Local SEO Delivered More Sales to Small-Businesses

It’s the Information Age. That means a company’s rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can be the difference between profitability and bankruptcy, especially for service businesses that rely on local traffic.

By now, almost all entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a means of optimizing a webpage in order to so have high rank in the SERPs.

Indeed, one regularly failed to see flavor of SEO is Local SEO intended to reach clients within a relatively small geographical area. It’s really important to small and medium-sized businesses that are targeting local audience.

411 Locals is an Internet advertising agency that specializes in Local SEO, among other digital marketing tactics. The company was able to use Local SEO to improve the fortunes of three businesses.

1. Top Rank Movers

Top Rank Movers is a moving company that serves Franklin and Green Hill, Tennessee. The company handles both residential and commercial moves as well as local and long distance transportation. Additionally, Top Rank Movers offers safe, secure storage for people who simply need to tuck things away for a little while.

Melissa Rogers founded the company in 1996. She noticed, however, that not a whole lot of people were discovering her business online. So, she partnered with an ad agency to improve the company’s visibility.

It did not go so well.

“We wanted to be on the map,” she said. “Our previous marketing subcontractors couldn’t get it fixed when we, at last did start noticing some results they were never stable.”

That’s when Rogers got in touch with 411 Locals. The company put in place a plan and the results were almost instantaneous.

“Within two weeks I saw results!” she said.

It’s not always that quick with SEO efforts. Typically, optimization results aren’t fully realized for a few months.

However, Rogers isn’t complaining that her company was the exception to the rule. She claims that her business experienced a 100% turnaround.

2. Weaveologist Melessa Denee DE

In New Castle, Delaware, Melessa Denee runs a hair salon that specializes in celebrity-quality weaves. That’s the type of business that almost exclusively survives on local foot traffic.

However, Denee noticed that her business had been “below average.” It was a classic story of a great business offering fabulous service, but not enough people knew about it.

As a result, she contacted 411 Locals for some increased visibility. The company determined which keywords were being used by paying customers in search engines and tailor-fit a marketing campaign accordingly. Additionally, 411 Locals gave the salon some social proof by ensuring that Denee’s very positive reviews were visible to anyone looking for a weave in the New Castle area.

The results? Denee saw her sales increase 50%.

3. Twins Movers

In spite of the name, Twins Movers is not located in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. It’s located in Washington, D.C.

For about 15 years, Twins Movers has offered professional moving services to people in the nation’s capital. The company strives to make the “relocation process go as smoothly as possible.”

In this case, business was actually going well. However, company founder Isaac Levy knew that Twins Movers needed more exposure to the online community. Specifically, Levy said that he needed help “getting customers to the website so they could see the quality of work we do.” He reached out to 411 Locals.

The goal here was easier said than done. Twins Movers needed to be on the first page in the SERPs.

The folks at 411 Locals got busy optimizing the site and working their white hat magic. Within just two months, Levy had noticed a difference.

As a result of the Local SEO, Twins Movers saw an average of 3% increase in business each year, with a 25% increase at its peak. Now, the company is on Page 1 in the SERPs for a whopping 20 of the keywords that customers search for.

That’s not an insignificant accomplishment for a company with stiff competition in a populous city.

Wrapping It Up

Businesses that are offering outstanding products or services to a local community but aren’t seeing growth in top and bottom line results should look to Local SEO as a means to improve their visibility. Like the three companies mentioned here, they stand to see a marvelous turnaround.

How to benefit from Local SEO in 6 easy steps

Have you heard about local search engine optimization SEO? Well, if you are a small business owner, you may have. Local SEO is getting more and more important for any local business.  According to the latest stats, about 50% of clients searching for a local service or store via their smartphones visit the local business within a day. 34% who search on their laptop or desktop computer do the same. It’s notable that 18% of the local mobile searches lead to a purchase within a few hours. Actually, 76% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase.

Obviously, it is pretty important for any local store owner or service provider to have decent, online presence and a website fully optimized for local search. This means, when a customer is searching locally, your website will appear on the first page of search results. Otherwise, your services will just stay unnoticed on the second or third page.

Below, are 6 easy ways that may help any local business owner make a huge step forward when it comes to local search.

• Actively use your Google + account. Write posts, follow local users and get followed by them. Share pictures of your latest work. Post relevant comments on local topics. Let the locals see that you are a real, active business. Create pages for your business on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks. Be active, and generously share your thoughts and achievements. Link your social profile to your site. Social signals matter much when it comes to Google search ranking.

• There are more than 100 decent free business directories, and you need to register there your business, website, social networks, address, products, and services. This will give your website really great exposure. Will tell people and search engines that you are a real and responsible business. This will definitely boost your ranking. Do not forget that 90% of the people are checking the results that appear only on the first page.

• So, put in some additional effort in making your business appear on the first page of Google search results.  Create a Youtube channel. It is easy. Start making short videos and post them. No worries - you don’t need to be a Hollywood director! Just stream useful and helpful information related to your services. For example record and stream the result of your latest work. Videos contrasting “before” and “after” will greatly impress your clients. In the videos, the description includes descriptions of your business, phone number, address, link to your website. Spread the video through your social networks, and copy it to Vimeo and Dailymotion.

