You type in the name of your website, ‘epr architects’ into the search engines and fantastic news, the website is ranked at number 1 of the first page of the search results. So, does this mean you’ve cracked online marketing and don’t need to do any small business SEO! Unfortunately not, but it is a common mistake for a small business to make. Unless you are a well established brand, there will be very few searches per month for the name of your business. Only the vistors who already know of you will be typing your specific business name into Google so there will be few new customers to your website. What’s important is whether you are visible to the potential customers who don’t know you. These people search for your products and services by typing in keywords and phrases into the search engines and will often specify a local region.
One easy way to know whether you need local SEO at all is to check out how visible your website is to customers. Follow these 6 steps:
- List all your products and services using one to three words.
- List all your brand terms.
- Review industry association sites and see what words they use to describe to discuss your topic.
- Ask your own team what words your customers use when asking or talking about the product or service.
- Now test these words out on the two biggest search engines Google and Yahoo. If you only operate in a local geographical area then type this is after the keyword. For example, ‘recruitment services Birmingham’.
- Against each word or phrase note down which whether you are on page 1 of the search engine results or not.
In a local market, where the number of searches per month are very small you need to maximise the number of relevant words and phrases your website ranks for and for each achieve a top position 1-3. Being ranked below this even on page 1 will not generate enough visitors in a local market where the number of exact searches per month are normally small. If you’re not seeing these results then your website is not reaching your potential market and would benefit significantly from some local seo services designed for small businesses.
In a small business category like you are mentioning here, what would be the best approach in addressing long tail keywords. What is written here is excellent advice and appreciated I am just wondering if there is a magic formula for building a base of long tail keywords.
This is great information, it never occurred to me that I could check my own listing like this, I guess that was a duh moment, any way I appreciate you pointing out the obvious to me. I will follow your steps and see where my ranking is but I am almost positive I need to invest in a local SEO. Thanks again for the advice and helpful tips.
You hit the nail right on the head. Local searches seem to get lost in the business of all online companies that operate completely in the cloud. The local, physical businesses can often get lost if the right local seo approach is not taken. While seo practices may not vary much, it is important to look at the process through specific lenses to ensure that you are targeting the audience that you want with the right tools so that you can get the most out of whatever work you put into it. Great information, thanks for sharing your expertise.
So you get lucky and think you are the greatest because you ranked number one on the front sheet of a search engine, like I said you got lucky. The search engine might have been feeling generous that day or you simply fell through the cracks, but don’t kid yourself, without a lot of follow up work you aren’t going to stay in that top rank. From my experience I would follow the steps listed to create a spreadsheet and do just what it says, research your own web site and make sure what you find it what you wanted to find. If you need to make changes now is the time and maybe that will keep you ranked high for a little while longer.
This is great I am going to send your link to all my friends and business associates so that they can follow these steps to find out the visibility of their web sites. Obviously you have done this before to have come up with the exact steps on how to do it right? This is a proven method of how to check this? I don’t want to be putting a bunch of stuff out there that is going to look to Google like I am trying to tamper with anything, you know how they are.
I think the author of this article made a significant point for small business owners to keep in mind: Being ranked below the top 3 spots even on page 1 will not generate enough visitors in a local market where the number of exact searches per month are normally small. Business owners who are new to web marketing might neglect the important statistic of how many local monthly searches are being executed for a particular key search phrase. It makes sense that a long tail search phrase and one which includes a geographical specification is likely to have a very low search number. So then I ask, should marketers mix up local search phrases with more general and popular / competitive key words?
If you are trying to appear for local search phrases, does the one to three key word rule apply, or should you simply add your local area (city, state, zip code, area code) to the end, making it a long tail key phrase? So let us say you want to sell womens jeans at a local store in Hollywood, FL. Tell me if you should use in your meta tag keywords on your web pages the following: “womens jeans store in Hollywood, fl.
So I gather that it is important to really drill down on key words that really fit your product or service because you have only about three to work with. That makes sense except I too am left wondering if you need to keep your key search phrase to three words. Can it hurt your ranking or diminish effectiveness if you use a longer tail key word? These are some questions that the article raises and I hope to find some precise answers before I do something that will adversely affect the standing of my web site.
You have given your readers a lot of information here. The steps that you have laid out to follow and find out your ranking among other things are extremely helpful. I have only looked at a couple of the steps so far but I intend on following them to a “T to see where I stand. I know my hits lately have not been the greatest even though I updated the content on my web page. So like I said I will follow these to a :T and see what I can find out that maybe I can fix to get more hits on my site. Thanks a bunch.
Awesome article with some really good advice. I am going to follow this step by step and see what I come up with. My site doesn’t seem to do to bad as far as traffic goes but I think it could do much better. I never new that a local SEO service could make this big of a difference, but I will definitely research this more. Thanks a million.