Many people are searching for local business than ever before. This lead to the fact that local search has become very competitive nowadays. This becomes a quiet problem for you who wanted to stand out and raise your ranking above other competitors in the same local services and businesses. So how can your local services and businesses stand out and rise in the rankings?.
Tip 1: Adding Reviews
Many people know about this fact, but there are only a few of them who really consider this fact important to do to boost their local SEO. To rank higher in local search and therefore can make your online platform landed in the top search, you need to add ratings and reviews that build trust to your brand of services and businesses. Local services and businesses that have physical locations have an advantage. Google shows local businesses more on its search results to the people who looking for things, services and businesses near them. Google results will lead them to a page where they will see a local map pack that shows a map of services and businesses locations, with the addition of listing from the services and businesses that is relevant to their particular search.
but being recognized and featured on the Google result of map pack is not enough. There are more ways that you can do to optimize your own Google My Business or GMB listing, especially in terms of reviews – so that you can one-up the competition.
Five-star ratings are not always what you get when you run a services and businesses company. There’s more that goes into a great online review presence than an average star rating or the number of ratings you’ve received. Make sure you’re keeping track of the reviews in your GMB listing and responding where necessary. People all around the globe are always so comfortable with online reviews. They even make it a habit, when they read reviews then they will automatically compare, contrast and read in-depth to decide whether to support a business.
How to Gather High-Quality Reviews?
Here’s how.
- Deliver high-quality customer service. Focusing on the customer experience will help you build an army of advocates willing to ride or die for your business.
- Timing is everything. Figure out the best timing for sending a review request invitation.
- Set expectations for reviews. The most successful businesses have built “the ask” into multiple steps of the customer visit. Before leaving the customer you should let them know when and how they will receive the invite and why it is important for them to respond.
- Invite via text. Your customers are already on their phones, so it’s time to start meeting them where they’re at.
At the same time, you as the owner of a service and businesses company, also have to be active in requesting reviews from your customers. Nowadays, you can even use tools to automate the process. Often, customers are willing to support your local business. But the big question is whether you’re giving them that opportunity and making it convenient for them. Where you fall in that map pack and how deep into that list a searcher has to go in order to find your business, in a lot of ways, will determine how much traffic and potential customers you get from that GMB listing.
Google takes the following factors into consideration when determining local search rankings:
- Relevance: Does your listing match what the consumer is searching for?
- Distance: How close is your business to the searcher?
- Prominence: Is your business prominent in the offline world? Is your business reviewed regularly?
A completely optimized GMB is a must if you want your service and business company to hit in on the relevance and get found more often in the search engine results. Because if Google doesn’t know everything about your business and what you have to offer, it can’t match searches with your listing.
In addition, the quantity and quality of your reviews factor into prominence.
Tip 2: Make Sure Your Bio and Information are Easily Visible
Your name, address and phone number data should be consistent and present across all your profiles on the web. You have to make sure that all your contact numbers are clickable. That will make most search engines recognize and will highlight your contact phone numbers.
Adding numbers is also not enough. You have to embed a map of your services and businesses locations to make it easier for the customers to find your place by including a Google Map of your locations right on your website.
Tip 3: Make Yourself Contact-able
Most people would prefer to text. Make it easy with a text-able business line. SEO experts are great at generating demand through organic search rankings, but not always experienced in the best ways to capture demand. Giving customers the ability to text your business (either through the GMB profile or your website chat) will convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers. Plus, your internal team can respond to 10x the number of potential with text than they could with phone or email. That means less work for you and more sales for your business.
These are the lists of what you can do with text:
- Set appointments
- Answer questions
- Streamline operations
- Capture leads
- Get reviews
- Send surveys
- Run promo campaigns
- Collect payments
Using text to gather reviews helps because people will respond at a much higher rate. More responses equal more reviews equals more hits and higher rankings. On top of that, you can use text instead of email for other, more standard SEO practices like reaching out for links. Get the conversation happening over text and see more success and faster responses.
Tip 4: Claim Every Business Profile
Make sure your customers and your search engines know you’re open for service and business. Claim every business profile and listing you can, on every website you can, and for every location, you operate. Make sure you have made an account and then make sure they are current. Fill in all the important info, such as service info, hours, addresses, contact methods, and numbers. And make sure to make your digital storefront neat and clean by doing web development.
Add some related pictures to your GMB profile. Pull out your smartphone and walk outside to take a high-quality picture of your business. That’s the baseline. Having nice photos helps search engines know your listing is real, relevant, and kept up nicely. Aside from uploading high-quality photos, make sure to keep updating your GMB.
The end goal of search engine optimization is to get more and better leads so you can have more opportunities to close the deal.
To find out how we can help you with your Website + Marketing, using our unique location marketing platform called Top4, get in touch today at www.top4marketing.com.au
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Source: searchenginejournal
