It is probably safe to say that the COVID pandemic is finally behind us. As we look forward to summer 2022, most of us have had our fill of the virus. We are ready to get back to our normal lives. But if you own a small business, what was normal prior to COVID probably won’t ever be normal again. Things have changed. For starters, there is a new emphasis on local. That begs the question of how your local marketing efforts are going. How strong is your local SEO strategy?
The world was already heavily dependent on the internet prior to COVID. But some two years on, our dependence on the internet has only increased. People look online to find products and services. They spend time on search engines before going to shop. And of course, a lot of us are doing quite a bit our shopping online.
If your company’s local SEO efforts are not up to par, you could be missing out on a significant amount of business. Local SEO is all about making sure that customers in your town can find your business. It is about getting their attention when they ask where they can find your products or services near them.
Plenty of Local Strategies
Local SEO tends to be the forgotten stepchild of digital marketing services in the minds of small business owners. For some reason, business owners engaging with organized SEO services for the first time tend to think on a global scale. They think about the possibility of reaching millions of viewers with their websites. They think about their message going far and wide without remembering that most of their customers live locally.
There are plenty of local strategies designed to reach that audience. These include:
- targeting local keywords
- making use of online citations
- producing locally relevant content
- making use of local reviews.
Google even has a number of different options for emphasizing local. For example, perhaps you have run a Google search and noticed the first three or four results at the top of the page complete with addresses and map coordinates. Imagine how much more exposure your business would get if it appeared in those results.
You Have to Think Locally
So how do you make local SEO work? There are skills and strategies to learn, but it all starts with thinking locally. Take Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing. Although the company works with clients around the country, their bread and butter remains the Salt Lake City region. Webtek team members know Salt Lake City because they live there. They work there. They eat at local restaurants, buy from local shops, and spend time enjoying local leisure activities.
This is not to say that your company’s SEO provider has to be located in the same town where your business operates. But team members should still have a good understanding of your local area and what makes it work. If your SEO developer doesn’t understand the essence of your local area, how will their local SEO services help?
Local SEO and Smartphones
If you are still not convinced that your company needs a strong local SEO strategy, there is one last thing to consider: the smartphone. More and more people are using their phones as their primary resources for utilizing the internet. Moreover, nearly all of them search for local businesses with their phones. A company without a solid local SEO strategy is not going to be found. And if people are not finding a company’s website, they are not going to find that company.