SEO is the field in which not only relevant specialists and agencies work. A lot of business owners and webmasters are also interested in ways to promote their platforms to gain as many benefits as possible from the promotion. Of course, the level of competition is different in different niches. The more popular the field is, the more investments successful advertising will require.
In particular, this refers to e-commerce, food & catering services, entertainment, etc. These are the fields that will hardly manage SEO promotion without a professional agency. So, let’s find out which approaches will be efficient and how to estimate the budget for the promotional services.
How to Promote a Business Locally
In the majority of cases, medium-sized businesses that are present not only online but also offline intend to promote locally, i.e., in their cities or regions. That is when you need to focus on the local SEO promotion. Experts began talking about it more than five years ago, and it is still relevant today. We are going to describe the main reasons and provide an essential local SEO checklist that will come in handy.
Why Local SEO Promotion Is Effective
First of all, it is worth mentioning that the majority of services should focus on the local promotion of their business. These are lawyers, doctors, stores and shops, educational institutions, cafes, restaurants, and hotels, sightseeing objects, etc. Thus, the majority of offline + online businesses are interested in promoting their enterprise locally. Here is why:
- Traffic: people hate it when they need to travel too far to reach the destination. The closer a place is, the more likely they will prefer it.
- Time: even delivery of food should be fast. If a pizzeria is located too far, it will take more time to get a pizza compared to ordering or picking it up in a cafe across the street.
- Impact of technologies: let’s be honest -the development of technology caused people to become lazier. That is where local SEO promotion will help businesses in the neighborhood develop.
- Change of Google’s algorithms: considering the above, the search engine began to rank local platforms higher than international leaders in the niche. Thus, companies located in the vicinity have got an additional advantage.
Thus, if you have not yet included local SEO in your promotional campaign, you are losing considerable revenue. To make sure that you will benefit from it, here is a checklist and brief recommendations to follow:
- Google my business page: you need to create a GMB account and optimize your page. Google recommends filling out all the fields to make sure that your platform will be shown at the top of the search results for your location. It is particularly important to specify the address correctly. After that, your company will be added to the Google Maps service.
- Correct keywords for your products/services & high-quality content: this requirement is crucial for any promotional campaign you are launching. There are plenty of tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush that can help you define the correct keywords and phrases to promote your resource. Introduce these queries in your own unique content. If you are not sure if you can cope with this on your own, check out SEO consulting rates and hire professionals.
- Contact details and location on your site: every single page of your site should contain not only the information on your product and field of activity but also location and contact details in:
- Meta title,
- Meta description,
- Header,
- Main body,
- Footer.
The optimization of the title and description meta tags is another crucial step to take. Make sure that their length is within the recommended number of characters, while they contain the main keywords and mentioning of the location where you plan to promote your business.
- Register your business and the site in local directories and services: this step will bring you several benefits at once. First of all, if you include your company in lists on reliable sites, Google will index them and consider your resource as trustworthy as well. You may also get backlinks from these catalogs, which has a positive impact on the overall ranking. These catalogs and directories have their own audience that automatically becomes your target audience.
- Blocks with reviews: the more people will get to know about you, the better it is. Just make sure to check reviews regularly and always react if there are negative ones.
- Schema.org geographical markup: it will help provide the search engine with all the relevant information about your company and site, as well as structure these data correctly.
- Mobile version of the site: among the local mobile search requests, 74% of consumers come to the place they find the same day. Nothing else needs to be said about the necessity to optimize the site’s mobile version.
Need Any Help?
It seems that the above recommendations are hard to fulfill. You are not lonely. That is why SEO agencies, experts, and freelancers are in great demand. If you are eager to know how much it will cost you, there are plenty of aspects you should consider.
Freelancer or Agency?
First, the cost of SEO services will depend on the contractor you choose. A freelancer will provide services cheaper, while an agency (with dozens of employees) will do the same work faster, as well as offers a more extensive range of services.
Evaluation of Your Site Before Promotion
Besides, the rate charged for SEO services is contingent on:
- your current positions in the SERP;
- number of competitors in the niche;
- the site, its content quality, and volume;
- the target you want to achieve;
- demographics and location of the target audience.
To be more specific, it is possible to say that the cost of local SEO services can start at the amount of $250/month, while the price for audit may range from $1,000 up to even more than a hundred thousand. Your readiness to pay a certain amount depends on the expected revenue. So, assess all the pros and cons and decide how to promote your platform.
