Is your company just getting into search engine optimization (SEO) for the first time? If so, there is a good chance that local SEO will be part of your strategy in the early stages. You are probably going to want to focus on a local audience before expanding from there. That being the case, knowing how to get the most out of local SEO is a smart move.
As a local SEO company with offices in Salt Lake City, UT and Austin, TX, we have made our living helping small businesses reach local audiences with effective marketing messages. We’ve helped local companies get their pages to the top of Google and Bing searches.
The thing to know about local SEO is that it utilizes some strategies that differ from more generic SEO. That’s by design. Why? Because your audience is smaller, more specific, and more easily targeted.
Knowing Your Audience Is the First Rule
If you want to know how to make the most of your local SEO strategy, know this: it all starts with knowing your audience. Who are the customers most likely to buy your services or products? How old are they, where do they live, what is their income level etc.? You cannot craft a marketing strategy to customers you don’t know.
Would you be surprised to learn that search engines are still the leading means through which people learn about brands and products online? It’s true. In recent data that breaks internet users down into various age groups, there were only two groups for which search engines came in second place. They were the 16-24 and 25-35 age groups. They utilize social networks first and internet searches second.
The remaining three age groups, spanning 35-to-64-year-olds ranked search engines as their number one means of learning about brands and products online. Incidentally, the same research data reveals that the 50+ crowd still makes up the bulk of all online spend. Think about that when you are trying to understand your target audience.
Craft Locally Focused Content
The next thing you want to do is start crafting locally focused content. Let’s say you run a landscaping business in Salt Lake City. Create content that talks about some of the unique aspects of maintaining landscaping in the local area. On your service pages, mention Salt Lake City and the surrounding regions.
Not all your content needs to be exclusively local, but a generous portion of it should be. We talk a lot about Salt Lake City, the state of Utah, and Austin, TX because we are trying to reach customers in those specific regions.
Make Use of Local Resources
Making the most of your local SEO efforts includes making use of local resources. If you can get your organization’s name and contact information into local directories, do so. If you can get customers to leave reviews on popular sites like Yelp – sites that can be locally focused by ZIP code – do it.
Craft content for local news outlets. Work on finding local businesses willing to come alongside you for cross marketing purposes. In essence, take advantage of every opportunity to reach your customers in a local setting.
There is certainly more to local SEO than we’ve had space to describe in this post. The last thing we want you to know before closing is that Webtek Digital Marketing specializes in SEO and digital marketing services. If you are new to local SEO, we can help you get up and running. As a local SEO company, we use the same local strategies to boost our own business.
