For businesses that depend on customers from a particular geographic region, local findability isa crucial factor in their success. Whether it’s restaurants, retail stores, dental offices or contractors, most businesses need local customers to survive and grow. Fortunately, there are numerous options and strategies available to increase your local findability and reach the most relevant audience.
You can improve your local findability using a number of channels: SEA, SEO and social media. In this article, we will not only list the commercial opportunities but also go into detail about the SEO activities you can undertake to reach potential local customers.
Target the right locations
Before we get to work on your
local findability
it is important to determine which location(s) you need to target. Once you have determined this, you can start looking at what actions fit your business.
In fact, there are different types of local businesses that require different approaches. For example, a plumber will need to approach his local findability differently than a bicycle shop.
As a plumber, you go to your customers and are available in a limited area. Based on the distance you are willing to travel for your clients, target different areas/cities and villages.
On the contrary, a traditional bike shop receives customers at a physical location to get their bike fixed. Then you are only interesting for a certain geographical range. People are not going to drive 100 kilometers to get their bikes repaired, limiting local findability to a smaller area.
How do you use SEA for local findability?
Search engine advertising
is great for ensuring or increasing local findability. Based on the bicycle mechanic and plumber examples above, we show how you can use both
Google Ads
as well as
Microsoft Ads
deal with this.
Local keywords for local interest
For both bicycle mechanic and plumber, you can use local keywords to respond to local need. So what are local keywords? Not very exciting but they are words that contain a location combined with the need someone has. For the bike shop, that could be “bike repair shop in alkmaar” or “bike repair in haarlem. And for the plumber, it’s similar to keyword combinations like “plumber in hoorn” or “plumber wanted in amsterdam.
This way, you can target your ads to people who are actively looking for products or services in a particular region.
Location targeted advertising
Another way you can increase your local findability with Google Ads and Microsoft Ads is by showing your ads based on a particular location.
When setting up a campaign, you can choose to show your ads only to people who are in a location or within a certain radius of your business. This means that only people located in the locations you specify will see your ads.
You can choose to use only keywords for this, for example, “plumber wanted” or “my sink is clogged” in one or more locations. Anyone who uses these words and is in the specified location will see the advertisement. After all, not everyone uses location in their search. This way you avoid missing out on potential customers.
In addition to using keywords, you can use other campaign types in the same way, such as display ads or Performance Max. This involves the use of visual ads targeted to certain (relevant) audiences.
Make use of ad extensions
Finally, you can add ad extensions to your campaigns. Ad extensions are pieces of extra information you can add to your ads.
Some useful examples are sitelinks, call extension (so people can call) and location extension (with route descriptions). By using ad extensions, you can not only show potential customers additional information, you also make it easier for them to engage with you – locally.
Also, extensions make your ads more accessible to mobile devices. Very useful for your local visibility. Think about it: when you’re looking for local products or services (a night at the movies, a nearby hairdresser, etc.) you almost always grab your cell phone. How easy it is then to show an interesting ad and have people click directly on a phone icon so they can call you.
The extensions most relevant to local findability:
- By adding a location extension, you ensure that potential customers can easily find your business from their cell phone when they are in the area
- With a call extension, visitors can reach you within one click by calling from their mobile.
- Use a sitelink extensions to offer additional links to a page on the website instead of just 1 page.
How can you use SEO for local findability?
In terms of SEO, search engine optimization, there are also the necessary opportunities you can undertake to be better found locally. According to Google, there are three local ranking factors that influence local search results:
- Relevance
- Distance
- Authority
When you are optimizing for local findability, it is important to keep these factors in mind.
Relevance indicates how well your business profile matches the user’s search intent. Google does an assessment of how well the services and products you offer match the search query being placed.
Distance is the most obvious criterion for local findability. Google takes into account how far your business location is from the search query used, or the location from which someone places the search.
Authority refers to a company’s prominence. The number of online mentions is an important criterion here. Consumer opinion is also taken into account here; positively reviewed businesses are more likely to receive higher rankings in local searches.
