Introduction

If you want to see your business rank higher in the local search results, there are a few things that you can do right now. A good place to start is by claiming your Google My Business profile and ensuring that it’s filled in with accurate and up-to-date information. From there, it’s important to monitor how well your business is doing on review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Facebook. Keep an eye out for bad reviews because they have the power to impact your rankings negatively if left unaddressed. Additionally, encourage repeat visitors with deals and specials so customers feel like they are getting something extra when they visit your brick-and-mortar location or online shop again!

Claim your Google My Business Profile

Your Google My Business Profile is an essential part of your local SEO strategy. It allows people to find you when they search for businesses like yours, so you need to make sure it’s set up correctly and has all of the information that’s relevant to your customers.

Before we talk about how to claim your Google My Business Profile, let’s take a look at why this is important for local SEO:

• Claiming your business will enable you to update the information on this page with ease, which means that instead of having one person in charge of updating everything all the time (which could be difficult), everyone who works with clients or has contact with customers can work together to keep things updated and accurate. This also helps ensure that none of those details get missed—which happens more often than many people realize!
• When someone searches for something related to what your company does, there’s no guarantee he or she will click on a result just because it seems like most likely option (or even pick out any one specific listing). Having great content on both listings ensures that even if someone isn’t clicking through from Google Maps directly onto Yelp!, they’ll still see something informative if they click through from another source such as Maps and decide not only do they want more information but also want someone who specializes in [INSERT KEYWORD].

Review your business information

The first thing you need to do is make sure all of your business information is up to date. This includes the name and address, a phone number, a website URL and a description of what makes your business unique (e.g., “we offer organic produce”).

To make sure everything is in order, head over to Google My Business and log in with the account that you use for other Google products like Gmail or Google Drive. You will see a dashboard containing all of your verified listings—that’s where you’ll find the information listed above as well as any other data that has been added by users (like reviews).

You should also check out how competitors are doing—you may find some cool tricks they’ve used that could help grow yours!

Populate your profile

The first step to growing your local search rankings is to claim your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This is an essential part of the process and will help increase visibility on Google Maps, as well as provide potential customers with information about what you offer and where you’re located.

Once you’ve claimed your GMB profile, you can start populating it with relevant information such as:

• Your business name
• Phone number(s)
• Address(es), including hours of operation and directions from popular landmarks like airports or highways/freeways/highways (think exit numbers!)

Adding photos is also important because it builds trust and encourages visitors to click through on the listing instead of just searching for similar businesses in the area that may have better ratings.

Manage categories wisely

While it’s important to use the right categories for your business, you also want to be cautious of using too many or too few. If you’re using too many categories, then it can negatively impact your rankings. Google will look at this and think that the relevance of each category isn’t strong enough, and they won’t rank you as well.

On the other hand, if there are no relevant categories listed with your business name in them at all, Google might not even show up on their results page because they don’t think it’s relevant enough to appear! Use caution when managing these types of things so that neither problem happens.

 

Ask for reviews, build a 5 star rating!

Today, you’re going to learn about the importance of reviews. Reviews are one of the most important factors for local rankings and business growth. So if you want to grow your business, you have to get more reviews!

Here are some tips that will help you get more reviews:

• Ask for them! When someone asks me how I made my website so successful, I tell them that it was because I asked everyone who came in my store “Hey, would you mind leaving a review? You know how much we appreciate feedback from our customers so if there’s something we can do better or if there’s anything that could be improved here at [store name], then let us know! We’d love to hear from people like yourself who enjoy shopping here at [store name].” Then they say “Oh yeah sure.” and leave me a 5 star review on Google+. After doing this every day for 2 years now my website ranks first when people search “best cupcakes” in their area which means tons of sales coming through online orders via delivery or pickup orders only through GrubHub or DoorDash since those apps don’t charge restaurants any commission fees unlike UberEats does which is why no one uses it anymore because it takes $$ away from restaurants’ pockets (I’m not affiliated with either company).

Optimize your website to drive local search traffic

• Optimize your website to drive local search traffic.
• Use keywords in your title, description and content.
• Use Google analytics to track the results of your SEO efforts.
• Make sure your site is mobile optimized.
• Use Google Webmaster Tools to report errors

Monitor and respond to reviews.

Monitoring and responding to reviews is one of the most important things you can do for your local search rankings. In addition to showing that your business cares about its customers’ opinions, it also gives you an opportunity to improve customer service and build a strong rapport with potential customers.

Google Alerts are a great way to stay on top of what people are saying about your business online. This simple tool will send you an email whenever new content related to your search term appears online, so that you can quickly respond if needed or watch for trends in how people talk about your brand.

If someone posts a negative review about their experience at one of your locations, take the time out of busy day-to-day operations in order respond directly by thanking them for sharing their feedback and offering any assistance they might need moving forward. These types of responses help build good relationships with current customers while also giving others who read this kind feedback reasons why they should choose this location over competitors’ locations when looking for similar services nearby.”

Encourage repeat visitors with deals and specials.

• Use a loyalty program.
• Offer coupons, gift cards and freebies to encourage repeat visitors.
• Offer a loyalty program that rewards customers for each visit.

Consider paid local search advertising.

Paid local search advertising is a great way to get more exposure for your business. Paid ads are placed on the same map results pages as organic listings, so they help you stand out from other businesses and drive more traffic through your doors. You can target your ads to specific locations or keywords, and you can choose what category of business you’re in (restaurant, hair salon etc). This means that if someone searches for a specific keyword but it’s not something that’s relevant to what they’re looking for (let’s say “hair salons” or “bars”), they may not be aware that there are other options available to them elsewhere on the map results page — which is where paid ads play their part!

Follow these tips to increase local search visibility.

If you want to rank in the local search results, then you need to give Google something that tells it what businesses are near by. For example, if we’re looking for a restaurant in our area and we have a local business that has a physical location, it’s likely they’ll get more traffic when they appear on the first page of Google.

To do this, make sure you have these items filled out on your website:

• Photos (preferably high resolution)
• Video
• Website link
• Phone number
• Location (address/geo)
• Business description

Conclusion

Local search is growing in importance and has the ability to drive more traffic to your business. If you follow these tips, you should see an increase in local search visibility.