Local SEO: Helping your local business get found online
If you’re a small business serving local customers, you’ll want to make sure your website is optimized for local SEO. That way the people in your area will see your business first when they’re searching for what they need.
You want to make it easy for search engines to know what your business is, where you’re located, who you serve, what your hours are, etc. When it’s easy for search engines to know what your business is and what it does, it makes it more likely that your website will be shown in relevant local search results.
Having a website optimized for local SEO can mean the difference between people finding your business, and your business being lost in the internet ethers.
Doing Local SEO well is time consuming, but totally doable. We are local SEO experts. When you use Suffolk County Webmasters, we ensure your website is optimized for local SEO so you can focus on your actual business.
— Google Knows Where You Are
More than 60% of searches are performed from a mobile device, and search engines almost always know its exact location. They use this information to deliver more accurate and useful results. Knowing how best to exploit this is the key to local SEO.
— Local SEO Basics
Here are some of the ways we optimize local business websites:
- On-page SEO. Get the fundamentals right. Page titles, metadata, heading tags and properly structured, keyword rich content. People often overlook this step, but it’s the equivalent of the king on a chessboard. Without this all other SEO activities are a waste of time.
- Information Aggregation. SuCoWeb will design one precise set of fundamental information about your business (e.g contact details, hours of operation, business categories, slogans, relevant dates, etc.) and disseminate it across hundreds of online business information platforms. From the very major (e.g. Google) to the very minor, every relevant platform will have correct and consistent information. This consistency and coverage will provide a big boosts to your business’ visibility online.
- Content Creation. This will be performed both on the website (through new pages, or a regular blog) and on social media. Integration of these two methods provides a powerful way for small businesses to spread their net wide, without losing the most crucial small business advantage – personal, direct contact with customers and potential clients.
- Management of Online Reviews. One of the great paradoxes of the internet: in this vast impersonal marketplace, word of mouth and personal testimonies are more important than ever before. Google uses customer reviews to prioritize some businesses over others according to their reputation, and other platforms have followed. It is no longer optional – businesses have to manage their reputation online or they will fail. We will take control of all major platforms, showing you how to encourage reviews, deal with negative reviews and avoid fraudulent activity.
The good thing is, you don’t have to know much about any of this to get started with a local SEO strategy. We’re here to take care of all of it.
— Location, Location, etc.
Using geolocation to establish an area of operation for your business can level the playing field. A specific plumber, for instance, would find it very difficult to compete against every plumber in the country or even their own state. But they will be much more able to compete against other plumbers within a 15 mile radius. Establishing an area of operation is not an exact science, but it can be done.
Any Questions?
This is only a VERY brief introduction to a much more complex business. There are hundreds of ways to perform local SEO. Which ones we use, and to what extent, will always vary depending on a client’s unique requirements.
We’re always happy to answer questions and provide advice without pressure. If you need to know more, please contact us via the link below. Or, you can call Simon at (631) 921-2027.