As a small local business owner, you might be wondering how important is your website and how can you get new customers from your site? After all, you are just a small fish in the sea of businesses and your budget might be smaller than a larger competitor. But this does not mean you can’t make it work for you. As a small business, your marketing strategy differs greatly form a larger national company. However, because you are a small local business, you can get more personal with your customers. Your audience is local, and many consumers are shopping at local businesses now more than ever. Make sure they know you are local too.
Creating local awareness for your business can be done through content on your website by making sure your website shows up for searches relevant to your business. For example, when someone searches for “restaurants near me”, their results will show restaurants that are in the near vicinity from where they are searching. And if you are an owner of a local restaurant, you will want your website to show up in the top search results for that search. To do this, your website needs to be optimized to show searchers that you are a local business.
First, the content on your website is important. Too many people get caught up writing content for search engines, focusing too much on using the right words that will show up at the top of searches. But if you write for the users of your site and not for the search engines, your site will perform better. When you write for your users, you are looking to address and solve their problems. You provide them with what they need and want when they are looking for it. If your content solves their problems and gives them what they want, they will stay on your site longer. This helps your SEO because the search engine will see how long a user visits your site and will continue to show your website to other users with similar searches in the future, bumping your site up in the search results.
Now your website solves the problems of your customers, but your local business is very specific to one area. Your website needs to show up in the location that your customers are searching in, and not show for areas they aren’t. For example, if your local restaurant is in Wichita and you don’t serve areas outside of the city, you would want to make sure your site will show when someone searches for “restaurants near me” when they are in Wichita, but you wouldn’t want your website to show up when someone is searching for “restaurants near me” if they are in Topeka. This is where local keywords come in. By using keywords that are relevant to your local market, your website will show up in searches where your business is located and won’t show up in locations where you aren’t. By including area-specific keywords in your website’s content, you are telling your customers, and the search engine, “I’m local to Wichita only”. This will help ensure that only your local audience will see and visit your website.
It’s not enough to just show up in the search results, it is also very important to make sure your website design is responsive and mobile-friendly because most searches are done from a mobile device. When someone searches “restaurants near me”, Google will show businesses that are in the same area as someone searching. Because you used local keywords on your website, you will show up in the search results. When they click on your website, they might be looking for your menu to see what kind of food your restaurant offers. If your website is not mobile-friendly, your visitors will have a hard time navigating to your menu and will leave to go to another website. Therefore, you need to make sure that your site can be read easily by the visitor.
Your Business is different from a national company and needs to be treated that way. Marketing is not a one size fits all approach and each business needs a different strategy to ensure they receive the best results. Making sure the right people are aware of your business will cause your website to show up when people search for products or services that you offer. If you are looking to have a website created with an emphasis on being local, it is important that you choose a website designer that knows your market. Using a website design company that is also local to your market will give you an advantage because they already know your market and how to design a website that is optimized to perform well in your market. Here at Big Corner Creative, we are a local marketing agency that serves many clients in a variety of industries. We have the knowledge and experience to design a website that will drive local customers to your website. Contact us today for a free website analysis and let us help you create local awareness for your business.