With the best will in the world, we can’t all be organised all of the time. Only today, a business acquaintance was asking on Facebook if anyone knew somewhere local she could buy a flipchart and stand – oh, and it had to be that day as it was for an event the next day. The local office supply chain shop had closed and Amazon couldn’t send her one quickly enough.
Of course, it’s hard to anticipate exactly what of your stock a person will need at no notice on any given day, but there are several things you can easily do for your web presence to make it easier for customers to find you.
It’s also worth understanding the importance of local SEO and ensuring you can rank both on desktop and mobile for ‘near me’ related searches.
Make it easier for people to find you when they need you
Google reports that 3 in 4 people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a related business within 24 hours. In fact, there has been a 150% increase in ‘near to me’ searches in the last two years.
Think about how you search for a local business. Do you sit down at your computer, or, more likely, are you quickly opening the browser on your smartphone?
Previously when searching for local attractions or businesses, people might have typed their town, county or postcode but now, people expect their smartphones to pull location data – hence the ‘near me’ search term.
Three ways to optimise for ‘near me’ searches
#1 Optimise Google My Business
By listing your business with Google My Business, which is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organisations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps, your retail space or shop will appear when people search for things you sell, or your kind of business.
List your opening hours
There has been 200% growth for phrases like ‘now’ and ‘near me’. For example ‘shops open near me now’. This shows that people have the intention to visit a shop now. You can win business simply by making it easy for people to know you are open.
List your prices online
People don’t always have time to wait in for packages and want to go and buy things straight away, but they also don’t want to waste time browsing. They want to know what they can buy, for how much and where. Think With Google reports that 76% of local mobile searches for something nearby results in a same-day store visit. Make it easier for people to compare prices by listing yours.
Make sure your listings are accurate
Ensure your name, address and phone number are replicated accurately across all your listings for consistency.
#2 Use proper Schema markups
Schema markups are code that you use on your website to add context to content so that non-humans e.g. Google, are served content in a consistent way which allows it to be in turn served to users in search results. Add schema markup to your location pages. The schema data should have the business address, hours of operation and contact information.
#3 Optimise a webpage per location
Create a specific webpage for each location that uses a user-friendly URL structure, for example, www.nameofbusiness.com/Manchester-kids-shoes. Make sure the title and meta tags are optimised for your target keywords. Upload images of your shop and use alt tags for your images, using location keywords. This means your image will appear on image searches. And of course, make sure your webpages are mobile-friendly, both for ease of use and so that Google doesn’t penalise you.
Bonus tip: maintain a social media presence
It’s worth maintaining an outline social media presence on the main social channels, utilising the biography section to list your location, even before you use the content of your account to win more business. You’d be surprised how many people don’t even list the town of their business in the bio, assuming people will know. Make it easy for people!
If you can post a pinned tweet, post, or highlight, try using this to ensure that your opening times are easily visible – don’t make people have to click through to your website.
Stay ahead
Businesses who stay ahead of their competitors and make efforts to make sure customers can reach them easily generate more profits. If you haven’t already started optimising your business for ‘near me’ searches, this is the time to start.
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