5 Things You Can Do for Better Local Marketing Results

By Andrew Oziemblo, Founder & CEO of Chicago SEO Geeks, the digital marketing & SEO agency helping businesses achieve long-term growth goals.

The importance of local marketing cannot be underestimated. Of course, the idea behind this is evident for local business; it helps you to appeal to those in your area. However, a lot of big businesses are also focusing on local marketing, as it gives them the opportunity to target certain demographics as well.

However, this can be very difficult to understand and achieve if you do not have experience in marketing and search engine optimisation.

This is where expert help comes in. They can help you to achieve this and to master the local search engine results you’re looking for. No matter what applies to you and your business, read on to discover five different approaches you can do to boost your local marketing results.

1. Google Business – The first thing you need to do is optimise your listing on Google Business. A lot of local companies just claim their Google My Business listing and then they forget about it. However, if you optimise your Google listing effectively, you have a great chance of featuring in one of the top three coveted spots with all of your details whenever someone conducts a local search. So, how can you ensure you achieve success? Firstly, make sure you fill in all of the information that Google asks for. You also need to add the correct business hours as well as listing your business in the right category. Photos can be beneficial, and you should make an effort to ask for reviews. Whenever you receive reviews, you need to respond to them. You can even add a 360-degree view or virtual tour of your business as well, which is a great way to set yourself apart from the other listings.
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3. Local Listings – You also need to work on improving your local listings. This involves using a number of different techniques to ensure that your business features high up on local listings. Local listing services are a great way of increasing organic SEO and improving your visibility. They are also a cost-effective approach to marketing as well. However, this is only going to be the case if you are featuring in listing sites and services that are of a high quality and that have high authority. You also need to make sure you optimise your listing so that this works toward boosting your overall search engine presence.
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5. Local Long-Tail Keywords – There is no denying that your choice of keywords plays a huge role when it comes to your marketing campaign no matter whether it is local or not. If you are to build an effective presence in the local search engine results, though, then you are going to need to focus on local long-tail keywords. There are a number of different reasons why this is the case. The first and most important reason is because these keywords outperform others. Plus, long-tail keywords are actually how people search the web. Long-tail keywords are also recommended because they provide context to your content. Google wants to strengthen their search results, and they focus a lot on contextual search. Long-tail keywords fit in with this perfectly. The statistics also show that long-tail keywords are better too. They have better conversion rates for one. The average conversion rate for long-tail keywords is 36 per cent. When you compare this with the fact the top ten per cent of landing pages convert at 11.45, you see just how powerful long-tail keywords are. These figures have been sourced via research conducted by Wordstream. If that was not enough, long-tail keywords also help you to rank for short keywords, as well as fuelling your local blog strategy. Plus, you can build a strong conversion tunnel through ranking for long-tail keywords.
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7. City Radius PPC – Another way to boost your local marketing campaign is to focus on PPC within the radius of your city. You probably already know that PPC stands for Pay Per Click advertising. This is an effective marketing approach that is used by many companies today. However, you can improve the effectiveness of your PPC campaign by a considerable degree if you focus on the local side of it. There are a number of things you need to do here. First, you need to review your targeting overlap to make sure you are not competing against yourself. You also need to make sure you expand your reach wisely. You should also identify urgent local searches, and use a proper offer to target those keywords. Finally, make sure that your ad copy is compelling. You need to make it immediately obvious that you are a local business with a lot of expertise in the area.
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9. Reviews on Google Maps – The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to improving your local marketing results is get your customers to leave a review on Google Maps. The importance of building up a good collection of reviews online cannot be underestimated. Reviews act as social proof and they build credibility. After all, if a number of people rate your business highly in your local area, then other locals are going to be more inclined to use your service, aren’t they? This is why it is important to focus on this element of your business. Kindly ask people to leave reviews on Google Maps so that you can build up your presence here. However, you should never pester people. It is also worth pointing out that these reviews will not only boost your credibility but they will also boost your visibility on Google too.

So there you have it: the five key steps that you should take if you want to improve your local marketing results. As you can see, there are many ways you can take your local marketing campaign to the next level.