5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Brand’s Local Search Presence

Imagine you are a gelateria chain with a location in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can bet your bottom dollar you’re going to want to appear on Google when someone who’s also in Salt Lake City searches for “gelato” or “gelato near me”.

In this article, we will explore 5 easy ways you can boost your brand’s local SEO.

1. Do you have a Google My Business (GMB) listing for your location? And are you in other directories?

This one is pretty obvious. You want Google to recognize your website and show it to relevant people. Well, the first step here is to register your business with Google My Business. This will confirm your business’ name, location, hours, contact info, and more for Google. Make sure to completely fill out your profile. Include your logo, and photos of your business, logos, workplace, and team, your hours, your contact info, etc.

2. Do you have customer reviews?

Nothing is more powerful than positive customer reviews. Once you’ve registered your GMB location(s), you can now route customers directly to that listing to post customer reviews. Don’t stop at Google. Register your business on all of the review directories. Here are some examples below:

• Yelp
• Facebook
• BBB
• Angie’s List
• Foursquare

Your customers are your online disciples! Make it easy for them to review your business online. This will help build trust for new prospects while growing your brand.

3. Is your NAP consistent?

This stands for your name, address, and phone number. Consistency is extremely important across various aspects of business. Your NAP is no exclusion here. Google and search engines will scour various directory listings and profiles to make sure that your business’ name, address, and phone number are consistent. If Google sees that Facebook says your business is closed on Sunday but GMB says it’s open 24/7, then Google will have to choose business hours from select entries. Be consistent across all online listings.

4. Do you have social media profiles?

Social media profiles are free. Creating social profiles for your business will send signals to Google to confirm your brand’s locations, offerings, and more. Google crawls and pulls results from social platforms, so sometimes Google could populate these results within a Google listing. If you have a 1.5 star review on Facebook, Google could show this within Google search results.

5. Have you built backlinks from local sites?

This may sound obvious, but it’s crucial. So you’re a gelateria in Salt Lake City and want people within your community to know your shop and frequent it. The same goes for the internet. Google knows what other businesses are located in Salt Lake City, so connect with other businesses' and their websites to acquire links from them. Everybody loves a link swap. You could offer one in return.