Local search marketing plays a key role in your marketing strategy if you’re a local business serving local customers. The approach to local versus a national audience, is completely different.  As a local business you depend upon foot traffic or email and phone calls to sustain and grow your business.

Google Business Page Optimization

One of the biggest things you can do immediately is build and optimize your Google Business Profile.  This is your point of contact within the Google ecosystem when a customer searches for your business. Optimizing your profile helps with Google Maps placement and local search ranking.  It also helps with your overall website search engine optimization by sending social signals that your business is open and serving up fresh content on a consistent basis.  Your Google Business Profile is the foundation for all other local directory listings.

Local Search Optimization

Having a professional website is your next piece to the puzzle.  Your website serves as hub by which all directory listings, including your Google Business Profile, links and drives traffic to. It’s critical that you have a professional website which represents your business and lends credibility to the products and services you offer. There’s nothing worse than searching for a service and finding a business that hasn’t even taken the time to create a website, much less a website that you feel safe visiting.  Lot’s of business make this mistake.  All of these properties, listings and how they present play into how customers perceive your business and will determine whether they do business with you or the next business listed next to you.