Having a local SEO management plan is synonymous with brand success online. An effective strategy can help your locations rank higher than local competitors, which makes customer acquisition goals easier to achieve. While success doesn’t happen overnight, the local SEO management tips below provide a strong foundation on which to build a digital presence that stands out from the crowd and appeals to your ideal customer base.
Local SEO Management Best Practice #1: Listings, Listings, Listings
Getting your foot in the door of effective local SEO management starts with your online listings. Carefully choosing the right business review sites for your brand helps with overall visibility as well as sending authentic and correct signals to Google. You’ll need these elements in order to get an accurate ranking online and then find ways from there to improve your standing.
Getting started with an online listing is easy. Listing on major sites such as Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook all help with establishing a digital brand presence that is easy to find for consumers. As you fill out the details of each listing, make sure that the information you provide is correct, consistent, and updated across all platforms. Not only does this help authenticate your listing to search engines; it also is a critical first step in establishing trust with the consumer. A small typo in the address, an unavailable number, or the wrong operating hours damages your ranking and any goodwill that the company has towards the customer.
As more of your brand locations get listed, it will be difficult for one person or even a small team to manually manage each listing on a daily basis. For best results in terms of consistent data, uniform branding, and even competitor analysis take a look at your local listings management software options, research local citation software tools, and invest in a local search rank checker.
Local SEO Management Best Practice #2: Create Local Content that Attracts
As you create a brand website (as well as location-specific sites) you should also strive to have a blog writing strategy for local SEO. Have some terms in mind that are already associated with your brand or utilize Google scraping for gaining insights into the keywords and phrases that potential customers are using to find businesses like yours.
Create blog content featuring these topics with the intention of promoting your offerings, but more importantly, to show brand knowledge in these areas.
In other words, don’t create content just to promote. Be a resource to consumers who are looking for differentiators, especially when it comes to local content. Write about how your products or services can help out on the local front. Tell people that you will be a presence at the weekend farmers market or the annual festival. Weaving yourself into the fabric of the community can make the company synonymous in the local scene, which makes customer acquisition easier for you in the long run.
Local SEO Management Best Practice #3: Keeping an Eye on Review Management
Local SEO management also requires some reputation management along the way in the form of your online reviews. Positive and negative feedback alike are major factors for local SEO, and you can actually use them to your advantage, specifically through your review response strategy.
Learning how to respond to negative reviews and looking at positive review response examples can give you enough runway for review response success. Depending on the feedback sentiment, your response can organically integrate those same keywords that you use in blog content and throughout the listings to further reinforce their relationship with the brand.
Responses also can help with ongoing customer retention strategies at a local level. Because reviews are a highly valuable form of social proof, your response to positive and negative feedback can speak volumes about how the company sees its customers. Making meaningful strides to thank those who loved the product and addressing issues with consumers who had a bad experience all contribute to both your local SEO performance as well overall reputation management efforts.
Conclusion
Local SEO management doesn’t have to be difficult even though it encompasses multiple parts of your online presence. Finding the local listing management and reputation management software can easily set you up for success in the beginning and ensure a smooth operation that attracts consumers and beats the competition for each of your locations.
