In this day and age, you shouldn’t start a business unless you’re prepared to promote your services online using SEO. SEO can help a new business giant traction and an established business to grow. If you’re starting a small business, there are some strategies you need to use to ensure plenty of traffic from local search.

 

Start by making sure that your business is listed correctly in online directories. Then you can optimize your website for local search from the first day you start putting it together. Grab social media profiles for your new business right away, and engage with your community in real life. Contact the press to get coverage for the opening of your business, and draw in new search traffic with plenty of original, relevant content on your website’s blog.

List Your Business in Online Directories

You want your new business listed in online directories like Google Maps, Bing Places for Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and so forth as soon as you open your doors. These directories are how potential customers are going to find your brick-and-mortar location. Many of them also provide platforms for customers to write reviews about the business. 

It’s important that your business information be correct on all of these directories. You should check with the four main map data aggregators, Factual, Express Update, Foursquare, and Neustar Localeze, to ensure that your business information appears correctly and consistently in any directories where it might appear on the web. 

Optimize Your Website for Local Search from Day One

As someone looking to start a new business, you have the advantage of being able to build your website from the ground up with local search in mind. Of course, SEO, even local SEO, is complicated and highly data driven, so you may want to buy good Phoenix SEO services to handle SEO optimization of your new website. 

If you go it alone, you’ll have to do keyword research, and work those keywords into your website’s HTML title tags, heading tags, and meta descriptions. You’ll also have to make sure your site’s internal link structure makes sense and that the site itself loads well and quickly, and is responsive to mobile. 

Get on Social Media

Social media is a place where you can interact with your customers, building stronger relationships and encouraging them to share your content on their own profiles. You’ll reach more people if you have active social media profiles, and you’ll be able to provide better customer service to people who can bring their concerns to you on their favorite social media platforms. You can encourage your following to talk about your new products or service offerings, and share your content to build backlinks. 

Contact Your Local Press

If you’re opening up a new business, you should contact your local newspapers to ask them to cover the opening of your business. This will generate online news articles that should boost your visibility online. They’ll create backlinks for your website and help get the word out to the local community about your upcoming business opening or new business.

Engage with the Community

You definitely shouldn’t be relying on your online activities alone to improve your SEO and bring in more business. SEO can happen in the real world, too, when you take an active role in your community as a business leader. Work together with a local charity or nonprofit organization to put together an event, or become one of many businesses sponsoring local events in your area. Put together gift baskets for the needy for the holidays, or give out scholarship money to deserving kids. All of these activities can help you strengthen your ties to the community, and can help community members feel great about patronizing your business. 

Create Plenty of Original, Relevant Content for Your Website

Have you ever wondered why so many businesses seem to have a blog? It’s because you need to keep adding new content to your website to keep it active, draw in more organic traffic, and maintain high search rankings. You need to commit to sharing new, optimized content on your website regularly. Each piece of content should create something useful for the user – it should be informative, educational, or entertaining, for example. Each piece of content also lets you add more SEO keywords to your website.

When you’re trying to start a small business, don’t discount the power of SEO to bring foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar location. Make website optimization a priority from the beginning, and harness the power of SEO for your business. 

By varsha

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