How To Establish Your Business As An Authority Online

How You Can Dominate Local SEO and Establish Your Business As An Authority Online

If you are new to local SEO, you might be wondering how you can improve your strategy and dominate the results. It is important that you rank well in local SEO because of the limited number of results that appear at the top of the general search results. Fortunately, there are a number of tactics that you can use to help boost your local SEO strategy and ranking.

Get Your Citations Right

When you work with local SEO, you need to have citations which are listings of your business across the internet. These citations play a vital role in determining your credibility as a business and you need to get them right. You need to know where to list your business as well as how you should be listing it.

You should list your business on the main online directories such as Yelp and Citysearch. You also need to look at other respectable local directories and list your business with them. Smaller niche directories should also be used, but you need to ensure that they have good standings with the search engines.

When listing your business, you need to use a single format for the address, name and contact information. This format should match the one used on your business website. Consistency is vital if you want the search engines to find the citations.

Get A Google My Business Account

A Google My Business account is free to open and you need to get one. GMB is considered to be a directory, but it is much more than this. With one of these accounts, you will be able to claim your location on Google maps and it will increase your exposure because you can rank in the local three-pack.

When you open your Google My Business account, you will have to complete a verification process. This process will include having a pin sent to the physical address of your business. This is done by Google to verify that your business is at the address that you state and your account will not be active until the verification has been completed.

Once you have completed the verification, you need to look at optimizing your account. To do this, you need to have a solid description of the business, choose the right categories, including your working hours and any other relevant information. You will also want to upload images of the business and your products. It is generally recommended that you upload at least 3 images to the account.

Get Online Reviews

Online reviews matter when it comes to local SEO and you need to ensure that you have reviews for your business. Studies have shown that approximately 84% of consumers will trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review if asked. More and more consumers are also looking at the reviews of a business before they buy their products or use their services.

While it is important to get reviews, you should also look at responding to all of them whether they are good or bad. When you respond to the reviews, it shows your customers that you care what they think. You will also be able to address any issues that people might have which results in them leaving a bad review.

There are 2 places that you should focus on when getting reviews. The first is your Facebook page and the second is your Google My Business account. People will turn to social media to find information about a business, but reviews on your GMB account will show up when your business appears in the search results.