How to Find the Best Local SEO Company To Grow Your Small Business

Digital marketing is taking over the way companies do business. People aren’t going out to the shopping centers or scanning the yellow pages like they used to.

In fact, 97% of people look for the products or services that they want by checking for them online.

Local Business Search Engine Optimization is essential.

It can convert new customers by making them aware of your business.

As your company moves to the top of the search engine results page, you’ll see the impact of your efforts.

Without local SEO optimization, your website will get lost in the crowd. You can’t afford to fail since your business is your livelihood.

As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to attract customers, increase your sales, make more money, and mainly grow your business. With a local SEO company working for you, your business will start to get the attention it deserves.

 It’s simple to throw a webpage together and make it live on the internet. What isn’t so simple is getting it to show up in the search results of major search engines.

If you aren’t listed on that first or second page in the search engine results, you might as well forget about anyone finding you at all. Users don’t click beyond that point. They will check out the first few listings and make their selection. 

The question is, how do you get your local business to pop up there? With the help of a local SEO, that’s how. This article will walk you thru some of the questions to ask, as composed by me, the #1 ranking local SEO expert on Google.

When potential clients or customers go online trying to find local services like tree trimming, heating, and cooling, computer repair, or an endless amount of other products and services on the internet, they want a local business.

They aren’t going to want to hire someone to do the work they need to be done from another state. It doesn’t matter if that company was ranked number one.

Local SEO takes that problem out of the equation. The company puts people’s products and services out to customers that they find within the area. 

You probably already know what SEO is.

In case you don’t, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the practice of making your website search engine friendly.

Local SEO is a part of that practice. 

It involves making your website search engine friendly on a local level. So, that people living in your area can find you. 

Here’s an example to illustrate the importance of SEO.

If you Googled your own business, you’d use its name. After all, you know what your company is called. Other people may have never heard of your business, but need its services.

They search by keywords. If you run a legal practice in Dallas, they would search for “Dallas lawyers.”

With the use of proper local SEO, your company would be one of the first ones to appear in the search results.

How Is A Local Search Company Going To Grow Your Business?

A qualified SEO marketing company is going to do one thing that can ensure you get the increase in profits that you are looking for.

They are experts at competitor analysis.

What is competitor analysis? It’s an evaluation of your competition. The process that the SEO professionals will use involves a complete review of any small business that is offering the same products or services in your local area. They will define what the company is doing regarding digital marketing that is working and what isn’t doing them any good.

Through the evaluation, they will look for all of the answers to these questions:

• Who is the competition?
• What services or products are available through the competition?
• What is shared by the competitor’s market?
• Do they have past strategies that can be identified?
• Do they have current strategies they’re using?
• Are any forms of media being utilized to market their goods or services?
• What is the amount of hours being used each week for media marketing?
• Do these competitors pose any potential threat?
• Does your group of competitors have an opportunity that you can use?

What Can a Local SEO Service Do for My Business?

There’s quite a bit involved in local SEO, so much that an industry has sprung up to offer this expertise to clients.

The best local SEO company will not only boost your company’s search engine ranking, but it will also make it so that the right customers find you.

These companies focus solely on local efforts. They know how to bring in leads. They can create geographical campaigns on local keywords.

What can one of these companies do for your business?

They can:

• Help you beat your competitors
• Bring in new clients and customers
• Increase your sales and web traffic
• Make your business much more visible online

Local SEO efforts make your website stand out from all of the others online.

Did you know that 97% of all people look online to find a local business to patronize?

The decision to hire a local SEO consultant is not one to be taken lightly.

You might have tried to do it yourself in the past. And why not? It seemed easy.

All that you need to do is sprinkle some keywords into your web copy, right? Wrong. There’s much more to local SEO than this. So much that you don’t have the time to do it while running your business.

Small businesses are a lot of work.

There are few office employees, so the owner ends up doing a lot of the work himself or herself. The owner handles sales, invoicing, inventory, and keeping those employees on task.

There’s no time to tackle online marketing. You may not even have time to update your website. This is why you need to hire the (best) local SEO company that can do these things for you.

On top of that, even if you have the time, do you know what you’re doing?

