such as business address, website, hours of operation, and telephone number, you can use it on other local directories such as Bing, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Yelp. Be sure to add plenty of photos and keep it updated so you don’t send potential customers to the wrong location.
Equip Your Business for Voice Search
According to allBusiness, an online publication geared towards small business owners, more than 76 million Americans will purchase smart speakers by next year. That means they are embracing the ability to conduct searches for the information they need by speaking rather than typing. The same publication predicts that 50 percent of all searches will be voice-based by 2020 as well. The most important thing to remember with voice search is that you need to target long-tail keywords because people tend to speak naturally and in full sentences when searching for information verbally.
Ready to Raise Your Local SEO Game?
VisionPATH, an experienced digital marketing company in South Carolina, is available to help improve your local marketing efforts with our Local Foundation package. This includes six core elements to help improve your local performance and return on investment for your marketing dollar. Please contact us today to learn more or complete this form to see if your business qualifies for a free strategy session.