Practical Ways to Boost Your Online Visibility – For Small Business Owners

As a small business owner, you will want to boost brand visibility in a way that you get found by your local customers. And when it comes to establishing and boosting visibility for small businesses, you should know that online search is the primary starting point for your local target audience who search for their required products and services – preferring the ones that are nearby.

Did you know that there are more than 5 billion internet users worldwide, and nearly 80% of internet users search for information online about potential local businesses in their area at least once a week?

Not to mention that more than 20% of internet users look up local businesses every day.

This aspect indicates that your small business must be visible in the Google Maps search results. By having your business show up in the local organic search results, you can ensure that your business is found by your target audience. This will give you a chance to transform those searches into online bookings, in-store visits – and – online purchases.

Here are four strategies that will help you boost your visibility.

Double-Check Your Indexing

Start with the baseline, where you will want to find out whether search engines are indexing your website, in the absence of which, your website cannot be found. Starting with basic SEO, you will want to understand how Google crawls and indexes your business website.

This basic knowledge will help you strategically lead your SEO efforts forward. Suppose you aren’t familiar with SEO or find it too complex to handle yourself. In that case, you can always hire an SEO professional or consultant to check your website for potential technical errors that could impact your website’s indexing.

You will want to aim at integrating relevant local schema with the goal of making the job of the web crawler easier.

Work On Your Google Business Profile

None of your local ranking strategy will be complete without a GBP (Google Business Profile). Make sure to optimize your Google Business Profile and understand how Google assesses information about local businesses from various sites, web networks, and directories.

It might be a good idea to get the best google local rank tracker, which is a simple and affordable tool that is exclusively designed to deliver advanced Google My Business capabilities and local SEO optimization.

Compared to the last few years, Google Business Profiles have now become richer and more interactive, and with the latest updates, the Google Business Profiles have become more useful than ever before for local searchers too.

Today, a Google Business Profile provides so much more than just important business information to local searchers, such as the following:

• Provide insight to searchers about the “customer experience” they can have at your business with the help of high-quality videos and images.
• Display amazing offers and events through Google posts.
• Share your business attributes, such as safety information and health features.
• Provide interaction with customers and reply to customer feedback.

It is important to mention here that Google values great searcher experience, which is why you will want to keep your Google Business Profile updated and eliminate all inaccurate and outdated information. You will want to double-check the phone number, hours of operation address, and other key business information that you might have listed on your business profile.

Create High-Quality & Informative Content

To attract the attention of your target audience and improve the visibility of your business brand, you will want to focus on integrating high-quality, exceptional content on your business website. Even if you have just started, you will want to see content as the moving vehicle that will deliver all offers, messages, and call-to-action to your target audience.

You will want to assess your competitors and other sources that contain content, such as informational websites, grand brands, media publications, and local review sites.

You see, when it comes to content – the bar is relatively high, which is why you will want to create and publish content that will make you a source of authority in your respective industry, not only in the eyes of internet consumers but also Google itself.

Before you start creating blogs and informative content, you will want to work on a local content strategy that syncs with your business goals. And while you are at it, make sure to include various types of local content along with optimizing each content piece for search.

Respond to Local Reviews

As a local business owner, you will never want to ignore two things: customer feedback and local reviews. When it comes to boosting the visibility of your local business, you will want to understand that reviews are highly impactful for the local search experience, as more than 70% of your potential customers will form an idea about your local business based on the reviews.

Regarding the local ranking algorithms of Google, there are three primary factors:

• Relevance
• Distance
• Prominence

And local reviews are a crucial part of the “Prominence” aspect of your business. Simply put, more reviews and positive customer feedback can massively improve the ranking of your local business. So, make sure that you respond to all reviews and feedback, even for bad feedback.

The Takeaway

As a small business owner, you will have to put in some extra effort to be seen online and by your target audience. At the same time, everything starts with a business website. You will want to ensure that you have the right SEO tools and a dedicated marketing department so that a team of professionals can ensure the online visibility of your small local business.