Are You Making These Four Simple Local SEO Mistakes?
As a business owner, you know how important your online presence is when customers are searching for your business online. The easiest way to get those customers through the door of your business is by them finding your business online. You might not even know it but your customers could be having trouble finding your business online if you’re making the following local SEO mistakes.
Four Local SEO Mistakes
1. Common Website Issues
As you probably already know your website represents your business as much as, if not more than, your physical location or your service equipment if you're a service-based business. Your website will be the first impression for a customer, and potential customers so your website should be appealing to a customer with strong information about your business. There are some common mistakes many businesses make with their website, but these are easy to correct with some effort but will make a huge difference in your online presence.
There are several issues that plague many business websites and keep visitors away. These are all fairly easy to correct with a little time and effort but will make a big difference in your online presence.
● Frequent Website Issues
● Slow loading pages and posts
● Not being mobile-friendly
● The website looks “spammy”
● Broken links / linking to a poor quality website
Other items that affect the quality of a website are spelling, grammatical errors, and irrelevant content on pages. These items may seem small in the big picture, but they all make a difference in your local SEO presence and placement in search results.
Relevant and quality content is a high priority for Google when serving up websites. Other items that will affect the quality of a website are spelling, grammatical errors, and irrelevant content on pages. These may sound like a small detail, but they all make a difference in your local SEO presence and rank in search results.
2. Having Usless Content
As mentioned, relevant content is a must because the credibility and quality of your content are some of the most important aspects of local SEO. Google, Bing Firefox, and all the other search engine algorithms detect irrelevant and poor-quality content, so you should never create content that is there just to take up some space on your webpage.
Ask yourself, does my content have a purpose, and is it relevant information for your readers. Be sure you create a solid content marketing plan and follow the plan. Illuminate Digital can help your business grow and help to create strong and relevant content for your social media and website.
3. Is Your Business Verified on Google My Business?
Brick and mortar businesses must have an optimized Google My Business Listing. You also need to be sure to have your citation data 100% accurate, a verified listing, and linking to your website. Because Google My Business is tied to the most powerful search engine in the world, if you’re not using this directory, then your business is making one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to the online side of your business. Our team at Illuminate Digital will be able to help you with all aspects of Google My Business, from making sure your citation data is 100% accurate and making sure people can find your business.
4. Not Submitting your Business to Directory Sites and Data Aggregators
There are hundreds of directory listings including Google My Business, Yahoo Local, and Bing Places that are using algorithms to decide where your website will be listed. Getting your business listed on all these is a tough task, but you can start by getting listed on just a few of the bigger sites for a start.
There are a number of services out there that can help you with the submission and management of your business listings to the data aggregators which in turn feed that information to the array of directory listing sites where your business listing information, or NAP (Name, Address, Phone number), might be listed.
Once listed, it is important that you make sure your business data is correct. If all the listings match it is considered accurate and your business listing is more likely to be found in search results. Your business can have a website that is "better than" your competition but if the business information is not accurate or listed on the major directory sites your website may not rank well and can be the reason it can't be seen on the first page of Google when customers are using keywords to look for your products or services. Not being listed or inaccurate information will have a negative impact on your business and local SEO. You can check how your online presence is doing right now by filling out our free visibility report.
If you have more questions about websites, search engine optimization, online presence, or any marketing for your business you can call me directly at 319-310-4648 or email at Brian.Stoll@IlluminateDigital.net
