Local businesses – including everyone from plumbers; heating and cooling specialists; lawyers; dentists; accountants and restaurants – need local customers in order to survive and grow.
Here are 10 ways local businesses can increase sales; improve website traffic; add new customers and keep the telephone ringing.
- Claim and confirm your business listing in review and mapping websites such as Yelp, Manta, CitySearch, Google+ Local, Bing Local and many others. Customers who “live” on their mobile devices constantly use location based review apps, such as Yelp, in order to find local products and services. Make sure your business’ profile is accurate and complete.
- Update your website’s content. There’s no need to re-design your website. Instead, you probably need a content refresh with new and expanded information about your company and its products or services. Your website isn’t a brochure. It should also reflect what’s going on with your business; new staff photos and bios; etc. Also, make sure your business hours are correct and always include your full business contact and address information. A map is always appreciated by new customers.
- Create and write a blog. We can’t stress this enough. A blog is like a diary or sorts, but it should be all about your business; what’s new in the industry; how you can help new customers; offer ideas; tips (like this blog post!) and much more. If you don’t have time to write a blog, get staff involved or hire an intern or local freelance writers. Try to include pictures with your blog. Blog posts should be around 300 words or more. Strive to publish two or three blog posts per week.
- Always be looking for ways to improve your website’s content. A blog is a great way to start this process, but update and improve your other website pages on a regular basis. Typically, the pages we see with the most content update opportunities include the About Us page and the Contact Us page.
- Don’t let your website developer slow you down. Content updates, especially simple ones, should be easy for anyone to correct and publish. If your website developer is S-L-O-W to update new content and new pages, then it might be time for a face-to-face chat or begin the process in looking for a new website developer. Recently, we helped a company re-write page content for their entire website. Six weeks later and the website is still missing these fresh content changes. That’s not good for the local business that needs to inform local customers of new products and services. Don’t let your developer hurt your business.
For more information on local SEO, check out our course on Udemy at https://www.udemy.com/earn-more-sales-by-increasing-local-traffic-to-your-website/
Recent Comments