Local Markets have become really very competitive. Gone are the days when the local Mom and Pop shops did not need any online marketing. Today 46% of the Google searches are Local. When the local population is looking for services nearby, the search engine provides the results that are locally optimized.
It simply means that you need to utilize the power of Local SEO.
Local SEO is intended to benefit the zone of marketing ideas for small businesses that have a single location store. The reach of Local marketing is limited to a radius and targets the local population.
Why Online Marketing for the Local Businesses?
Contents
- 0.1 Why Online Marketing for the Local Businesses?
- 0.2 How Local SEO works and why is it important?
- 0.3 Why does your business need Local SEO?
- 1 Top 10 Tools you should use for Local Marketing
Online Local marketing is competitively priced against offline Local marketing. It brings in more qualified leads in a timely manner. Local search directories bring in higher conversion rates on some sites up to 50%. With more users turning to mobile devices for searches, the importance of Local SEO has grown immensely. It is a perfect vehicle for greater Return on Investment.
Did you know? Many Local SEO opportunities come with zero cost like citation building which is very effective in ranking the websites higher.
How Local SEO works and why is it important?
For small businesses Local SEO matters, even more, when the offline sales get directly impacted by the reviews and ranking. The Local SEO earns repeat customers but with new competitors paving the way to the market, it becomes even more necessary to have a strong local online presence.
The local searches are intended to be more customized answers as compared to SEO. They offer user-centric results and are the preferred choice for 50% of the mobile searches today. Local search marketing ideas for small businesses developed by Local SEO works in a very focused manner and offers the users exact information like answers to where and when. Google has witnessed a huge upsurge in traffic looking for local information and that is why we are seeing a change in the algorithms too.
Today Local SEO has so many aspects that handling it manually may not be the best way. The local businesses need to monitor and manage:
- Ranks
- Reviews
- NAP (name, address, phone number)
- Embedded Maps
- Local Listings
- Site content
SEO has become a crucial factor to bring success to the online business. Today we see lots of digital marketers struggling with SEO tools that include the Local SEO tools too. These tools are intended to save both time and effort and keep you ahead of the competition. They measure varieties of elements and offer a visual representation of data. Local SEO tools help businesses in streamlining and automating the tasks from a simple to use dashboard.
Why does your business need Local SEO?
Stats reveal that 71% of the users look up for the business, its reviews and addresses online before they visit the store. It is now up to the businesses to decide what impression they wish to offer the local population.
Local SEO agencies work to make sure the NAP citations are error free and optimized. They use tools to build, claim and remove duplicate listings. Local businesses are added to the Local directories as per the geographies.
Top 10 Tools you should use for Local Marketing
1. Facebook Audience Insights
A very powerful tool that provides deep analytical data that is segregated as per demographics and behavior. The data is authentic because this has been offered to Facebook by the users themselves. With the tool, you can choose the audience you want to target like as per the area your store is present and various elements like Gender and liking.
Getting an access to all this data gives you an idea about what percentage of the local audience is looking for your services and the ads are shown to them to bring in more engagement. It serves as a very powerful tool to run and fine target your Local Facebook ads.
2. Contentmart
While content, and its quality, is all that matters in building the reputation of any local brand, Contentmart could be considered as the best marketing tool. Basically, it is a content marketplace, where you can hire freelancers and get your writing tasks done. But the portal utilizes a varied and reliable set of quality checking tools to ensure that you always get flawless content at the end.
Toughest plagiarism checking, grammar error detection, keyword analysis, deadline restrictions, easy communication with the hires and many other qualities of Contentmart makes it a complete package. For any local business, getting good content is the biggest obstacle. However, with this tool, you won’t find it difficult anymore.
Business owners can get content for each of the campaigns, along with multiple blogs, articles, press releases, and more, as needed every month typically.
3. Google My Business
Google My Business helps you attract new customers by letting you create a cost-free listing. Whenever a customer is looking for relevant services in your service radius, a Google Search or Map will show him your listing. It is a very intuitive platform to quickly create a business listing and edit or update it. You can share information about the clients business and offer deep insight to the audience by sharing the facts to bring in more engagement.
The Google My Business platform offers an easy to update listing platform that can be regularly updated with NAP, photographs and more. Make sure that you keep updating the listing about latest event and discounts offered by the client to customers to keep it interactive.
4. SEOPressor
SEOPressor is an SEO tool that gives you maximum control of website SEO with perfect ease. The tool is capable of scoring the elements of SEO strength on your website. It comes with an added advantage of offering solutions and recommendations towards your Local SEO goals for on-page analysis. SEOPressor delivers almost instant results and saves you from over-optimizing the website.
The tool takes away the disadvantages of guesswork, as it intelligently analysis the SEO data and offers suggestions for fixing the imperfections. It is a Comprehensive Semantic Builder without making any code changes. It makes your website, even more, search relevant.
