What A Local SEO Company ACTUALLY Does - Small Business Advice [VIDEO]
In this video, we'll explore how SEO companies can help local small businesses increase their visibility in local search results and attract nearby customers. By implementing targeted local SEO strategies, SEO companies play a vital role in helping businesses connect with their community and grow their customer base.
Video Transcript
Are you considering the services of a local SEO company to help your business skyrocket to the top of Google? Smart move—that can be a big boost to your business and attracting customers. But there’s definitely some things you need to know about these companies and compare them to others because not every company offers the same services.
In this video, I’m going to break down what all the services typically offered by an SEO service company are so that you can decide: okay, which company offers the right services for me, what am I willing to pay for those services, and what’s my expectation. So, we’re going to break that all down right now.
Okay, up first, local SEO companies conduct keyword research. That means they’re focused on what local terms and phrases relevant to your business customers are potentially searching that could lead to a good customer for you. This includes terms like such-and-such service near me, city names, neighborhood names, and other location-specific keywords related to the service you offer.
All right, the second thing they offer is Google Business Profile optimization. That is a critical tool for helping your business show up and attract customers who find you in Google. Often they help small businesses claim, verify, and optimize the Google Business Profile so that you get found more. This involves a lot of things including putting accurate business information, putting the right categories, adding photos, managing reviews, and optimizing for local search.
Some companies do some of these things, some companies do all of these things, so figure out what it is they’re actually going to do when they say they’re going to optimize your Google Business Profile.
Number three is local citations and directories. SEO companies ensure that the business is listed accurately and consistently across all the important online business directories. What this does is it helps improve your visibility because it reinforces all the location data for the search engines and just points everybody in the right direction. It tells Google your business they can trust.
Number four is content creation. This could be customized to target local audiences and address specific needs in your area. It’s things like blogs and videos. SEO companies might create these articles or landing pages and other content that references how your business services the local area to help those pages come up in Google.
The next thing they do is they acquire good backlinks for your local business. Now, this is one where you’ve got to be careful because some backlink companies get really spammy backlinks for you and it actually hurts your website. But a good one is going to get good links that raise your business’s authority because if Google sees a lot of other websites linked to your website, it means they can trust your website more. They might do outreach to local influencers or they might sponsor events that get you a link from like the Chamber of Commerce website—things like that. So that’s backlink building.
Next, they’ll do something called schema markup. You don’t have to worry about that a lot—just know whether they do it or not. They implement it on your website and it helps search engines know additional information about your business. It’s kind of a technical thing but it’s one thing you can say, “Hey, are you going to do this schema markup thing or not?”
Next, given how prevalent mobile searches are—people searching from their phone to find a local business—they can do a lot of things to improve your website. So if you don’t have responsive design, they’ll do that, improve your loading times, fix the user navigation so it’s easier for people who are using the site from a mobile phone. Google looks at all of that to decide whether to bring you up for somebody who’s searching on their phone. So they might do some mobile optimization of your website to help you with those local searches.
The next thing SEO companies offer is audits. They’ll do an audit and provide a strategy based on what they find about your business. This is more kind of like consulting work and they might do that as part of their package or they might do that in the sales process or they might just sell that as a service.
They also offer local reviews. Managing online reviews is actually really critical for local business SEO. Some SEO companies help you monitor and respond to reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. They also help you with strategies to encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, which boost your star rating and boost your ability to rank in local Google searches.
And then finally, SEO companies provide regular reports and analytics to track the performance of your efforts. That is kind of something that you really should have because otherwise, how do you know what you’re paying for is working?
Now, if you don’t have a small business website yet, check out the link below to Mighty Sites. It’s only $9 a month. And please hit that subscribe and like so that you can find more great info.
But before you leave, check out these next videos on other ways to help you grow and manage your small business.