One of the biggest issues for business owners is to stay relevant in today’s mobile-driven world and get noticed in your local area. If you don’t appear on someone’s map or don’t show up for “search in your area”, you can lose a lot of potential customers.
Being hyperlocal is a great way for marketers to send out successful marketing messages to potential clients in a specific local area and promote your products or services effectively. Hyperlocal marketing looks like a microscope that can help you focus on a particular city or neighborhood to improve your business for a local search.
You know that hyperlocal search is pointing toward the growth in mobile search, and Google wants to increase “near me” and “ nearby” searches. According to this research, 94% of people search for local information by using their mobile phones. That’s why it’s important to optimize your business for mobile and local. Implementing these hyperlocal tips into your local strategy will make your brand more successful within the niche in your local area.
1. Build Local Reviews
You know that most of the mobile search results are accompanied by reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other business review sites. For small businesses, reviews play an important role in local search ranking. Based on the Moz survey, reviews total to 10% of local search ranking, so local SEO is very crucial for generating in-store traffic.
If you get a lot of positive reviews about your business, you can be ahead of your competitors and get more potential customers. It is important to receive as many positive reviews as you can to increase your brand authority. According to this survey, 88% of customers rely on local reviews and in-person recommendations to make purchasing decisions.
In this context, Yates Jarvis, an e-commerce marketing consultant, emphasizes the following:
“Garnering positive reviews isn’t just about outshining the competition; it’s about building a trusted community around your brand, one satisfied customer at a time. In the hyperlocal marketing arena, each positive review is a powerful testament to your business’s commitment to excellence, significantly influencing the purchasing decisions of future customers.“
You can encourage your consumers to leave reviews about your product or service. You can also offer something (discount, free item, or special offer) in exchange for reviews. Just be creative.
Gather many reviews as you can and create a special testimonial page where you can show all of them. For example, Zavodnick, Zavodnick & Lasky created a fantastic client testimonial video about their services.
You know that it is easy to destroy your online reputation, but it takes much time and effort to re-establish it.
2. Create Localized Content
If you want to succeed in local SEO, creating great content for your target audience is a must. You can create localized content on your blog and publish different local news, events, or local points of interest like landmarks, buildings, or destinations that people might search in a particular area. Moreover, you can create a local community or network of loyal readers that can be a great starting point for sales and enhance your profits.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, mobile search results continue to rise, and it is vital to optimizing your content for more mobile search terms. Create content by including “near me” and neighborhood search terms. For example, Hasner Law writes review-based articles by using hyperlocal tips and buying intent. They specialize in personal injury and create content titled “The Most Dangerous Intersections in Savannah” or “The Deadliest Workplace Injuries in Atlanta”.
From time to time, you can step out of the comfort zone regarding the content and focus more on local communities (weather, language, habits, events, etc,). With all content, be informative, useful and conversational. Avoid being self-promotional and stick to your brand guidelines with its own voice. Just try to deliver personalized local value via your content for customers that have common interests and share a community.
3. Optimize Your Google My Business Page
Google My Business is a great way to have a steady increase in hyperlocal search. When searching for a particular type of local business, you will always find the top GMB search results, such as the overall rating, reviews, content, contact details, and other information. If you want to get more hyperlocal, it’s essential to manage and optimize your Google My Business Page.
Once you’ve created your GMB page, here are the following things you should do:
- Fill out every single field related to your local business and claim ownership of your business listing.
- Choose an appropriate category that helps to describe your business and connect to potential customers.
- Double-check the contact information of your listing (address, open hours, local phone number). The contact information should be consistent with the information on your website, social media, and local directories.
- Add a unique business name, description, and link to your website.
- Include high-resolution photos and cover image.
- Publish content within your account to let people know about your special offers, discount, and events directly from search results.
If your Google My Business page is optimized properly, you can stand out from the crowd and attract new customers from the local search and Google Maps. If you manage multiple business locations, you should create and optimize pages for each location and link back to your Google My Business pages.
4. Add Local Schema Markup
One of the key tasks to improve your local SEO is using schema markup to help search engines easily understand your business as local. Once you implement schema markup into your website, you can improve your website in local search results and show more informative results for users. There are many different types of schema markup you should choose to better specify your local business.
For law firms and attorneys, you can use a particular Schema to enhance their local results. Here is a great example from Mirman, Markovits & Landau PC, using schema markup for their local small business:
You can mark up not only addresses, names, but also things like videos, breadcrumbs, website navigation menus, etc. Just make sure to validate the code before adding to your website, reveal any possible errors and make the changes at once. Google’s Structured Data Testing tool is the best way to test and validate your code.
You can easily test your schema markup in Google’s Search Console and get instant results of your implementation with average results reporting. Ensure to check out your Google Search Console for any new issues to quickly resolve these errors.
5. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
As more and more people are searching for local options on mobile devices, ensure that your website is optimized for mobile. Mobile focuses a lot on hyperlocal marketing, and it goes hand in hand with the search. Once you have a mobile-friendly website, you have a high chance of showing up your local business in top search results.
When it comes to mobile optimization, find relevant location-based keywords and optimize them for your mobile content. To check out how well your webpage is optimized for a certain search query, you can use On-page SEO Checker. It will give you a detailed and comprehensive analysis of each page with a list of required fixes and recommendations.
Always add your business name, location, phone, and address on your website. Make sure that your NAP information is consistent with the information on your GMB listing, social media profiles, and local directories.
You know that customers want to instantly find all necessary info through mobile search. Be creative and active. You can create mobile apps for your small business and add there all daily deals, special offers, mobile coupons, discounts, and flash sales. It is a great way to connect with your target audience and control your business’s mobile promotions and messaging.
6. Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is a good way to market your local business and drive a lot of organic traffic. You can integrate maps to show directions to your local business, add click-to-call buttons, share one clear message, and give special offers.
It’s important to optimize your emails for viewing on mobile devices and tablets as a lot of people are likely to open them through these devices. You can also follow this ultimate email outreach guide to increase your website traffic.
Moreover, there are a lot of email marketing services like Pinpointe, AWeber that come with integrated mobile support, high delivery, open rates, and email analytics to better understand how effective your marketing campaign performs at achieving your goals and increasing conversions.
Bottom Line
Having an effective hyperlocal marketing strategy is a good way to increase your local presence, drive more traffic, and take your business to the next level. Using these hyperlocal tips will help you find new customers, show your brand to the best advantage before, during and after the purchasing process. Keep experimenting and learning from each hyperlocal effort to figure out how effectively to scale target cities and regions.
