Your presence online begins with a website to establish your business. But, to start seeing any significant traffic, you need at least a basic SEO strategy. This allows you to forge ahead of competitors while getting noticed on the first page of the search engines. Understanding these strategies also allows you to increase your rankings and potential customers. The following are seven simple tips you can easily follow for the best results.
1. Accurate Contact Information
Potential customers and search engines should be able to easily find your contact information. You will want to add in your name, address and phone number on every page on your website. This allows search engines to easily find yourlocation, which helps keeps your contact information consistent across the web.
2. Local Search
For any small business, the most prominent online leads are from local search. Getting listed in the search results will immediately boost your traffic. Setting up Google +, Yahoo Local and Bing Places profiles is the best place to start to make sure the search engines include your business in these local searches. These profiles each link back to your website while giving information about your business and services.
3. Claim Business Listings
Online websites and directories such as the Yellow Pages, Yelp and Manta often create unclaimed business listings. However, most of these go unnoticed by business owners. Claiming these online listings send strong signals to the search engines and leads to higher placements and ranking making it easier for you to be found.
4. Social Media
The power of Facebook and Twitter makes it easy to build an audience of potential customers. It’s important to create a page and/or profile for your business and remain active with it. This activity feeds into the search engines, while continuing to help you build your audience.
5. Get Reviews
The customer has gained a stronger voice with the Internet. You can use this to your advantage by directing them to review sites. Asking your customers for reviews will instantly increase your credibility and will also gain you points with the search engines. These points tend to lead to higher rankings too.
6. Monitor Activity
While many review sites provide positive feedback about your business, some will also have a negative review. You need to watch for any negative online reviews and quickly respond. Responding to this feedback shares your side of the story, and shows potential customers that you care about the experience your customers have.
7. Create Content
Search engines like to see an active and growing site. By adding a blog or newsletter to your site you are also creating more keywords which helps search engines and potential customers find you.
This is a proven method to educate, gain trust, and credibility with customers by offering valuable information. Adding content from your website on social media helps increase your reach and credibility against your competitors.
With these simple tips, you will quickly establish your local business online and be found by more potential customers. Making it easy to get noticed by the search engines, maintaining your online reputation and providing valuable content allows you to become the local expert.