These steps will give you complete ownership of your small business presence online and provide results in getting the clicks, calls, leads, customers, foot traffic, etc. that you are looking for!
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of building your online presence. You need to find out what your customers are searching for, so that you show up! The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to do a Google Search and see what comes up in the pre-text. Who’s ranking for the term you put in? Where do you rank with this term? You can also download a free tool call “Keywords Everywhere’ https://keywordseverywhere.com/, that will give you a lot of insight on the terms you believe your customers are using and other suggested keywords with data.
2. Advertise
Advertising on Google is a really fast way to get your business to the top of search results for the keywords you are targeting. Setting up ads are easy and if you claim your Google Business Page (mentioned below), Google usually sends a $100 credit!
3. Get Your Map Pack Cranking
The Map Pack is the information in the middle of the Google results page – of companies and their location. To rank in this area, you’ll want to focus on the following:
-Google Business Page
If you have not claimed your Google Business Page yet, go do it! Search for your business and on the right you’ll see if it’s been claimed or not. To tell, look for the link that says ‘claim your business’. This will get you started.
-NAP
This is your business name, address, and phone number. You will want to make sure they are consistent across all sites. These are called citations – your profiles on other sites like Yelp & CitySearch. If they are not the same, Google gets confused and you will not rank as well. If you see a lot of inconsistency here, let us know and we can help.Â
-Reviews!
Reviews are huge for ranking! When is the last time you purchased something without looking at the reviews? The more good reviews you have, the better! Always ask customers to leave a review on Google. A good way to ask for reviews is a good Review and Reputation management service. This will help weed out the negative – so you can help your customers better, and post the positive everywhere you’d like!
4. Organic listing/SEO/backlinks
This is making sure everything you do is optimized for search engines. It takes longer for this to start working, but it helps everywhere. You’ll want to make sure your Google Business Page, your website, any blogs, videos, or podcasts you put out are using your researched keywords. And, anytime it makes sense to link one piece of content to another, absolutely do it!
Reading over this may seem overwhelming, but once you start learning about it and putting things into practice, you’ll be a rockstar SEO expert!
Good luck! If you have any questions, we’re always here to help!