How to leverage your location for increasing your online visibility?

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How to leverage your location for increasing your online visibility?

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Imagine, you live in a small city, and your business only caters to the few thousand residents, who live there. The additional customers are the occasional passersby. With the increasing number of global companies coming into town, it might be difficult for you to hold onto your customer base. The era of online marketing has made it difficult for the local businesses, who do not know how to utilize search engine optimization and search engine marketing techniques to their benefit.

What is the hyper-localization of SEO?

Ever since late 2015, Google Trends has been emphasizing on the "near me" queries. It is one of the fundamental aspects of hyper-local SEO. It has the potential to help marketers garner the attention of the local market. Over 82% of the potential customers conduct regular searches on search engines like Google before checking a store out. Therefore, entrepreneurs not optimizing for the era of hyper-local marketing are always running the risk of losing sales. Unoptimized online presence harms a brand's reputation and revenues on a regular basis. That is true irrespective of the location and the demographics of a company. You may have the biggest in Panama, and yet you may remain invisible to an army of potential buyers online.

What should define your hyper-local search results?

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while optimizing for a hyper-local search result –

  1. Emphasize on your city

Mention your location on your website. Register on Google My Business with the correct name, address and phone number (NAP). If you have more than one phone number for one location, register them all. Do you already have social media pages? If not, create pages and claim your business by linking your page to your site. Each active social media page and public mention is equivalent to a link. When a person searches for your business or similar businesses in your location, your social media mentions can act as active links on the SRL.

  1. Multiple local landing pages

This one is for businesses with more than one location. Having more than one local landing page can help you increase your hyper-local visibility online. Using keywords concerning the location and local specialities help in maximizing your visibility in SRLs. Do not forget to optimize your business' local landing page for the same keywords. Hyper-local optimization of sites through content-based approach has the potential to contribute to organic traffic from search engines.

  1. Track and analyze your growth at the local level

Merely making the changes is not enough. A smart marketer has to track the changes at the local level and run analytics on the progress regarding CTR, conversion rate, and land-based sales. Observe your keyword rankings, monitor your website KPIs and watch the rates of return from the local sponsored website advertisements. Tracking the progress within the correct location is very important for all hyper-local businesses. It will also help to look at social media driven traffic that results in conversions at your website.

  1. Add structured data markup linking your business to your website content

Google needs to understand that your site has links to the mention of your business on GMB. You can ensure this process by including the Google Schema Mark-up or the structured data markup on your webpage. This aspect will allow you to define the specific attributes of your business including the address, contact details, hours of operation, exact geographic location and your business type. Right now, both Google Maps and the Local 3-pack enable the Google users to filter results based on several defining aspects. The proper data structure makes it much easier for your business to become visible during filtered search results on Google or Bing.

Hyper-localization of your SEO will help you become visible to all users within your geographic location.

Mobile searches have shifted from being search-term focused to becoming voice dependent. The sudden change in the method of accessing Google has created a sharp divide between the buyer's journey on the phone and desktop. In case of the former, the path is heterogeneous with multiple touch-points that have the potential to influence the user's decision at any point. The entire journey on mobile has several micro-moments. The local brands need to have the understanding of user intent and user interest to be able to predict the outcome of any search. For example – when an individual searches for a particular store or a business using mobile devices, chances are he or she is planning on travelling to the location in the search results. Therefore, businesses optimizing their Contact Us and Location pages for these moments have higher chances of seeing increased sales. Additionally, mobile has become the device of choice for almost everyone. There is no reason you should not optimize your business website for mobile viewing.