5. Placeable
Placeable is a perfect tool that helps transform the Local data into revenues. Capable of the automating location data updating process, the tool converts maximum online traffic to offline sales. It comes around as a robust tool for location data management and customized locator that are geo-targeted. It offers creative marketing ideas for small business.
The tool is inherently capable of improvising the content from an optimization perspective and publishing it automatically.
6. Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner tool comes as a free tool to research on the keywords. A perfect tool required at the inception of every campaign. Easy to use tool helps you search for relevant and most searched for keyword. You can even have an idea about how your existing keywords are working for the website or blog. Keyword Planner helps you choose the most competitive budgets for your campaigns.
The task of Keyword planner does not end at the beginning of the campaign. You can use it to find more keywords over the time as it offers you real-time data on the keywords and how the audience is searching for them. You can find out the search volume before you start using a particular keyword.
7. Screaming Frog
As a desktop solution, Screaming Frog is the best available tool to evaluate the SEO in real-time. The tool crawls into websites URLs, images, CSS, script, and apps to find out how the SEO is working. The basic version is offered as a freemium for the users. The crawler is capable of finding out broken links, server errors, duplicate content and more.
It can crawl and analyze Page title and Meta description and offer optimization solutions. You can integrate it with Google Analytics API and get a deep insight to bounce rate, conversions, and revenue.
8. Serplify
Serplify is a unique web-based software application. It is intelligent software that quickly helps in building unique local sites. These websites are inherently optimized with keywords to be ranked on Page 1 of Google search engine. All the pages created are unique and you get thousands of authentic backlinks. It helps local ranking by adding domains and locations. Capable of mass indexing, optimizing and syndicating the content, the tool offers huge monetization potential.
9. GeoRanker
A tool that offers unlimited SERP tracking and an extensive analytical tool!
It offers rank tracking, competitive intelligence and helps with Local Citation sources. With consistent citations amounting to 25% of Local ranking, Geo ranker helps local businesses in ranking higher for local searches. It helps developers with real-time position of the website tracking and analyzing the keyword density.
10. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an ultimate tool to create genuine local backlinks. The tool helps you analyze and build relationships with local influencers. These influencers are known for creating a word-of-mouth awareness for Local brands. It handles content promotion very well across multiple channels and offers customization facilities also.
It comes with an email research tool, and link building query generator.
How do Local SEO tools help?
The question, which 90% of local business owners must be having in their minds at present, is: Do we actually need a tool? We didn’t want to skip this question of yours. So here’s why your business needs Local SEO and Marketing Tools:
Accelerates the Local SEO process:
Tools offer better and quicker data collection. They process the information in a better fashion and offer better data visualization. It reduces the time taken by the manual Local SEO techniques.
Better data analysis
Local SEO tools offer extensive data analysis and reporting on the same. White Label reports are available from some Local SEO tools that encourage better strategizing for future
Automation reduces the work redundancy
Local SEO has many redundant tasks like posting listings across multiple Local directories, correcting citations, removing duplicates and checking the information consistency. The Local SEO tools are capable of automating these mundane tasks, saving time/effort and preventing manual errors.
Categorized data
Tools are inherently capable of categorizing the analyzed data as per demographics, mobile, and organic traffic. Categorization of data plays a turnkey role in identifying the weaker sections that need improvement.
Better Bandwidth
With good tools, the developers are free from the mundane tasks and can better utilize the time for strategizing and implementing the patches to bring in more engagement and ranking aspects.
Tips for Offline Local Marketing
For a Local business to run successfully, marketing approach needs to be a ratio proportion of online and offline marketing. While 50% of the users are searching online do not forget the rest 50% is still waiting for businesses to reach them offline. Offline marketing had lots of channels and can be materialized well by:
- Business card distribution
- Running contests
- Speaking at Events
- Printing Ads on local print media
- Making calls
- Handing over brochures
Conclusion
As per search engine data, Millions of users on daily basis are going for local search. These searches are intended to find out the best local services in their area. Tapping into the opportunity, Local SEO tools can help Local businesses being identified for Local Searches.
Local SEO brings in the best opportunity of engaging a client with the business services because he himself came looking for them. Using a landing page and capturing the contact information brings the customers into a warm zone after you get in touch with them via the Local ranking mechanism.
Local SEO services are a targeted approach for of new age marketing approach. No longer are local businesses printing and dropping handouts to gain the attention of potential clients. Local searches are offering an advantage to the marketing ideas for small businesses by taking them to a platform that is being exposed to the entire local population over handheld devices and computers.
With the reviews and rankings helping the audience make the decision, the Local SEO aspect has become indispensable and the tools in the write up are a perfect solution to reduce the effort and quickly make an astounding impact.
Bonus Tip:
Tap into the power of backlinks from non-competitive websites.
If you are linked with any other business in your area and they are also on the internet, getting backlinks from their website will get you double traffic. However, try getting these links from the non-competing websites which may have similar target audience as yours. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, getting backlinks from a catering business’s website or wedding planner is a better idea than getting your content published on a regional photographer’s website who is operating in your own area.