• The press release is only for big companies! Well, not really. There are plenty of affordable ways for a small business owner to release content and achieve great exposure. When done properly, a press release can be a great investment for any small business owner. Just come up with an interesting and intriguing headline, as well as topic. Mention your name in the body of the text. A press release can bring more traffic to your website and sometimes can even get noticed by local media and syndicated by the search engines.

• In you local area, there is a huge free of charge resource you can use to your advantage. There should be numerous blogs, media, public related websites, radio stations. Under any content, piece of news or article, there is an option for commenting. Spend some time to write some comments under popular news or articles.

• Get involved in discussions. This will start making your name popular among the local community. Just avoid over commenting and posting thin content. Because your profile might get banned. A proven tactic is to post comments a few times a week, but regularly. Check for forums and register yourself. Some of them may not allow you to put a business name and phone number. However, they allow registration and comments via your social network profiles - Twitter, Google+,  About.me. So, you will be able to comment with your business name. This can actually bring traffic to your website.

Local search optimization is a really great tool for a small or medium business to find its place under the sun. Remember, 60% of American adults use tablets or smartphones to search for local products and services. 90% of them will check the websites that appear only on the first page of Google. Only 10% will check the second page. 30% of mobile online searches are made just before a visit to the store. So, local search optimization is a must.

411 Locals Ranking: Best SEO Tools Worth Paying For

So, your WP website has been launched, you are way ahead of the competition, and you’re starting to make some profit. Staying on top is worth every cent and the wisest move would be to make a well thought out investment. Did you know that buying SEO tools is a sound investment that will yield long-term results? 411 Locals recommends the following platforms you should pay to utilize in 2016:

Tools for Website Monitoring:

Screaming Frog Spider Tool: It is a website crawler with growing popularity among SEOs and digital marketers. It’s a freemium tool, which means charges for full proprietary features and functionality are applied. You will take advantage of fast scanning of your domain’s URLs with checks of redirect loops and issues, 404s and server errors, details about robots.txt and sitemaps. For on-site content strategy, Screaming Frog easily identifies the optimal length of meta descriptions, headings, and more.

Raven Tools: Another tool for free site crawling. However, by paying 99 bucks per month, you will get significant marketing insights. You will see which aspects of your website and campaign are good in the long run and which aren’t. It is a smart tool that combines several of the others. It serves well organic and PPC optimization. You can use it successfully for social media, monitoring of SERP rankings, competition research, and reporting.

Tools for Social Media Marketing:

Buffer: It has a one-month free trial and charges 10 bucks monthly. Buffer takes care to share your content at the most suitable times. You’re in charge of the scheduling algorithm and the time-saving aspects of the tool will help you add articles to your queue, upload your videos, and share your images.

SproutSocial: It is the platform you need for social engaging. You can upload, publish, and schedule content across the platform and monitor all metrics of the former. That will help you outline the overall success of your publications, improving your strategy skills. Like Buffer, SproutSocial unites several platforms and connects profiles. The price is $59 per month.

The aforementioned tools will allow you to review your metrics and focus on the areas that will ensure the success of your marketing strategy. Furthermore, you will make social media investment with massive returns. In the next installment of our blog article, 411 Locals will recommend you resources for link analysis and copywriting worth paying for in 2017.

The previous post was all about the tools that can help you review your website metrics and monitor the progress of your social media strategy. But what about the other aspects of digital marketing and SEO? Which tools will make a difference in 2017? In this post, 411Locals will recommend you a few platforms for link analysis.

Whether you’re an advocate or an opponent of the current link building trends, links remain an essential part of any SEO campaign. The following tools will be a good investment when you seek answers to the most important question – “Am I doing it right?”:

Open Site Explorer: Moz’s favorite tool is about quality backlink profiles. It focuses on link authority and longevity. Paying for OSE’s services makes sense. Its free version allows you to see only the first five backlinks for your domain. For $99 monthly, you will have full visibility, unlimited reports, and access to other tools developed by Moz. You will be able to see anchor texts, page and domain authority, and do research. With Open Site Explorer, you will never have a bad backlink staining your website.

Majestic SEO: Majestic is a freemium tool since 2015. It would be right to say that every SEO professional had to deal with Majestic at some point. The tool calculates the trust ratio which is a site’s trust flow divided by the citation flow. Majestic has its own glossary that will help you understand the industry standards of your backlink profile.

Ahrefs Old and trustworthy, this tool comes at $99 per month. What makes Ahrefs unique is its easy-to-use competition research function. You can identify viral content and observe the keywords used in it. In other words, Ahrefs is helpful for both link building and content marketing.

Buzzstream: You can cover multiple aspects of your online marketing strategy with this tool. It is useful for email outreach and link building. Buzzstream is also great for team tasks. You can simplify task sharing once you set up your account. The latter is the only downside of the platform – the sign-up details are somewhat complicated.

Test the aforementioned tools to enhance your campaign. 411 Locals will give you more information about SEO-related tools and resources in the next post, so be sure to get back.