Tips For Improving the Visibility Of Your Business Through Local SEO

Tips For Improving the Visibility Of Your Business Through Local SEO

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a targeted approach to optimizing your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches. As mobile searches become increasingly localised, understanding and implementing local SEO strategies is crucial for businesses looking to enhance their visibility and attract customers in their area.

1. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors’ Google Business Profile Q&As

Spend time researching competitors’ Q&As and see what potential customers are asking others in your industry. Q&A is designed to give users a forum to ask questions about a business on its Profile, and other users may reply to them. You can pre-populate your Q&A with frequently asked questions and answers yourself in effect, your own FAQ section on your Profile.

A strong Google Business Profile is important for attracting and converting customers for businesses in any industry. As per Whitespark’s 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors Study, Google Business Profile listings are far and away the single-most-important factor driving an enterprise’s visibility for local searches. Additionally, businesses with brick and mortar locations are important, providing users with the best experience possible on their Profiles, which starts with publishing accurate business information like address, phone number, and hours of operation.

2. Tweak A Google Product Listing To Get More Exposure

Online stores’ product listings are crucial in the competitive world of online marketplaces. Like a well-designed storefront window in a physical store, a carefully optimized product listing can increase sales and brand awareness. They are necessary for increasing sales and building the brand’s online visibility. Moreover, optimizing product listings not only increases sales but also building brand’s online visibility. Optimization strategies raise your products to the top of search results, attracting customers’ attention and enhancing sales.

Uploading your products to a Google Business Profile gets simpler. Google released a new way of doing this called “Pointy”, where “Pointy” is a device plugged in between the barcode scanner and point of sale devices. They add scanned product into Google. This is a quick way of uploading your product inventory to your Google Business Profile.

Looking to showcase some products over others for various reasons and having a surplus of stock in your locations, for example. Bringing that stock to the forefront of the locations’ GBP listing helps alert local customers to it, allowing you to target specific products more to relevant audiences, dependent on their location.

3. Use Google’s Business Messages While You Can

Google’s Business Messages functionality has existed since 2017 in Google Business Profile and since 2018 in Google Maps. It has only recently made it onto the desktop, however. Google Business Messages is Google’s solution to the real-time chat customer service problem. They enable virtually any business to help customers when they need it, any time and anywhere. Business messages put a chat feature online for your business that is directly accessible from Google Search, Google Maps, or even your own channels, such as your website and Google Business Profile.

Google’s Business Messages lets your brand be found across multiple channels and devices and allows interested people to chat directly with your team. In building new business, as not everyone has time to call up a business they have yet to engage with, enabling potential local customers to message straight from your GBP is an excellent way for streamlining conversation. Local businesses that perhaps don’t use centralized call centers or messaging. It can be another touch point that shows the personalization of the business based on the location that the consumer is in.

4. Update Your GBP With All Relevant Newly Available Attributes

Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) attributes have long been a feature of Google Business Profiles, used to convey useful details about a local business to search users. It can be helpful to think of attributes as short statements that say something about your business to help searchers decide whether your business is what they’re looking for. Think, ‘outdoor seating’, ‘family friendly’, or ‘wheelchair accessible.’

Google frequently adds functionality to Google Business Profile that your business might be eligible to use. Not every new feature is available to all types of businesses, however. Further, although these attributes don't need to affect rankings in the map pack, they can make your business more attractive to prospective local customers.

5. Join Local Marketplaces And Forums

Online local marketplaces are experiencing phenomenal growth. Through Amazon, eBay, and Walmart, online retail is being led by these platforms, resulting in an increasing demand for hyperlocal, location-based websites. Shoppers are now looking for products and services in their local areas, demanding convenience, quick delivery, and the ability to shop or book services from local business marketplaces.

The key to marketing your local business well is understanding what your audience is looking for. A great way to understand your target market is by spending time where they are. Register your business in local directories and forums, which is not so much for the traditional citation benefit.

6. Keep An Eye On Your Reputation

Keeping closed eye on the reviews left on sites such as Tripdvisor. You can even check your own GBP listing regularly. Keeping on top of some of the other places in the SERPs might give potential customers an outsider’s view of your business.

It is crucial to remember that what a potential customer sees about you may not just be the information you are writing on your website or Google Business Profile listings. It might not even be the reviews left on sites you are closely monitoring and responding to