Local marketing means marketing within the community of the physical store, restaurant, bar, etc. Local SEO means the same thing, except the marketing itself, is just happening through search engine optimization (SEO). Nowadays SEO means basically optimizing for Google. Google is the biggest search engine followed by YouTube, which also is owned by Google. But what are the local SEO packages that you should consider buying as a small business owner?
Why local SEO matters?
If you aren’t convinced that you even need local SEO, think again. Over 60% of Americans use smartphones every day and the number is very similar in other countries. And 87% of those smartphone users use their smartphone to make at least one search in a search engine every day. So the numbers speak for themselves. If you want to get your share of the searches and convert them into customers, you need to be in that space. But what are the bare essentials that you need? What are the basic local SEO packages that you should consider buying?
Get your business on Google Maps
A lot of local searches happen in Google Maps so you need to be there. This is probably the most important thing you should do. When people are looking for nearby gyms or restaurants, Google maps is generally favored over Google search. And while some users still might use the traditional search instead, you won’t miss this audience as Google is smart enough to show some results that are pulled from the Google Maps. Ok, great, but how to do this?
Google My Business Page
In order to have your business listed in Google Maps, you need a local SEO package that contains this. Just keep in mind, that creating Google My Business Page is something that you can do for free too. Just need to have Gmail account or Google Apps (not free) in use and you can just simply go to Google My Business and create your page. To get the business confirmed you need to wait 1-2 weeks to receive a postcard from Google with the verification code. This is to confirm that your location is where you said it is.
Since this is quite fast and easy to do, we did it ourselves for our company Cashcow Ltd. But of course, we are an internet marketing company specializing in SEO so we know our way around local SEO too. Unfortunately at the moment, we aren’t taking any new customers in as we have our hands full on our current accounts and running our own projects.