What is SEO?
I’m getting this question a lot, especially from people who are trying to enter the world of digital marketing. Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Looks smart and scary, right? It might sound so, especially at the beginning, but basically, SEO is just another name for practices that help you get more sales by improving online visibility.
With SEO you can do that by giving information to your customers in the right way. For instance, you could be shown higher in the search engine results if you choose the right keywords which are relevant to your business and clients. That’s especially important for a local business as according to the recent Access research: “proximity is the essential consideration involved in a consumer’s decision to patronize a merchant.” So, get better SEO equals get more customers?
Not exactly. Considering SEO as a tool for generating traffic it’s also necessary to mention that traffic doesn’t mean real customers or in more professional terminology - leads. To convert your foot traffic to real customers you still need to provide a solid customer experience. However, with SEO you can get more traffic to your stores, and then you would just need to play your cards right.
Thus, SEO still plays a crucial role in generating customers and conversions. SEO is especially important for local marketing as it focuses on attracting people in smaller areas such as specific towns or cities. Your main competitors there would also be local businesses rather than international enterprises. So, how to take care of my local SEO? If you would like to be successful, you need to include not only your town or city name but also zip code, build links, and get some fresh reviews. Sounds easy, right? Let’s dig in.
How to take care of SEO
There are a few key factors that you need to take care of. First and foremost you need to know about NAP and Google 3-Pack. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number, and this is the basic information that you need to provide to any type of service that you would like to submit your locations. This information is essential for your customers in order to reach you. Among all of these services, the most important one could probably be GMB and Google Maps as nowadays Google rankings are more important than ever before.
Thus, if your local business lands in Google 3-Pack (Google Top Three) it would bring your business significantly more customers. Here are some statistics on it from SOCI: “The Google 3-pack is the method Google uses to display the top three search engine results pages. Seventy-five percent of consumers don’t look past the first SERP, and the top page of results receives 93 percent of the traffic. Ensuring that your business appears in the Google 3-pack is crucial. ” Thus, try to make your SEO and better make it good. Gotcha, but could I make it by myself?
SEO DIY
Yes, you can! I would highly recommend you to take care of SEO by yourself, and here is why. It might help you better understand your customers (what are they looking for?) and understand why your competitors might be getting more traffic than you do. Maybe their site ranks higher or their keywords are more relevant to the clients.
However, it depends on your business. For instance, if you have a massive business with 100+ locations, you wouldn’t be able to manage SEO for all of these places by yourself as you simply wouldn’t have enough time. Thus, you would need to hire someone: a marketer, an SEO specialist, or a specific platform that would automate some of the routine processes and save your time.
Conclusion
To sum up, SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, might significantly boost the number of customers that you’re getting to your store. Basically, you just need to provide your customers with the NAP (name, address, phone number), and try to make it to Google 3-Pack in your specific local niche. Remember that you could totally manage SEO by yourself. That’s not rocket science and it might even help you to better understand your clients’ needs. Here’s just the initial information and if you’d like to dig deeper you can check the following article. Cheers!
