Local Optimization: How to Maximize Your ROI

“Own your back yard.”

The idea of “owning your back yard” is local optimization.

It’s the idea that you can stick to providing services and products to local customers, become successful, and keep costs low. Instead of competing with a global, corporate powerhouse you’re competing with other small business owners.

Local Optimization: What has Worked

Immediately, you know you need to cement your placement as a market leader within your area. Even if you live in a small town, an online search will pull up a few competitors and other mid to large companies buying up the ad space.

You need to one-up their presence.

Start by implementing local optimization strategies. This way, you’ll be front-and-center for those seeking your services within your local area. (Usually, that’s a 5-10 mile radius surrounding your target location).

Here are a few different key strategies you can implement to boost your website in local search results:

Easy

First, claim your business listing or add the listing within Google. Be sure to include your name, address, and phone number (website URL would help as well).

Then, go straight to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to claim your business pages. Update their profile information and link them back to your website.

Medium

Radiate and begin adding your business listings to other local search engines and larger platforms such as Bing, Yelp, or White Pages.

Add citations to your business listings with the help of aggregators like Localeze or Infogroup. Don’t know what a citation is, get informed. Include photos and videos of your business, its offers, and workers. This can add branding and trust to the site and other points of interest on the internet.

Hard

Work with influencers in your local marketplace to leave reviews, hype product releases, and work with content creation and distribution.

Next, attend industry events and experiment with traditional advertising methods (such as email campaigns, newsletters, mailers). This will help to create buzz and attention. Finally, be sure to cover local news, produce any other form of media for customers/leads to understand your business and what’s offered.

Often, this leads to backlinks and reviews!

The key is to get listings within Google. From there, you can make content that uses strategic keywords. Then, you could scale to advertise and implement large-scale marketing campaigns. But it all starts with the NAP (name, address, and phone).

Which leads to…

Local Optimization and the Future of Competition

Small business owners are stubborn. Sometimes, that’s a good thing! Other times, it means they’re reluctant to try new strategies. They’re hard pressed to spend a day to do local SEO and marketing strategies because it’s unknown.

Where do you fit in?

At the forefront! Your ability to use these local optimization strategies will blow others out of the water. The knowledge of local SEO goes a long way especially if you tap into custom solutions to improve local rankings and conversions.

If you learned anything it should be this: