How Can a Small Business Rule Local Search Results

Local search results are of tremendous importance, especially when it comes to brick and mortar stores. 50% of people who do local a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day. The same goes for 34% of people who perform a local search on their tablets or computers. Ever since Google introduced its Pigeon update back in 2014, local businesses that grew a strong organic presence have enjoyed increased visibility, awareness and recognition. Over time, the SERPs for both Google Maps and Google search has become almost identical, meaning that no matter how consumers perform their search, they will get the same results for local businesses. Here are a couple of tips for dominating local search results.

List Your Business

There’s nothing worse for a business than when potential customers can’t find information about it online. Many small, local companies and establishments fail to provide essential details including their number and address. Many also forget to put more in-depth information. Apart from the NAP, an acronym standing for the name, address, and phone number of your company, it’s also a good idea to inform your target audience about the business hours, types of payment, and a description of your business. In order to help Google collect and index all the necessary information about your company, take advantage of various online directories such as Google My Busines, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Yahoo Local Listings, and all kinds of other platforms relevant to your industry. Consistency is crucial for this tactic meaning that all your local citations, that is, mentions of your company, should be the same in each directory. Double-check if the NAP on your webpage and the NAP on GMB match.

Use Your Keywords

Keywords aren’t used just to make your content more accessible on the internet. They play an important role in local SEO too. Namely, by placing relevant keywords which reflect local information in your GMB business title, description domain, and reviews, you’ll make sure that your target audience can easily discover and locate your business. Of course, as SEO is a pretty complex marketing approach, it’s much more effective to leave it to professionals. This is especially the case if you’re running a business in a competitive market, for example, Hong Kong. As Pearl of the Orient in a big industrial hub, it’s easy to be swallowed up by your competitors, which is why it’s best to promote your business locally with the help of experienced search engine optimization. Hong Kong experts who understand that particular market can help you climb to the top of Google local search results.

Encourage UGC

According to a recent study by Nielsen, 83% of people trust recommendations from their friends and family, which explains why reviews are a powerful vehicle for dominating local and traditional search results. Moreover, a survey has revealed that purchasing decisions of 67.7% of participants are influenced by online reviews. Just think of this: what’s the first thing you do when you want to book accommodation in another city or country? You most certainly use TripAdvisor to read what others have to say about a particular hotel or B&B. One of the best ways to attract potential customers is to have genuinely positive online reviews. This will not only convince people who are considering the idea of purchasing your products or services that your company is worth giving a shot, but also signal to Google that local searchers will be satisfied with what you have to offer. The trick is to subtly encourage your existing customers to create user-generated content and tell others about the positive experiences they had with your business. A gentle nudge in the form of a discount, coupon, or cool swag is a perfectly legitimate way of motivating your customers to write a review. If you’re not comfortable with asking for a review directly, you can invite them to give you feedback and share their opinion in order to improve your products as well as customer experience.

What They See Is What They Get

Don’t forget that most people are visually oriented. In other words, a research study has found that visually rich presentations are 43% more persuasive. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than the ones without images. In a similar vein, including your own images in your GMB listing is very likely to attract more attention. You can highly benefit from posting high-quality images of your products, staff, and establishment since they can have a significant impact on your prospective customers’ first impressions about your business. If we bear in mind that 46% of people perceive a well-designed website as trustworthy and reliable, it’s clear why you need to pay attention to visual elements of your online presence. Also, user-generated images are a welcome addition to their reviews, but they shouldn’t be the only images representing your company in the search results.

Implementing these couple of tactics are of vital importance for ensuring that your business will be well ranked in local search results.