It’s not a secret that social networks and search engines have a huge affect on local business promotion.
According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online, That is why it is important to pay attention to digital marketing. Even when your target audience lives in the specific area.
Many entrepreneurs don’t even imagine how local SEO is important to market their business and they don’t involve their business in it at all. Local SEO is the first step that you should do to market your business online.
All the major search engines now let you list your business for free so that your geographic location and contact details appear when someone searches for your business/type of business and town or city. You should sign up for Google Places and Bing and Yahoo directories as well.
Paid search traffic can also have huge advantages. Your ads appear to people just in your town or county. It means you don’t pay for irrelevant clicks that your business doesn’t need.
If you have a website, then don’t forget to optimize it for local search. you can use the name of your town, city or region in the page description, page title and in the content of the page.
Here are most important steps to promote your local business online.
1. your website should be listed on most popular local business listing websites.
Sometimes people are looking for local business in different places like local business listing sites that are great tools to help potential clients find you in local search.
You should
1. Include your business name and logo.
2. Enter your local phone number.
3. Add your physical address, email, working hours.
Here are sites that your local business should be listed.
• Google My Business
• Yelp for Business Owners
• Yellow Pages.
• Yahoo Small Business
• Bing for Business
• Yell.com
During some period you will see the real power of business directories. If you want to check out your local rankings or rankings of your competitors and their backlinks, you can use some SEO tools and check new directories to get listed.
2. Don’t forget about social media.
Social networks are a great source for getting more awareness for your brand and get more customers through it. You can easily build up your online brand to be more popular. Make sure you sign up for Google +, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to market your local business. There are many social networks to get target audience in social media.
3. Advertising
Social networks and search engines give great tools for advertising your business locally. You can use google Adwords, facebook ads or twitter ads to target needed audience and getting real results.
4. Public relations
Getting your business mentioned on the local news website will help to build your profile within the local community.
If you’ve got a story that you think will be better to get covered, Then the best thing to do is get to know your local journalists. Participate in local events and charities to support the local area and raise your profile.
5. Get positive reviews.
Positive reviews are an important part of any local business. People love to read reviews before purchasing any product. Make sure you have good reviews on Yelp, Dex, Google Plus and other review sites. Add special review section on your website and ask customers to review your products that they bought.