It can be tough. It can be a real nose to nose fight, but those local SEO results are as valuable as gold itself and you cannot afford to let your competition get the better of you. This may call for good old fashioned, old school ways of negotiating with clients and potential clients, but it also means you’ll get that brick and mortar clientele along with your online ones.
Local SEO is often underestimated by webmasters and marketers. They get lazy or ideological about SEO, thinking that one way solves all problems. It doesn’t. SEO is now a teeth gritting, eyes blazing field of expertise that gets more scientific every step of the way. Not only that but it also calls for old fashioned ways of pulling in the clients, even if it means hitting the sidewalks and roads to reach clients and chat face to face.
The art and skill of personal presence to enhance SEO is what marketing and sales have been built on since the beginning of commerce. People used to meet in person or over the phone but a good handshake was still part of the deal along with a lunch or dinner. Salespeople used to have to resort to all sorts of tactics just to get a client reeled in. The more powerful and wealthy the client was, the more goodies and goodwill has to be lathered on. It took skills of personality and presence because some clients had egos to feed. Knowing just what to say and when to say it called for panache.
Today, although it seems you can get things done faster online, it always isn’t the case with local SEO. You’re dealing with a limited yet valuable market and you’ve got to take advantage of everything you can get your hands on.
First, make sure your website is local SEO friendly. You’ve got your contact and location data on each page and if possible in all your copy and photo, video, and graphics tags. This is important as your content will be indexed in separate categories on Google and your local data will be part of it. Once you’ve analyzed and applied the right corrections, the next step is to fine tune your inbound and outbound links. Make sure they’re relevant to your business and get those inbound local links from high profile sites like local commerce or sports teams, radio stations, even holiday municipal events.
Next is to beat feet over to the various stores that can link to you from their sites exclusively or offer bonuses and discounts exclusively through your site. This calls for visiting and handshaking and maybe even a cup of coffee or two. Make the company feel like they’re getting the bargain for little or no effort. This way they’ll incorporate your site links in their updated copy on blogs and even on social media posts. See if they’ll allow you to take pics and videos of your friendship or even those special people who make that company run. You’d be surprised at how much traffic a popular person can pull in. For example, let’s say you’re trying to get that hard earned inbound link from a top company in your locale. You notice an old timer working there or some extra jovial person. Ask if they could go on video explaining the benefits of using that company’s goods and services and plaster that video with description and tagging with your contact and location data in it. People will then share and like that video on social media and you’ll have gained dozens of inbound, organic targeted traffic.
It’s not that this is a new approach, problem is people, marketers especially have forgotten what made marketing and advertising what it is today, hands on and friendly relationships. Getting that high traffic, authoritative link from a local company’s site makes your site look like one of value to the surfers in Google’s eyes, and your position on the search engines should rise accordingly.
There used to be an old advertisement slogan from AT&T that said, “Reach out and touch someone.”, well that’s how some things are done nowadays as well. There’s no harm in exercising your personal negotiating skills with your local SEO campaign.
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