How Important Is Local Marketing?
The local web is a growing ecosystem of online media channels collectively driving local awareness and sales to small and medium size businesses; with over 73% of online search activity related to local content. How optimized is your website for local search? In our latest blog post, Zuma Technology will provide some fresh tips in effectively optimizing a website for local search.
Keyword Research
The most important element in targeting the audience for your product or service is keyword research. Most people start with an online tool to get keyword suggestions and search traffic estimates. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a great place to start. Even though the tool is optimized for Adword campaigns, you can still get an idea of the combination of keywords being used for your website.
Simply type in a few targeted keywords, the website URL and choose the businesses category, click search and voila you have keyword ideas! Once the keyword research is complete, review your current content and use the optimized keywords throughout the website. A word of caution, search engines do not like when a targeted keyword is overly used on a web page or throughout the site. This type of practice is called ‘keyword stuffing.’ It views the content as spam and will lower your rank in the search results page. A rule of thumb is to have no more than 2 – 3 keywords per page while maintaining a nice, organic flow to the content.
Google Places Local Directory
When we develop a customer’s online local presence, we focus on the low hanging fruit. One of the digital assets we incorporate in the marketing campaign is Google My Business page. With numerous search engines online, we feel it is best to start with Google because of their dominance in the search market, especially local search.
For example, if a consumer performs a search for a business, the search result returns the map and Google+ Page. This is a must have asset in terms of owning the first page in Google. According to Google’s statistics, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online through desktops, laptops and mobile devices. An astonishing percentage to say the least! Google is the search engine to optimize for in terms of local online presence.
Advertising Locally
Marketing allows you to attract new customers and create brand awareness. Google Adwords can help with many facets in marketing your brand, product or service. The platform allows businesses to advertise to a local segment in a specified area by zip code, city or county. When you begin an online marketing campaign a big budget is not necessarily required.
All it takes is to differentiate yourself from your competition. How can you differentiate yourself? Focus on the uniqueness of your service or product and present the compelling argument to your audience as to what makes you special and why should a potential customer choose you.
Local search marketing is the beginning of the big picture in online marketing. Optimizing locally will help attract local customers within a target community and assist in bringing customers through the door. Next week we will discuss how a business owner can optimize their website themselves by modifying 3 elements on a website.
