Recently, I came across a good (or bad, depending on your perspective) example of how not to do local SEO. In fact, the company in question was quite lucky to have got my business, as I quite easily could have given up on my search! Stripping out the identifying details, here’s the cautionary tale for those wanting to attract local business through SEO.

I was looking for a local business that replaced or repaired trampoline mats. Naturally, I hopped onto Google and punched in “trampoline mat replacement [My Area, which in this case happens to be London]”. The search results that ended up on the top of the first page were all trying to sell me brand new trampolines (no thanks – this is not what I am looking for). Others were local Google My Business listing sites which started with “Looking for trampoline mat replacement in [London]?” and continued with what I knew from experience to be a frustrating rabbit trail. Other sites that were listed for me included places with trampoline parts (hooray!) in the United States (phooey!).

In the end, I tried about five different search terms, with and without quote marks to create a longer search term and narrow things down, including various ways of describing my local area. Finally, I managed to find something that looked possible with the search term “canvas goods [My Wider Area, Greater London]”. Even then, it took a bit of hunting around on the site and a query to find out whether or not the company in question actually did trampoline repairs.

This experience left me thinking. I mean, I’m surely not the only person in my local area to own a trampoline – in fact, I know I’m not. And let’s face it: for safety reasons, the mats need to be replaced now and again. So why, oh, why was it so hard to find a local business online that offered the services I wanted?

Now, I’m a bit of a bulldog and I wanted that trampoline mat repaired badly and I really, really wanted something local so I didn’t have to lug a massive bit of canvas all over the place to a company that wasn’t local. I did consider it! Other customers might not have been as stubborn or persistent, and might have gone elsewhere, as I was tempted to do. It struck me that that particular company would have been missing out on a fair bit of local business. Yes, word of mouth is still a great way to get new customers, but when it comes to attracting local customers (especially for a unique service), it’s important to be visible and easy to find through an online search – and that means that you have to do the local search engine optimisation right.

This company was lucky – they were the only one (at least that I know of) in the area that provided this particular services. Imagine what would have happened if they had a local competitor who were doing the local search thing right.

The simple SEO trick they got right

There was one thing that the particular company did right: they did have their business and its location listed with Google. In fact, this was how I found them: Google’s algorithm looked at one of the search terms I tried (canvas goods), then matched up my area, (ahem London) with the business that matched that search term that was closest to me. If this particular company hadn’t listed with Google My Business, I would not have found them. I probably would have thrown up my hands in despair and done something else – looked for a second-hand trampoline and taken the old one down to the recycling centre, for example.

And that’s a lesson that we could all learn if we’re thinking about how to improve your local search listings. This Google Local and Google My Business system is one of the reasons why it’s the most popular search engine out there. You really do need to make the most of it if you want to attract business from customers near you who want to find what they need near to where they live.

It’s not hard to set up a Google My Business or Google Local account. In fact, it’s very easy and it’s kind of fun. In fact, you don’t have any excuse not to do it (in other words, if you aren’t already doing this, go and do it right now). If this SEO thing sounds too technical and mysterious then your best option is to hire a digital marketing agency like London SEO Guy (londonseoguy.co.uk). Like I say, some things are best left to the professionals.

Better local Digital Marketing

So what could that particular company have done better to help their business be seen online to local customers? There are quite a few things that they could have done which we can all learn from if we want to optimise our sites for local search engine marketing. Here’s a few of the easy tricks that that would have made my search a lot easier (and make it easier for all the other customers that aren’t as digitally literate!).

List all your services

If you offer a service, then make sure that you say so somewhere on your site! What that particular company did wrong was that they listed some of the services they did, with some nice pictures of what they’d done (and the pictures weren’t too large, which at least made the site mobile-friendly – another big must for SEO and improving your rankings these days). But then they had “and lots more; contact us for more details.”  However, we have to find your business online before we can contact you! You may need to get a bit creative here with your keywords, especially long-tailed keywords (a real turbo booster for your search result rankings) to make sure that you include everything that your potential clients might type into their search bar.

On-Page Optimisation

Make the most of metadata and tags. Definitely put your location in the tags and metadata – and also think wider when you do this. For example, if you have a business in, say, Caterham, you shouldn’t just have “Caterham” in there. You should probably also list Croydon, London, Greater London, South London and all the nearby areas and neighbourhoods.

Location relevant mentions

Include lots of location-relevant content in your blogs. This a great way to include the names of places nearby (parks and streets) in your content in a natural way – which is another must for improving your page rankings. It also shows that you’re involved in your local community. For example, if you’re a garden store, then you might want to talk about things in local parks or other new developments in the area, and link this to gardening. You could profile local growers and gardeners – who, of course, are going to tell their friends that they’ve been interviewed and will share their page like crazy on social media.

List your business on social media websites

Have a page on social media sites. In fact, I’ve come across a few businesses who have this as their only online marketing strategy and they don’t even have a proper website. While not having a specific website isn’t the smartest idea, Facebook pages do rocket up the rankings.

Promote your Brand offline

Get involved in your community! This requires going offline to interact with others at local events. This is old-fashioned but some things never go out of style and they help with your page rankings as well as increasing your visibility. It also gives you the chance to talk about something local and mention lots of nearby locations – and don’t forget to use plenty of hashtags involving your local area name(s) and/or the event itself to build some backlinks.

Create a Listing on Local citation sites

Use the local listing sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp! or some London based as All In London, Digi London etc. OK, speaking as a customer, these sites are a bit frustrating to use, as I’d much prefer to find the actual website of a nearby business in my search results. However, they do end up high in the rankings and they do drive traffic to your site, as potential customers do use them to find local businesses (yes, including me!). And that’s always good for your business as well as for your SEO rankings.