If you’ve been advertising on the internet for any length of time, you’ve heard about SEO – Search Engine Optimization. What you may not know, though, is what SEO really means – especially for you. And not knowing could be the difference between moving your business forward or staying stagnant, or perhaps even moving backward. And that is one thing to avoid at all costs.
So, time to ask the question: What does SEO really mean for you? The answer is: Going to the head of the class. When you have mastered your business’s utilization of localized SEO, you’ll be the number one search result in your business class. It really is that simple – and that complicated. Knowing how to master local SEO is the trick – what to focus on, how to make things easier for yourself and your customers, understanding what should be optimized, and knowing how to audit your SEO to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
Let’s take a look at a few goals you should focus on for getting a grip on local SEO for your business. There are some things you, as a business owner, can absolutely control with SEO and these are the things you should concentrate on the most. And probably the one thing you should get used to and learn to adopt as a guiding factor is change. The world of online advertising, searches, marketing and everything else related is constantly undergoing change, so it is the one “constant” in your world. Make peace with this fact and you are a step ahead of everyone who struggles against it.
Learn to audit your online presence – find out what your audience sees and doesn’t see. If you have created a complete picture of where you are on the local SEO scale, along with your competitors, you can determine where the gaps are and figure out how to close them. You will be able to do this easier and faster, too, than if you come at it without trying to see the whole thing overall. When you do a complete audit, plan out how to close any gaps, and implement the required changes, you will end up driving more and more business your way than you ever thought you’d see.
One thing that can help is to do a comparison spreadsheet. Complete current information about your business such as your whole address, phone number(s), operating hours, etc. Then do an online search using just the name of your business to see what comes up in the search results. Your ranking here will tell you volumes about how well local SEO is working for you now. Take a look at what populates about your business information in the search results – does everything match up or are there discrepancies? Navigate to your webpage – are there any inconsistencies there? If the answers to these last two questions are yes, you know you have some updates to make right away. This should be your first focus when auditing your local SEO results – get all your vital statistics lined up and provide accurate information at all levels.
