Are local customers finding your business online?

James Hussey

Most business owners know that being visible on Google matters. What often gets overlooked is how important it is to appear in searches made by people nearby.

If somebody searches for a solicitor in Chester, an accountant in Liverpool or a garage close to where they live, Google is trying to work out which businesses are genuinely relevant to that area. Local SEO is the work that helps make that connection clearer.

A good place to start is your Google Business Profile. It sounds obvious, but plenty of businesses still have old opening hours, missing services, outdated photos or incomplete information sitting there. That can make a poor first impression before somebody has even reached the website.

Reviews are another big part of the picture. People read them, but Google pays attention to them too. A business that regularly receives genuine reviews and responds to them looks active. It also gives potential customers a much better idea of what dealing with that company is actually like.

The website itself matters just as much. If you cover several locations, say so properly. If you offer different services, give those services their own useful content. Simply adding the name of a town to a page a few times is unlikely to achieve much.

The businesses that tend to do well locally are usually the ones that make things easy to understand. Google can see what they do, where they work and why they may be useful to somebody searching nearby.

There is no single trick behind local SEO. It is mainly a case of getting lots of smaller things right and keeping them right.

For a local business, that effort can be worthwhile. You are not trying to reach everybody on the internet. You are trying to appear in front of people in your area who are already looking for what you sell.

If you need help optimising your local SEO performance, please contact us at Engage Web.

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James Hussey

Digital Marketing Executive at Engage Web

Having once gone to school in the Burnage area of Manchester known for being the childhood home of Noel and Liam Gallagher, “Some Might Say” that James is a “Supersonic” presence within Engage Web, happily turning his hand to “Whatever” tasks his role throws at him.

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