NAW data
Let’s start with an important action for local SEO: listing your contact information (business name, address and city). This is the most important data that should be everywhere. Make sure they are listed correctly and in the same way everywhere to be as clear as possible to Google. Therefore, list your information on a separate contact page and put it in the footer of your website.
Google My Company
Google My Company is also known as Google’s digital business card (Maps). There are many companies that do not know that they can edit their data. When you tailor the data more and expand it with relevant content you increase the chances of Google showing you in relevant local searches.
Make the page as complete as possible; fill in as many fields as possible with current, accurate information about your company. It starts, of course, by checking your business name, contact information and opening hours. But there are other additional options. Adding photos and videos of your business and location (internal and external) help increase your authority. Does your company have multiple locations? Then claim each location and expand content for all of them.
Google My Business also allows you to share your products and services. This helps to make them more visible within Google and gives overview to potential customers in a familiar way. In addition, you can share relevant information with users within Google My Company, such as blog posts, events and offers. Be sure to keep this up to date as well and share new content regularly.
Tip: also check out Bing Places for Business for customizing your location information.
Google reviews help increase trust and your authority. People look at a company’s Google reviews more often than you might think. If you have a lot of (positive) reviews here, it gives the potential customer a good impression. And since a company’s authority is also affected by the number of reviews, it is helpful to collect as many reviews as possible. You can kindly ask your customers to leave a review or even offer an extra discount if they do so. Do you get a negative review? Make sure you always respond to this and try to resolve the situation as best you can.
Local content
By local content we mean content, separate pages, that is specifically about a place. It is often a page set up specifically for local findability. If your business has multiple locations, it is wise to create a landing page for each location. This allows you to clearly communicate the name and address information for each location, what products and/or services are offered at this location and what people can expect at the location. This way you increase your chances of being found organically on local searches (as from our earlier example “plumber in alkmaar.
It makes no sense to start creating a landing page for each village or street just to put as many pages live as possible. Google in particular is smart enough to realize which towns or cities are in the region you are targeting with your location(s)
How do you use social media for local findability?
When you’re working on your local strategy, of course, you can’t forget about social media. To begin with, of course, it is important that you can be found on social media at all.
In fact, potential customers in your area might look for businesses through social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram. Instagram, for example, is often used to find great restaurants nearby. Therefore, create a business profile on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn.
Of course, there are other social media you could use, but these three are the most important (because they have the greatest reach). In doing so, look especially carefully at which social media suits your business. Does your company have the ability to take beautiful photos that can serve as inspiration? Examples include furniture, home furnishings, fashion, and automobiles. Not all services or products lend themselves to social media. Keep that in mind.
Make sure all important details of your business are present on your social media profiles (name and address information, opening hours, link to website, etc.) and add local keywords to your profiles if applicable.
Hashtags and content
When it comes to local opportunities through social media, hashtags play a big role. By adding a hashtag to your social media posts for the area you want to target, you increase the likelihood that potential customers will see your content. For example, users looking for a restaurant in Amsterdam will view the hashtag #restaurantamsterdam for inspiration. Therefore, getting professional photos/videos taken for your channels can be a good investment. Especially on Instagram, good imagery can be important. This gives users or followers a good idea of who you are and what you do. When that comes across well it potentially leads to new customers!
Social media ads
With the various social media channels of interest, do you really only want to reach people in certain locations? Then the only way to do that is to deploy ads. When setting up your campaigns, you can specify which location (city, zip code, region, etc) you are targeting with certain products or services. Both your ads and landing page can be customized to the location you are targeting.
Conclusion
Hopefully, after reading this article, you have a better idea of the ways you can improve your local findability. Everything happens online these days, including searching for offline products and services. So it’s high time to tackle your local findability!
Would you like to create a strong local presence but could use some help? We are happy to help you stand out from competitors and increase your customer base. Contact us without obligation and we will provide you with appropriate and honest advice.
