Location based searching is important and could be your best friend or worst nightmare, depending on how effectively you use the tool.
Here are our top tips to optimise your website for the local market:
Create a Unique Landing Page
This one’s mostly common sense; think about what your potential customers and clients in the local area will want to know. You should tell them where to find you in the area, and a local phone number that they can contact you on. You want to stress that fact that you’re close by to service their needs, people want their services to be in the surrounding area so they can meet the people that they’re working with.
You should have any promotions or offers on this part of the site, as well as a brief description of the services you provide. The landing page is where you want to give your customers all the information they need and direct them to the more in depth sections of the website.
Add a Business Listing
It’s easy and free to add a business listing to Google and Bing, which means when people in your area are looking for a service your company will crop up with all the information they need. It will pop up with your opening hours and contact information, this is a handy and effective way to get your website optimised for the local market. Reviews will even come up here, so people will see that your brand is trustworthy straight away.
Build up Business Directories
Using services like Touchlocal, Scoot, Yell and Yelp to make sure your company is represented on a number of sites. The more your brand is out there, the more likely someone is to come across it. User reviews on these sites will also allow potential customers see the amount of happy customers you have.
Add Google Reviews to your Site
Google reviews are a great resource to add to your site, when potential customers look for your company they’ll see all the customers you’ve helped in the past. You should encourage customers to leave you a review if they’re satisfied with the service they received. If they’re not happy it also lets you see why and how you can avoid the same pitfalls in future.
Add a Store Locator
If you want to encourage customers to come to your place of business add a store locator to your site. This way customers can get handy directions without having to type it into Google, if they access it on a smartphone they can even open it with their maps application and use the GPS to guide them there. So there’s no need to miss out on business because a client can’t find your premises.
Link all of your Social Media Platforms
Being able to have all of your Social Media outlets linked together allows you to vary the content going out to each of these locations and it doesn’t alienate any potential customers who prefer one Social Media site to another.
Invest in Local PR
If you want to break into the local market you should be working with someone to raise the profile of the business. Whether it’s an advertisement in the local newspaper or a mention in a local blog, let the community know that you’re on their doorstep.
Use Referral Traffic to find where your Customers are Coming From
Using referral traffic will help you figure out where your customers are coming from, this will help you decide which tactics are most successful and which to reinvest your efforts into. This will let you keep on top of which methods are working and which you could research to become a little more effective. It also lets you see if locals are discussing your company and what they’re saying.
Observe Competitor Performance
By Googling similar services to the ones that you offer you’ll be able to see your competition, if they’re as well optimised as you that is. Dedicate some time to researching them and their reputation, as you may be able to take pointers from the things they are doing which put them slightly ahead of you in the rankings.
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Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.
