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
Your website represents your business just as much as your physical business location. Your website is your first impression for a customer, so your website should be appealing to a customer with strong information about your business. There are some common mistakes businesses make with their website, but these are easy to correct with some effort but will make a huge difference in your online presence.
Frequent Website IssuesYour website represents your business as much as, if not more than, your physical location, and there are several issues that plague many business websites and keep visitors away. These are all fairly easy to correct with just some time and a little effort but will make a big difference in your online presence.
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, but they all make a difference in your local SEO presence and rank in search results. Here at Illuminate Digital, we can make those differences happen for your local SEO presence.
2. Having Useless Content
As mentioned above, you must create relevant content because the credibility and quality of your content are one of the most important aspects of local SEO. 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.
Make sure the content that you create has a purpose and relevant information for your readers. Be sure you create a solid content marketing plan and that you are following the plan. Here at Illuminate Digital, we 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-n-mortar businesses definitely need to have an optimized Google My Business Listing. You need to be sure to have your citation data 100% accurate, a verified listing, and linking to your website. Google My Business is tied to the most powerful search engine in the world and if you’re not using this directory, then your business is making a big mistake. 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 listing directories when deciding where to list your business information including Google My Business, Yahoo Local, and Bing places are just a few. 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 your business is listed, it is important that you make sure the 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. If your business listings don’t match then your business may not come up in a search at all, or the wrong information may come up, and you never want to give a customer a bad address. Both of these 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 on our website at https://www.illuminatedigital.net/online-presence-services