Looking for More Leads Near You?
As someone who’s been in website design and development for almost a decade, the number one thing I hear from clients post-launch is, “how do we increase traffic to the site and get more leads?”
In this case, most people ask about search engine optimization, but that may not be the right answer for your business.
See, SEO is all about getting your website to rank on page 1 for organic keywords. But, if you spend tons of time and money to get your content to rank on page one and you start reaching people outside of your service area, what have you accomplished?
I’m not saying you don’t need SEO—you might—but if you’re a business that provides a localized product or service like chiropractic care or meal prep delivery, then gaining web traffic beyond your service area is no beuno. Right?
So, what is the answer? How do we get more inbound calls, form fills, and leads?
The answer is Local SEO.
The last time you searched for a local service—let’s say, “web design cape girardeau mo,” for example—do you recall seeing results like this:
That, my friend, are the local business results and Google tends to show the top three businesses that match your search, making it a highly coveted spot to show up.
What Determines the Top Three?
Showing up in the top three local results, or the snack pack as it’s sometimes called, comes down to three variables:
- Relevance
- Distance
- Prominence
Here’s what Google says on the matter:
“Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. A combination of these factors helps us find the best match for your search. For example, our algorithms might decide that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results.”
Relevance refers to how well a local Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.
Distance considers how far each potential search result is from the location term used in a search. If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what they do know about their location based on GPS or IP-based geo-location.
Prominence refers to how well known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels, or well-known store brands are also likely to be prominent in local search results.
Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business, from across the web, like links, articles, and directories. Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking. More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business’ local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so search engine optimization (SEO) best practices apply.
How to Boost Your Local Listings
Now that you know more about local business listings, think of Local SEO as a way to help boost those listings. We can’t do much about distance, but we can work on relevance and prominence.
First, Google isn’t the only business directory. There are also Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, Instagram, Yelp, Foursquare, HotFrog, and countless others, and many pull their data about your business from other directories.
The main data that they pull are your name, address, and phone number, or the NAP. Having a NAP that matches 100% in all of these directories matters, and it matters quite a bit.
If your business has moved physical locations or changed phone numbers and your NAP is inconsistent across the internet, this will lower your local rankings.
Even small differences such as “Broadway St.” vs “Broadway Street” or “Suite 102” vs. “Ste. 102” will have a negative impact. It can be very daunting to try to go into all of your local listings one-by-one, especially since you won’t have logins to most of the listings. They imported your data from other directories, remember?
So what can you do?
At B&B Media, we use sophisticated software that allows us to publish listings to nearly 90 directories on the internet. Or, if you have listings already and they don’t match or you have old businesses showing up at your location, we can fix and/or suppress the incorrect listings.
Getting Started
So, if you’re wanting to show up in the top three local listings, or the snack pack, then where do you start?
First, we can do an audit of all your listings and see where you’re falling short. Then, we can help you register your Google Business and Facebook pages. If you already have those, all we need is admin access to the listings.
From there, we’ll connect those listings to our software and begin pushing that data out to the other listings. Or, we’ll begin suppressing duplicate listings and fixing inconsistent data.
To get started, we charge $170 up front for setup and $50/month to maintain the listings. And trust me, it’ll be worth every penny.
Ready to get started? Call 573-200-6578 or get in touch below.
