4 essential elements of SEO strategy for service-based businesses
Unique elements necessary for a service-based business to rank correctly in search engines.
While large multinational companies employ SEO strategies to win over clients and clients from all over the world, a small business dealing only with clients in its geographic region only wants local leads.
This article looks at what to have in your SEO strategy if you are one of those smaller companies and trying to gain visibility with local clients.
1. Your website
Take a look at their website and see if you can tell where your business is located and who they serve.
Your target area should be noted predominantly in the home page copy, your contact page, as well as in the footer. You can even incorporate it into your business name or URL.
The idea is, of course, to make sure that when someone comes to your website looking for what you provide, they are also claiming that you provide services in their area.
Also include these terms in your META data. Make a difference when it comes to reaching local customers who search specific to your city or business service area. Also, when you create individual pages for each service you provide, include the locations served in the headlines and copy.
2. Google My Business
If you haven’t already done so, you need to create a Gmail account for yourself, so that you can easily log into all Google applications and products.
Google My Business is one of those tools available for free that makes your business fix on Google Maps, and if Google sees the right signs, it will also appear at the top of the local ranking results. Local ranking results are the results that you will see when Google has understood that your search query is location specific.
Try typing “plumbers near me” into Google and you will probably see some ads and some localized listings before you see organic search results. This could be 1-3 ads or 3-4 local listings, depending on how competitive the market is.
Those local listings are valuable to your business and by creating and verifying your business with Google, you will have at least taken the necessary steps to appear on those local listings.
Once you have the account, fill out as much as you can. Provide photos and use your service and location keywords in the description and anywhere else you see a genuine opportunity.
3. Local quotes
Local citations are when your business is listed in local directories. You probably only need to do this once and it is very easy.
Just search for your location with the word ‘directories’ after it. There are some obvious ones like Yelp, but you can find some niche directories for your locale, as well as your service.
Never pay for these directories as Google will have already bookmarked those directories when it reviews your site. Paying for links or citations will always hurt your ranking efforts.
4. Reviews
When it comes to local customers, the reviews are golden. They are testimonials that other potential customers can trust. Requesting them from previous clients is totally fine; however, falsifying them is not.
Don’t have them log into your Gmail account from your computer to leave a review or Google will see that all of your reviews come from the same IP address and the reviews will not help your ranking.
There are many other things you can do too, but those 4 points are staples in any local SEO strategy, and if you have a service-based business, you will need them to get the right traffic.
Of course, if you’re looking to really dominate the ranking results and make sure you have a solid strategy in place, you’ll want to hire someone who provides professional search engine optimization. They can take things further and actively keep going to let Google know that you provide what you do, where you do it, while you spend your time providing your service.
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