Both the small business owners and their employees know that they must make an appearance on Google. What they don’t always know is which methods of SEO produce the calls to action, and which simply appear on a report. If the person looking doesn’t intend to make a call, then you have ranked on the wrong keyword altogether. Local SEO is a different type of SEO than national. It’s more about purpose and less about volume. If someone is looking for “best plumbing tips” at night when they have a leak in the kitchen, they’re close to calling the plumber as opposed to looking for a leak.
In this article, I will discuss 10 local marketing strategies aimed at the search that will result in real phone calls, not just leads that never convert. Some of these take the afternoon. Others require continuous care. These are all business initiatives that could be undertaken this month.
Ensure your Google Business Profile is fully optimized
Google Business Profile is likely to be the initial impression a customer has before they arrive at your site. With a half full profile, a generic category and no picture, it passes by quickly. Complete all fields on the form, including attributes, hours, service area, and description that provides a description of what you do. Add actual pictures of staff, actual pictures of work done and actual pictures of location. Companies that maintain an up-to-date profile, featuring new photos and correct business hours tend to appear more regularly in the local map pack, where the majority of phone calls begin.
While most businesses neglect posts, they still have an impact. A brief mention of a seasonal promotion or recent employment provides Google with a reason to view the profile as active, and it provides a browsing customer with one more reason to believe that someone is really managing the business on an ongoing basis. Profiles that have not been active for months lose positions in the ranking in spite of no other changes.
Take advantage of call tracking numbers which are measurable
You may not be able to see the problem, but you can’t solve it. Once you receive a tracking number on your Google profile and website, you will know exactly where a call came from, whether from organic search, a paid ad or a specific landing page. If you don’t, most companies will follow a “trial and error” approach and continue to waste money on things that don’t work. Tracking numbers are also useful for capture, allowing you to capture calls and train personnel on actual callers’ needs and on where calls are lost.
Typically, this data will show something unexpected. A company could think that its paid advertising generates the highest number of calls, only to discover that it has 2 times as many calls from a single service page via organic search. If there is no tracking, that page doesn’t receive much attention. It gives you the location of where to add more content, more links, and more effort.
Construct citations on the directories that count
Any online location that includes your business name, address and phone number is a site. Google will verify these listings to ensure that you’re a legitimate, viable business with a physical address. All directories aren’t created equal, however. Pay attention to the important ones:
- Google Business Profile and Bing Places
- Apple Maps and Yelp
- Industry-specific directories related to your service.
- The Better Business Bureau (if relevant to your area)
Being on dozens of crap directories is less than getting a couple of accurate high authority ones right.
Target keywords: near me, service+city
Local search volumes are different from general search volumes. They include “near me” and the name of a neighborhood or a city. You should repeat that language on your website, but don’t try to battle it out. Some web pages are ranking for the term “Emergency Roof Repair”. A caller typed query, “Emergency Roof Repair in Fort Lauderdale” ranks on a page that is titled, “Emergency Roof Repair in Fort Lauderdale”. It seems like a no-brainer, but many small business sites don’t have any of these and ask, “Why do I not appear on local search?”.
Get reviews that mention your service and city
Reviews serve two purposes. They earn the trust of the individual reading them, and they provide Google with data as to what you do and where you’re at. A review that says “great service” will help a bit. A review stating they fixed my air conditioner in Fort Lauderdale on the same day I called is much more helpful, as the location and service they provide is included in the review, of course. Directly ask happy customers when the experience is fresh, immediately after the work is completed.
If you send a simple text message with a direct link in it, it’s better than a generic email that gets lost. It also assists customers with a little push in the right direction, but it doesn’t script it for them. A brief phrase such as “tell me what we did and where” is sufficient to add the necessary specificity and utility to the language that doesn’t sound like a lecture.
Include an ‘EASY CALL’ button that can’t be missed
This one is forgotten time and time again. This is because if someone is on your mobile site and has to search for your mobile number, you have already lost some of them. A sticky call button that appears on each page eliminates that friction altogether. This still needs to be done for desktop visitors, although not with the same sense of urgency. The aim is straightforward: to make it as easy as possible to call you!
Develop area-specific pages for all the areas you service
Do not have one page that lists all cities or neighborhoods you serve in a sentence, each should have its own page. Each service area has its own page, which allows you to target specific keywords, reference local landmarks and address local issues. This is important for service-oriented companies that go to the client’s house, such as legal services or home repair or cleaning, where the customer wants to feel that you do visit their part of town.
The common error business owners make at this point is composing just one page and changing the city name ten times. Google sees that pattern and so do readers. Even if it’s just a few words, there needs to be something special to each page: A reference to the type of houses in that neighborhood, the local landmark, or a note about how quickly the police or fire department were to arrive in that area.
Make sure your NAP is consistent throughout the Internet
Name, address and phone number are NAP. Google does not like it when companies have different names on different websites, with slight variations in the name and a slightly different phone number. Google isn’t fond of variations in the name of your business on various websites, along with a slightly different phone number, and it can take a toll on your rankings quietly. Search for your business name and examine all the results. Making these matches is a chore, but it’s one of the more dependable methods for enhancing trust signals on the web.
This is one of the most convenient ways to get lazy, since it’s not an immediate thing we need to do. When your NAP is off, nothing breaks visually. However, Google becomes less likely to trust a company when their basic information varies from one site to another, which results in poor rankings despite no apparent reason.
Apply local schema mark-up for Google to get a grasp of your business
Schema is code you place on your website that explicitly informs search engines of the content that you provide, such as your business type, hours, service area, and reviews, instead of using machines to guess. It does not assure a rank boost, but it does mean that you can get richer results, such as star ratings, and hours of directly displayed search. If you don’t have one of those people on staff, a company that provides local SEO services Fort Lauderdale businesses rely on for such technical tasks can set it up and let it work in the background.
Create and share content that addresses genuine local enquiries
Content that addresses a specific question a local customer may ask is more likely to be successful than content that is more general in nature. There is something real to the answer to the question, “How much does AC repair cost in Fort Lauderdale in summer”. What’s missing from “5 Tips for a Healthy AC” is an answer. The first type of content attracts queries from individuals who are near the decision-making process. Don’t make it too long. It should respond to someone who calls it before dialing it.
Final thoughts
None of these 10 strategies will be as effective when used in isolation. If you have a Google Business Profile that doesn’t have any reviews, it looks like something is missing. The trust is lost if the great location pages don’t have accurate NAP. It’s not that the businesses receiving the highest number of calls from local search are necessarily doing one thing really well. They’re performing all 10 things repeatedly and correcting the little things that most competitors would not bother with. Pick whichever of these is the weakest for your business at the moment. A partially complete profile, a phone number with a different form on another site or location page that wasn’t written. When the largest gap is fixed, the calls will follow.
It’s also beneficial to go through this list at least once every couple of months rather than one time. Directories switch between formats, phone numbers including relevant details are updated and new competitors emerge in the same map pack. An annual review of these ten areas twice a year will help you identify issues before they subtly impact your billings.
