Local SEO
As far as local businesses go, there are always hurdles that need to be defeated. Starting a business is itself a big achievement for entrepreneurs, but the main challenge is maintaining one.
There are three common challenges businesses need to overcome. These include managing expenses, hiring people, and following new trends to develop a customer base.
Local SEO X The Unseen Market
Every business revolves around money. There are different areas where businesses have to spend their money. But the issue is handling the financial hurdles. With an unplanned budget and financial advice, businesses will be spending more than they need to.
Keeping an eye on expenses is important because the expenses determine the profit the business will make.
However, it is not easy to reduce the expense. It’s affected by demand and supply. If businesses need to keep up with the market’s demands, then the chance of increasing expenses is 100%.
More Skilled Manpower Required
Businesses don’t run themselves. They need manpower with skills to handle different departments. Generally, the number of employees in a small business ranges from 1 to 100 people. Getting this manpower is easy but getting a skilled one is difficult and time-consuming.
Whenever looking for manpower, businesses need to decide what skills they want in their candidate. The problem is candidates can’t always fulfill all the requirements. Besides, hiring manpower also increases the expenses.
By relying on full-time employees, you automatically limit yourself to a localized pool of talent. This makes it harder to fill those specialized roles that you need to reach your business goals.
Unseen’s freelancers allow you to build effective teams and fill any skill gaps without having to worry about lowering your hiring standards or paying an arm and a leg to relocate new hires.
Keeping Up With the Latest Trends
The market is fluid. It changes and introduces new trends. Small businesses need to keep up with the changing trends to keep their business growing. But this is where many businesses start to fall apart.
The thing about new trends is that businesses need to sell their products at the right time. It means they have to keep on studying the market to speculate their next products. If a small business fails to deliver during the peak of the trend, then it will suffer a heavy loss.
If you want to stay competitive as a business, then you need to constantly be innovating. This is why execution is so key — because the companies that win aren’t necessarily the ones that come up with the best ideas first. They’re the ones that execute the fastest. By relying on full-time employees to get the job done, you’re going to struggle to stay relevant, speed up innovation and reach your potential as a company.
Local SEO FAQs
Almost half of all searches are local, and nearly 90% of searches on mobile devices are local. With so many people searching for businesses near them, your business needs a local listing. A local listing will make it easier for people to find your business when they do a local search, no matter what device they are on. And if you have a complete listing, including mostly positive reviews, that’s likely to result in calls, visits, and sales.
According to Google, there’s been a 150% increase in searches for businesses “near me now”. Google research reveals that many searchers are performing searches relevant to their immediate needs. Since local listings include opening times and locations, then the most relevant businesses will show up when people search. Getting your local search listing optimized is an essential step in improving local SEO. Use a local search marketing expert to help your business get found in these searches.
Since Google dominates search traffic, one of the main platforms where you should have a local listing is Google My Business. But it’s not the only place people are doing local searches. People also search for businesses on Facebook, LinkedIn and Apple Maps You should also consider listing your business on Bing, Yelp and the Better Business Bureau. Wherever you choose to list your business, make sure you using consistent business information, especially the name, address, and phone number (NAP).
A good local listing starts with NAP - name, address, and phone number. But there’s more to having a fully optimize local listing than these details. Just over half of all searchers want to know your business opening hours, and a similar number want directions to your location. Include a map to give these searchers what they need. Other useful information is your website, type of business, and business description. You can also include products, services, payment information, and more.
A Google My Business listing is a local business listing that lets you manage the online presence for your business across services like Google Search and Google Maps. You can create a Google My Business listing for free. Your listing includes the business name, address, and phone number, as well as information about how to get to your business, opening hours, and more. Customer reviews and photos also form part of a Google My Business listing.
If you have multiple listings for one business, it’s wise to remove the duplicates. Duplicate listings can be regarded as spam. In addition, they can be flagged by searchers or competitors, resulting in search ranking penalties. If you have more than one listing, nobody will know which is the correct business listing. In contrast, cleaning up your listings will help you build trust. Surprisingly, deleting duplicate listings can be difficult, and you may need expert help to do it.