Small Business Marketing

Google Local Marketing for Small Businesses

Google wants you to do SEO and online marketing, did you know that?

google local seo and marketing servicesKeyword research is where you start. Then keywords chosen for commercial intent and to include a location target are vital for local marketing. As an example NOT ‘auto repairs’ but ‘auto repairs houston’ as the more generic term will have high competition and be low value commercially to a local business.

Site visitors from people across the country who’re unable to utilize the services of a local company are uneconomic. Not only that, they can negatively impact visibility for a small business doing local marketing.

Citations (Business Listings)
Citations are important for a small business and its local marketing efforts. Think of these as ‘votes’ of confidence. Provided of course that the details match exactly across all platforms. Use micro formats to compile your business listing data. Business name, address and telephone number, so that it matches exactly on your listings and website.

Seomomma.com (SEO Momma)

Main address:
Suite 2, Neyland Villa, Howey
LD1 5PN
Llandrindod Wells, Powys, UK,

Tel in US:( 1) 602 334 0527 ,
Tel in UK:( 44 0) 7799 576 223 ,
E-mail: info(at)seomomma.com

As you can see, it contains the business name, the business phone number and address these three items are your NAP (Name Address Phone) it’s important that every instance of these published on the web, inconsistency is bad for your visibility in search results. Consistency on the other hand, will help your visibility and make it easier for people to find you. Of course, what you see is the result of having information enclosed in ‘tags’. what the search engines sees is both the tags and the content. Like this;

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
 <span itemprop="name">Seomomma.com (SEO Momma)</span>

<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
 Main address:
 <span itemprop="streetAddress">Suite 2, Neyland Villa, Howey</span>
 <span itemprop="postalCode">LD1 5PN</span>
 <span itemprop="addressLocality">Llandrindod Wells, Powys, UK</span>,
 </div>
 Tel in US:<span itemprop="telephone">( 1) 602 334 0527 </span>,</br>
 Tel in UK:<span itemprop="telephone">( 44 0) 7799 576 223 </span>,</br>
 E-mail: <span itemprop="email">info(at)seomomma.com</span>
 </div>

Small Business Marketing

Website
No business, large or small can really succeed today without a website. Not because without one you can’t benefit from the web but because consumers expect you to have one. Once they start researching they will want to see a website and read what you have to say about yourself and your products/services. It’s part of the ‘trust’ factor, with so much choice they want to do business with companies they feel they can trust, your website is part of that.

As a guide your site should contain at least the following;

  • 6 pages
  • Optimized meta tags, content, images and one video.
  • Home Page
  • About Us
  • Services/Products
  • Contact
  • T’s&C’s
  • Privacy Policy
  • Reviews (Where applicable)
  • Social Icons

You also need to be on social media platforms, Google My Business Local Maps and Facebook Business Pages at a minimum.

Then you need to build links, this is the way search engines prefer to find sites. They like to follow links from ‘seed set’ sites like .gov/.edu/.org. These sites are highly trusted by Google, a link from one of these sites is the holy grail of link building and very difficult to get. For a small local business, almost impossible to get.

The next set of sites Google likes to see links from are trusted sites like CNN, BBC or Wikipedia. Trusted sites are those that Google knows contain relevant information, like the CNN news site in the US or the BBC in the UK.

Now obviously it’s difficult (unless you’re in the news) to gain links from those sites. Google also frowns on sites that have ‘paid’ links. That’s not to say that paying for a directory listing is frowned on because it’s not. That’s a sound business decision and perfectly legitimate. The links Google and others search engines dislike (read don’t allow) are the sort where a link is on a page of links, or on fluff content that has no value.

You need to reach out to trusted sites in your niche and get links from them as well as local directories like online newspaper classified ads and directories.

Next comes the content that you put out. This must be very high quality, useful and relevant information. It must satisfy the needs of the searcher not the search engine. What does this mean? In the ‘old’ days, you would choose a keyword, like ‘blue widgets’ and write a piece of content where you used the term ‘blue widgets’ a certain amount of times. The actual information was less important than the number of times you used your target keyword.

Today that will not only not work, it will in all liklihood get your site penalised and dropped in visibility. Today you have to write content that answers the questions people are asking. With voice search on mobile phones, people search using ‘long tailed keywords’. It’s termed ‘natural language’. So instead of typing in a search for ‘blue widgets’ they speak and say something like “where can I buy blue widgets near me?”

There are many components to successful local business marketing for small businesses and sometimes it makes sense to get the help of an expert. Well that’s why we’re here 🙂 Give us a call or fill in the form and let’s see if we can do something wonderful together 🙂