Your Local SEO Marketing Plan: 5 Strategies for Attracting More Local Customers

July 10, 2020

You depend on local traffic – and local customers can be some of your most loyal. Don’t you want to attract more of them? It sounds like local SEO is your goal – and great local SEO is a lot like a game of chess. Read on for five strategies to start capturing more local search traffic and get more local customers.

Do Your Research

It’s a straightforward question; what are local users looking for? Do you even know? Google Analytics may be the most indispensable tool for discovering the keywords that draw people to your site and where they’re coming from. Keep an eye on your most popular pages as well – those can be optimized into killer landing pages. We love Analytics, and we can help you get it set up or take better advantage of it. Call us to learn how.

Talk to Your Customers

Reviews are like gold for local SEO – and they are often an unexpected move. Give your customers a direct link to your review platform of choice; Google, Yelp, etc, and ask for their opinion. If you have the chance, ask them how they heard about you – and pay close attention to local keywords you might be able to leverage on your site. Monitor reviews, and don’t just block negative ones – respond to them publicly (as positively as possible). Solve customer problems and take the conversation offline if necessary.

Work With Your Neighbors

Other local businesses are a fantastic resource when it comes to local SEO. Jump your way across the field and chat up any related businesses in the area to get started. Let’s say you’re a hardware store that sells gardening supplies – offer to add a link to a local plant nursery on your website for a link in kind on theirs. The key here is relevance and authenticity – you don’t want to pay for a link on some shady site that has nothing to do with your business. Take the chance to capture an important keyword and request specific anchor text in the link, and voila! A strong external backlink is created, boosting your local SEO.

Set up Your Page for Mobile Success

Your mobile site is your most powerful piece. Per Google, more than 50% of searches happen on mobile. You need to optimize your website for mobile visitors. This means creating a site with welcoming mobile design of course, but it also means optimizing your load speeds on mobile. We like to strike a balance to boost SEO – reach out and let’s discuss how your site’s mobile strategy can improve.

Get on Google Maps

It’s the most important part of being discovered locally. Type your business’ name and a keyphrase into Google Maps – do you come up? If you don’t, your focus should be on appearing in Maps for the right keywords. Getting a listing on Google Maps is a huge step in the right direction – and optimizing your site for it is a surefire way to capture searches from local customers.

Think 20 Moves Ahead

Monitoring reviews, optimizing site speed, mobile design, Google Maps entries, and so much more go into local SEO. It’s a lot to handle all at once. At Rearview, we know all the moves you need to make – and we can free up the time you’d otherwise spend managing your local SEO. Focus on what matters most to your business, and leave SEO to our team of experts. Call Rearview Advertising and discuss how we can put your business on the board.