Getting a Small Business More Local Website Traffic

Does your business have a website? A website can be a hugely resourceful tool for your business. Business owners don’t have time to waste on tasks that don’t help your brand.  Working on your digital marketing can be a challenging task, which is often difficult to measure its results.  We take the time to bring you some actionable tips that will help your business grow.  Many small business owners get frustrated that people don’t find their site and question website values for creating further business.  We encourage small businesses to use target marketing, thus focusing on developing a relationship with a niche audience.  Let’s look at some easy tips for getting your website to work at creating leads.

Websites are an effective tool if set up for Local SEO

The majority of small businesses need local business to survive. If your business focuses on local clients, your target audience is within reach. Google search engine is getting incredibly good at identifying if your query is locally focused. This gives you a chance to rank for your keyword terms even if there are significant national competition for your desired service or product.

Be sure to claim and optimise your Google My Business Listing.

Not sure how to do this properly? Follow these basic tips:

• Click on the claim this business or create a business on the Google My Business listing. Your claim requires a verification process including a postcard request that confirms your location listing.
• Write a great description of your business that highlights the services and products that your business specialises in. Choosing the correct business categories and services is very important to ensure that Google knows what your business is all about.
• Be sure to add high-quality images and graphics to the listing. Image views are very important to help your business rank as it ensures greater credibility and engagement with your audience.  These should include facilities, staff, products and other branded imagery that would benefit potential new clients.  Short videos about products or services are also increasingly important.
• Google My Business accounts have become user friendly for small business owners. The account allows you to post descriptions about your services, post updates regarding opening hours and share your latest content with your audience.  Posting updates every week is a great way to ensure that your content is being listed by Google to local audiences for both your brand name and related searches to your niche.
• Integrate Google My Business into your overall digital marketing strategy. Share content on GMB similar to other social platforms. Post links to products and special offers directly back to your website allowing your audience to learn more or purchase directly from the website. There are also ways of managing your Google Ads directly from this platform.

Get the fundamentals of your small business website correct

Ensure that you have separate pages for many of the key aspects of your site.  Although it might be easy to manage a single-page website, there are so many more benefits from having a multi-page site.  For a small business, make sure you have a separate contact page. This should include a local landline if possible, your address and an interactive map where suitable. Google algorithms value a verifiable address, and your customers benefit from knowing you are a local based enterprise. If you’ve several locations, optimise a page for each location.

Ensuring that you also have several client testimonies across the website.

This is a great way of increasing the reputation of your products/services locally. This is the basis for nearly every marketing principle. People trust other people rather than an advertising pitch. Make sure that testimonials are across all platforms where possible.  Reaching out and asking for client references is as easy as writing an email to clients, sharing a post request or automating the process into your digital marketing strategy.

Setup Local SEO Schema

Schema mark-up is an effective way of ensuring the data on your site helps search engines identify the content of the site.  Using all the back-end tools correctly such as tags, descriptions, image alt text etc. is so important for fundamental SEO.  Avoid spammy and irrelevant tags as your site can be penalised for poor SEO practices. If you feel that this is beyond your current skills, there are several online courses to help you get the fundamentals right. Many plugins are also available to help you get these set up correctly. You can also reach out to your local digital marketing agency or SEO expert.

Create in-depth Content

You know your field better than your audience.  The expertise you have is why your audience wants to engage with you. This can be in so many forms.  Creating engaging videos and blog posts is a great way for you to stand out from your competitors locally. This doesn’t mean that you need to be the greatest writer or entertaining video host. Think of interesting and new ways to communicate your message.  It may also be appropriate for you to get professional content producers involved.  This typically involves you drafting a blog post or quick video and then getting professionals to make it more appealing visually or better ranking for your keyword terms.

Claim Social Business Listings and Citations

Your audience may be searching for services on local directory sites or social media platforms.  These may include the likes of listings sites such as GoldenPages.ie or Yelp.ie. Be sure to continually search for listing possibilities. Make sure that these listings are reputable and are more valuable if they reflect your particular niche. Listings on Social Platforms are important but only if you maintain your profile and engage with your audience.  Posting should be structured and engaging as possible.  Stay professional and within the guidelines of your brand. Interacting as your page gets you noticed.

There are many tools out there to help you find relevant articles and trending content. This will allow you to keep on track of industry-related topics. Be sure to keep track of all your listings and logins in a spreadsheet as updating company info is a must.

Small Website Ranking Strategy

As a small business, it is increasingly hard to rank for your main industry keywords due to competitor rankings. Larger competitors have a significant budget to pay a professional marketing team to ensure they rank highly for these keywords.  Doing extensive research of keywords will enable you to identify niche keywords and longtail search patterns.  Audiences are using more detail in their search queries to get specialised information.   Ranking for a four/five-word search term is a more precise strategy that will allow you to get better ranking results. For example, if you’re a small business carpenter, it may be difficult to rank for ‘Carpenter’, so it may be more realistic to focus on niche area such as ‘bespoke furniture’ or a longtail term such as ‘new handmade wooden staircase’.  This ensures that your content s specific to the audience needs and allows for better conversion rates. Consistently building up content ranking for a variety of terms will help your site rank for the main terms over a consistent time.

As always, VIMAR Digital Marketing wants to engage with business owners and help improve their brand exposure.  Our team provide work with a variety of businesses from start-ups to large internationally focused companies.  Our digital marketing services are tailored for each client and are always results-focused. Be sure to comment and share if you like this post.