Successful local SEO campaigns feature a lot of miniscule, yet highly important moving parts. Local search accounts for approximately 46% of all Google searches that’s a huge chunk of the digital marketing pie and it’s certainly worth the investment for any business with multiple locations.
Of course, it also means that businesses with multiple locations need to have unique online marketing strategies that are custom designed for each location in order to work properly. That’s where hiring local SEO experts to help create effective online content that’s full of relevant keywords comes into play. Keep reading to learn more about the elements of successful local online marketing and how they can drive up your return on investment.
Local SEO Strategies for Multiple Locations
Traditional advertising standards call for a great deal of in-depth research into local markets. This includes learning about local demographics, identifying your target audience, and learning about what appeals to them the most so that you can create meaningful targeted ads that will capture their attention.
Conducting keyword research is a vital step in the process of learning about local demographics because it helps you find out what users are searching for in specific regions. With this information, you can then create meaningful content that not only appeals directly to their sensibilities but that also directly answers the questions they’re asking. By providing the answers to their specific search queries, you’re increasing your chances of ranking higher on local search engine results pages. Including key location-based tags in your content as well as your online marketing materials will make it infinitely easier for searchers to find your business online.
5 Critical Elements of Local Online Marketing Success
Regardless of how many physical locations or service areas you have, it’s important to do your due diligence and represent them all equally online. Each store or company branch presents an opportunity to expand your clientele and reach a much wider untapped market. Here are the five key elements to not only attracting more clients using local SEO strategies, but to maintain their patronage.
Listing Management
It’s important for existing and prospective customers to be able to associate either one or a few friendly faces with your business. For that reason, every location should have its own branch manager. On top of that, your company website should also list all of the locations of your business as well. Under each business location tab, you should provide detailed information about that particular branch including brief but informative staff summaries. This will help existing and prospective customers get to know your business and be more personally invested in supporting it. Customers typically have more of a vested interest in supporting local businesses that they can easily recognize rather than massive faceless corporations that they can’t personally relate to.
Create Custom Local SEO Strategies
Local SEO research is a pivotal part of your online marketing campaign’s overall success. You need to research and identify exactly what aspects of your business will or could potentially appeal to the specific markets that you’re trying to break into. Otherwise, your efforts will be entirely ineffective. For instance, it doesn’t make sense for you to use the same marketing tactics that work in Western Canada in Toronto. Even though you’re expanding your business within the same country, the markets and demographics are completely different in one part of the country than the other. The same principle can also be applied to local markets that are within closer proximity to one another.
People in Brampton, for instance, have entirely different interests, sensibilities, and needs than people in downtown Toronto. It’s up to you to figure out which aspects of your business are most likely to appeal to different demographics in each location so that you can aptly and effectively apply them to your local online marketing campaign in each region.
Create Local Landing Pages
With the constant uptick in mobile searches, creating detailed and specific local landing pages for your website and to improve local search engine rankings has never been more crucial. Local landing pages should feature address maps that are usually powered by major search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo along with a complete street address and contact information. Local landing pages should also showcase hours of operation for specific locations so that customers can have access to all of the information they need for each location.
Additionally, local landing pages are a great resource for existing and prospective customers to find out and keep track of community-based events that you may be involved in or conducting. These can include charity drives, social events, and networking opportunities for your business.
Take Charge of Reputation Management
Effective local SEO strategies are also instrumental in helping your company and its individual locations or service areas maintain a strong positive reputation within the local communities that you work in and serve. Hiring digital marketing experts to track your online analytics and manage day-to-day local search activity regarding your business is a core asset to maintaining a positive reputation. A big portion of this is moderating online reviews and responding to them in an appropriate and timely manner. Every business receives negative reviews from time to time. How you respond to those negative reviews is telling about the way your organization operates and how much you truly value your customer feedback.
Take the time to read through all of your online reviews, thank every customer for their feedback, and actively try to rectify any negative experiences people may have had with your business. That’s a true sign of professional growth and integrity and your customers will respect you for taking on this approach.
Leverage Paid Search and Social Media
The more online exposure you can muster up for your business’s different locations and service areas, the more you can increase your customer interactions. What better way to do this than by leveraging paid search and social media? Most people find local businesses through mobile searches. Paid search in conjunction with organic rankings and social media advertising triple your chances of being prominently ranked on search engine results pages.
Need help improving your business’s online visibility through effective local marketing? Numero Uno Web Solutions can help you get there. We’ve worked with numerous small- and medium-sized businesses across Toronto and the GTA to help them build and maintain strong online presences and increase their ROIs. Contact us to speak to one of our experienced digital marketing strategists today.
