In a world that is addicted to the internet and does most of its purchase research online, every company needs to have a strong online presence in order to do well. Local SEO (search engine optimization) helps small businesses attract customers and stay afloat in this competitive market.
The initial step to generate leads for your business is to build an effective SEO strategy. For that, you should focus on local SEO, irrespective of whether you run a small business or a big organization. Even multinational companies are now realizing the importance of catering to the local audience for more conversions.
A local SEO company helps you build such strategies to improve search rankings and create more opportunities online. With their efforts, your business can gain visibility at all the right places.
But before we dive into the tips to choose a local SEO company for your business, let us understand what local SEO is and how it helps elevate your business.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization that focuses on geographical components to bring local traffic and create awareness of your business in people around your location. This marketing strategy is extremely effective, as expressed by Google on multiple occasions.
According to Google, more than 46% of searches have a local intent. A large number of people make location-based searches on their computers and mobile devices. For services such as cleaners, restaurants, medical clinics, etc., it is mostly a local option you are looking for; someone you can reach quickly.
This is why it is important to target the local audience if you want your business to flourish. After all, if you are running a restaurant in Los Angeles, your first priority will be to find customers who actually live nearby and are likely to visit your establishment. Rather than making a global name, your focus would be to gain local popularity.
Local SEO helps you do this by reaching potential customers and expanding your brand recognition. And to implement local SEO strategies that will give results, you must find the right local SEO company.
Why is it important to choose the right local SEO company?
There are multiple SEO agencies and marketing companies that can help you set up a local SEO strategy. To sort through them and choose the right option can be a daunting task. If you make the wrong choice, you stand to lose money as well as potential customers.
Hence, it is important to consider your choices carefully before reaching a decision. After all, you will trust the SEO company with your brand reputation and online presence. And needless to say, there are serious consequences to picking the wrong local SEO company.
Extreme Automation
Although automation can make mundane tasks much faster and easier, extreme automation can take away your brand identity and make you lose your essence. Whether it is automated email templates for all customers or impersonal push notifications, an SEO strategy based solely on automation will do more harm than good.
One Size Fits All
Another mistake that local SEO companies often make is to create a basic strategy that has already been adopted by thousands of other companies. Even if your strategy is somewhat unique, you should have a varied approach towards clients. The right SEO company understands that clients may have specific needs and interests and creates campaigns accordingly.
Missed and Untracked Leads
If your SEO expert is not doing their job well, you will end up missing leads that could have brought you revenue and long-term business opportunities. It is important to track leads, analyze successes and failures, and evolve marketing campaigns based on previous results.
Choosing the right local SEO company will ensure your strategy is holistic, while keeping costs and labor at an optimized rate. With the right person or team directing your SEO efforts, you can gain traffic, increase conversions, and achieve higher revenue.
How to Choose the Right Local SEO Company for Your Business
Now that you know how important it is to choose the right SEO company, let us see how.
Seek Expert Opinions
While making marketing decisions, always seek the opinion of SEO experts. That may be an experienced professional or a company that provides certifications for SEO expertise. If you have proof from a reliable source that your SEO agency is worth investing in, you can feel more reassured about hiring them.
Look at Track Records
Next to third-party certifications, the company’s history of work can help you make an informed decision. To ensure your local SEO company will deliver what it promised, you must look at their record with current clients and past customers. Have they been able to generate positive results? How high is their success percentage?
You can find reliable online reviews on Google, check their website for testimonials, and also read case studies if available. If the company has had long associations with clients, it is a good sign that proves their efficiency and success rate.
Apart from reading reviews, you can also choose to approach their past clients for recommendations. Always approach multiple past clients before making a decision, so that you can get an objective opinion about the company.
Communicate Clearly Before Hiring
Before engaging a local SEO company for your business, it is important that you understand each other’s needs and expectations. Communicate your goals clearly, explain any objective results you want to see, and also provide a timeline if applicable.
It is also a wise move to go over proposed strategies and plans, so that campaigns can be built and executed quickly and more precisely. This approach is always better than blindly diving into an agreement and later being disappointed with the results.
Find Out How They Track Data and Provide Reports
Any SEO strategy depends on tracking data accurately. The analysis of this data helps to track leads, understand potential customers, and build a niche in the market. Your local SEO company needs to track leads, analyze responses, figure out which channels are fetching more traffic, and so on.
An understanding of these aspects will help you create more successful strategies. You can achieve this through tools for call tracking, keyword analysis, lead acquisition, etc. With so much data in hand, you also need to check reports of your local SEO performance.
While choosing an SEO company, ask how they collect data and present reports. Some important questions include whether they provide quarterly or monthly reports, which data channels are highlighted, and how they plan to implement the results.
Set Clear KPIs
KPIs or key performance indicators are types of performance measurement metrics that evaluate the success of an SEO strategy or campaign. You must have a clear discussion about the KPIs you need the company to track. Some factors that can be regarded as KPIs are:
- Traffic
- Revenue Growth
- Number of new customers
- Number of ad clicks
- Search ranks, etc.
If you are clear about which KPI to target, your SEO company can make better strategies and fetch you the desired results.
Check Their Customer Support System
After performance, the most important factor while hiring a local SEO company is their customer support policies. If you are paying for a service but not getting responses when in a fix, it will make the whole experience bitter.
Check whether the SEO company has a hands-on customer service team or personnel. Ask how to reach them in case of queries, and find out from past clients how effectively they deal with customer issues. These factors will let you make a better decision that you won’t regret later.
Conclusion
The right local SEO company can do wonders for your business. Since local SEO has a vast potential in influencing business growth, you must choose the right professional to help you in this journey. Keep the above factors in mind when you are researching for local SEO services and you can never go wrong in making a choice!
