Many customers start their retail shopping journey on the Internet. A leading statistic shows 81% of consumers search the Internet for products and services before buying them locally.
If your website doesn’t pop at the top of the search results page, you are more likely to lose customers to your competitors. If you don’t want that to happen, it is imperative that you invest in your online presence and hire professional SEO services.
SEO can sometimes be complex and time-consuming. The search engines change their algorithm periodically, and you need to adapt to the new online business landscape to gain an edge over the competition.
An SEO company often has a team of experts who can work on different aspects of your online presence and ensure you have the edge over competitors. Here are some ways an agency can help grow your business locally.
Focus on Local SEO
If you want to grow your business locally, you need to focus on local SEO. According to a recent study, 35% of all search traffic is local. An experienced agency will optimise your local SEO in many ways to ensure your website gets more traffic and conversions.
Here are some things that the SEO Company will do as a part of optimising your local web pages.
Create a Google My Business Account
A Google My Business account is a critical element of local SEO. If your business does not have one, the agency will create this account and provide essential information to help customers reach your business. An optimised Google My Business account will give your company good visibility in the search engine’s local results.
If you have a hardware store in Melbourne and an Internet user searches for hardware tools in Melbourne, Google will list your business in the search results along with a map. Such local searches can increase footfalls in your brick and mortar stores and grow your business locally.
Get Reviews from Happy Customers
The SEO agency will plan a strategy that will encourage customers to write reviews about their experience with your business. Positive business reviews not only optimise your Google My Business listing but also encourage more local customers to buy from you.
The SEO agency could send a post-purchase text or email asking customers to write a review. The experts will perform an internal survey before sending post-purchase emails to customers to avoid contacting dissatisfied customers. The agency will also respond to any negative reviews by offering the best possible solutions to them.
Optimise Your Online Presence for Voice Search
Voice Search is expected to be the next big thing in e-commerce. Hence, your website must be optimised for voice search. The agency will perform research on how people search for products and services in Melbourne and what keywords they use while performing a voice search.
Generally, people use long-tail search keywords when talking into devices while searching for products and services. The SEO firm will optimise your website for long-tail keywords and adjust the content to match the conversational tone and phrases used by the target audience.
Produce Content Based on Local News, Stories, and Events
Local events and news stories are the best ways to attract the attention of the local audience. The SEO firm will create content based on local events and news stories and post them online. Some of the things the agency will do are:
- Write blog posts around local sports and cultural events, activities, and news stories.
- Create videos on local charities and sporting events that your business supports.
If your business serves several regions in Australia, the agency will create location-specific pages with high-quality local content.
For instance, if you have a real estate business that serves different locations, the agency will create one webpage for each location and list properties for sale in that specific location along with other helpful information like population, marketplace, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, adjacent neighbourhoods, and connectivity.
Optimise Your Website for Mobile
According to leading stats, 50% of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices. The younger generation is habituated to accessing the Internet from their mobile devices for most of their daily work.
People search for restaurants, products, services they need on mobiles. If your online portal is not optimised for smartphones, you may lose many business opportunities.
The SEO agency will research your target audience and the types of mobile devices they use. The agency will optimise your website for mobiles based on the information gathered to ensure your website provides a good and consistent experience to users across all platforms.
Some of the optimisations the SEO company will do are:
- Ensure the website pages load quickly (less than 3 seconds)
- Use larger fonts in your mobile version of the website so that users can read the content easily, even on small screens.
- Ensure good UI/UX for the website
Focus on Local Keywords
If you want to grow your business locally, the SEO strategy should focus on local keywords. That is, the keywords used in the content should be relevant to local customers.
The SEO agency will use online tools to filter Google keyword searches based on location. The Google Keyword Planner can help you know which keywords are popular in a specific region.
The SEO agency will find relevant local keywords with high search volumes and insert them in URLs, content, and metadata. The agency will also include region-specific content that helps search engine bots identify the location-specific content and show it in relevant results.
Get High-Quality Backlinks
Google gives significant importance to backlinks when determining the ranking of a website. SEO experts know this and work to get high-quality backlinks from the Internet.
For example, if you run a superstore in Melbourne and buy farm produce from Melbourne farms, the SEO experts will ensure the farm’s website has backlinks pointing to your website.
The agency will create high-quality content on organic foods, and the farm’s website owner might want to link to your content. It will also post a high-quality blog post on reputable sites related to your business niche and get backlinks from the blogs.
If necessary, the SEO company will also engage with influencers in your industry and get backlinks from them.