You might know about keywords. You can update your social media profiles.

But what about a competitor analysis? Do you know how to get other companies to link to your site? Can you track your SEO campaigns? What about monitoring your competitors?

These tasks all take time. You need the help search professional.

The number of local SEO companies out there is continuing to grow.

Before selecting someone in the SEO industry, make sure they can perform each of these tasks for you:

• SEO Audits
• Keyword Research
• Content Marketing
• Competitive Analysis to see how your business measures up
• Local SEO
• Organic SEO
• Link Building
• Google Maps Marketing

These are the services that you need to have long-term results.

There are businesses out there that will provide you with some of these, and that may not be enough. Without a well-rounded approach,  the chances ranking about your competition diminish.

Growing your business requires planning and knowledge, as well as the skills and experience to take your business to the next level.

A local SEO company understands the many benefits of their services.

They will update your online listings, consolidating them if necessary. They can claim your Google My Business profile, as well as your Yelp one. They do all of the work for you.

After the initial consultation, a good local SEO company will put a marketing plan in place. They’ll consult with you every step of the way, but they’ll do all of the work. You won’t have to redo your web copy to include relevant keywords. They do that, along with many other things.

Initial Strategy

The first step is to develop an initial strategy.

They’ll start by examining your current statistics. How many keywords are you using? Which ones would work better?

The initial strategy will also include

• Marketing efforts
• Paid advertisements
• Social media updates and campaigns
• Email marketing campaigns
• Website updates
• Blog posts

If you run a carpenter shop, they’ll list the keywords that your web copy needs to include. If you’re heading into a busy building season, they’ll come up with a number of blog posts using those keywords to build up your expertise.

Those blog posts will be posted on your social media. You won’t have to do a thing, besides monitor their progress and give approvals.

You may have a bit of a grasp on the basics of a local search and how it can help your business at this point. You’re still probably asking yourself, “What are the benefits of paying for this service?” 

You aren’t going to want to put money into something if there isn’t going to be any return on your end.

Lead Generation

When people search for products or services, as long as Google knows where they are, it is going to kick back the places that offer those items in the closest radius. An SEO professional knows how to put you in that position so that you grow naturally in local searches.

Reputation

Your company’s reputation management is essential.

After quality SEO is active and your business jumps up to the top of a search engine results page, people are going to start to know who you are.

Your reputation is going to flourish in the local community. With your building located in the region you live in and a high local search result, your status is only going to continue to grow.

How often do you check the reviews that your customers have placed on Google, Yelp, and Angie’s List?

The best Google local search engine optimization company will go over those reviews and help your business improve. They’ll develop strategies for getting clients to leave reviews for you.

They might also set up Google alerts so that every time an article comes out that mentions your company; you’ll receive notice. This is an excellent way to monitor your company’s reputation.

Adjusting your online reputation also requires a good marketing campaign. This campaign extends your company’s reach.

They will update your social media accounts. They will put out any virtual “fires” and solve problems that occurred in the past. This is just one of the many benefits of hiring one of these companies. The reputation of your business depends on their efforts.

Increase in Visibility

They jump on their computer, do a quick search, call the first person on the list, and go from there.

You need to be on that list to be seen. SEO is what puts you there. Even further, local SEO puts in a position of high visibility online.

Website Traffic that Targets the Right Audience

Targeted website traffic is when you have your online marketing plan in line with the people that you are trying to reach.
When a person searches to find a dentist, they are also going to add the city where they live so that they can visit one that is within close proximity.

Those are the people that you want to see your website. A local SEO company with the proper skills is going to be able to make sure that it happens in that manner. They are trying to find you your very next customer in every way possible.

High-Quality Backlinks

Link building is something else that is critical.

By obtaining organic natural links on authoritative pages around the internet, your trust with Google will grow. Link building also directs users to your webpage where they can discover all of your products and services.

Citations

Additionally, they can help you build your number of local citations. That is where your business name shows up in other areas online.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a link provided back to your website, but your company gets a mention, and Google and other search engines can verify that you are who you say you are. With these citations built up, you are more likely to appear in a local search when someone is looking for what you have to offer.