Attorneys, dentists, doctors, contractors, therapists, retail shops, restaurants and every other type of local business or organization must have a presence on the Internet in order to be found by the millions of people who are using the web to find goods, services, business names, addresses and phone numbers every year. If you’re not visible on the web, you are losing business – it’s as simple as that!
What isn’t always simple is knowing what steps to take to make a wise investment of your marketing budget to achieve local visibility on the web. That’s where we come in. Solas Web Design helps great North American businesses make smart choices about their Local Search Engine Optimization and Local Search Marketing. We can work one-on-one with you in 3 different ways to help you achieve the local search engine rankings you want so that you start getting more phone calls and foot traffic at your place of business.
Your website is the most important factor in your overall search engine rankings and local rankings. If it is currently failing to rank well, we are ready to consult with you about meaningful improvements that can be implemented so that your business becomes a strong competitor in the search engines.
If your website wasn’t developed by designers who also happen to be Local SEOs, chances are it is lacking key local hooks. Your site may require a few simple adjustments and additions or significant improvements to the site’s total organization and optimization. Show us your website and we will create a free proposal for its local optimization.
Don’t have a website yet? View our Local Business Website Design Packages.
Once your website is properly optimized for Local Search, your next step is getting listed in a variety of online local business indexes. Without question, the most important of these is Google My Business. Avoid accidental mistakes and costly penalties by hiring us to create/edit your Google Place Page. We know the Guidelines for Representing your Business on Google like the backs of our hands and will create a clean, spam-free, violation-free Google My Business listing for your business.
We can get you listed in other vital local business indexes, too, from Bing Places to Yelp to Infogroup to Hotfrog and more! Remember – Google crawls the entire web looking for references to your business. Being listed in the right places strengthens Google’s picture of the validity and relevance of your business. Let us take the stress out of the listing process by handling it for you, professionally.
Solas Web Design’s co-founder, Miriam Ellis, is respected throughout North America for her knowledge of Local SEO. Miriam provides hourly phone consultation to all kinds of great local businesses and is the Local SEO Subject Matter Expert for Moz.com, the internationally renowed SEO software company. She spends part of every day simply answering questions about Local SEO best practices. If you have questions about local search, call Miriam at (707) 981-7943. She can teach you, train you and empower you to undertake your own Local SEO campaign, giving you total control over how you choose to market yourself locally.
Diving into local search marketing on behalf of your business can be lonely, confusing and even intimidating. There is a lot of information out there on this subject – some of it spot on and some of it absolutely wrong. Sometimes, even an hour or two spent talking with an industry professional is invaluable in its ability to help you make profitable decisions, avoid costly mistakes and determine where you should be focusing your energy. Whether Local SEO is a whole new world for you or you are on your way to becoming a pro yourself, consulting with Miriam Ellis will give you confidence in the decisions you are making for your local business.
Local Search Statistics You Absolutely Need To Know
– 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information
– 78% of Local Mobile searches result in offline purchases
– Every month, people visit 1.5 billion destinations related to what they searched for on Google”
* Data quoted from Google
Over the past two decase, more and more business owners have been pulling their budget out of off-line media like phone books and newspapers and putting it toward online marketing. With figures like these, it’s easy to see that having a strong, locally-optimized website and a smart local search marketing strategy has become a must. We can help you. Contact Solas Web Design Today.
Definition of a Local Business
In the eyes of the search engines, your business must meet the following criteria to qualify for inclusion in the local search engine results:
If your business model complies with these two factors, it qualifies as local and can take advantage of the exceptional opportunities the Internet affords local businesses like yours.
What Do Local Search Engine Rankings Look Like?
Whether an Internet user is search for a painting contractor in Berkeley, California, a bowl of chili in Cincinnati, Ohio or a dentist in Washington D.C., they are likely to be shown a set of local results to choose from. Google and other search engines are constantly evolving the way in which they display local business information. For some searches, they show purely organic results culled directly from websites. For others, they show results mainly drawn from the data they have in Google Maps/Google My Business. Most commonly these days, searches that are local in intent receive a display of blended organic and local results.
Google and others will continue to tweak their displays, but the bottom line is that your business will benefit from being visible with the combination of a strong, locally-optimized website and off-site marketing efforts.
How Do Search Engines Rank Local Businesses?
Your overall search engine rankings will be based on a large number of factors, some of the most important of which will be:
If you want to outrank your local competition, your strategy will basically come down to making a greater effort than any other local competitor. Planning a winning strategy that adheres to the rules of the search engines while making you stand out is the right way to go about achieving dominance on the web in your city and industry.
What Not To Do
Don’t put your reputation in the hands of any Local SEO company that intends to attempt spamming their way to success for you. Such ‘success’ is typically short-lived and can result in serious penalties or bannings that will make your business more-or-less invisible on the web. Unfortunately, as Local has become more and more of a force to be reckoned with, an increasing number of marketing firms have cropped up selling services that are, at best, worthless, or at worst, forbidden by Google and other search engines.
Don’t let any marketer put your important reputation in jeopardy with tactics that aren’t allowed, no matter what. Always investigate the professional reputation of any Local SEO you are considering hiring. A few searches on the Internet will show you the industry involvement and reputation of any Local SEO. Sadly, we hear from many business owners who have been gotten into hot water or who have blown their budget by hiring the wrong people. Once penalized, it can be extremely difficult to get back into the good graces of Google et al. We don’t want to see this happen to your business.
How You Will Benefit From Working With Solas Web Design
Local business owner education is our #1 commitment. We will explain to you exactly what we are doing, and why we are doing it so that you come away from working with us feeling confident about how Local Search works and how it relates to your business. We adhere strictly to the Guidelines for representing your business on Google. and teach you how to make smart decisions, not risky ones, for a successful future.
After an initial contract of work has been completed, we remain available to our Local Search clients for hourly consultations or additional work whenever you need it. We offer one-on-one service you will not find at mega design corporations. We get to know our clients’ businesses and goals, and have clients who have been consulting with us for a decade.
Our Clients Say:
“Solas Web Design came highly recommended as being the best local search experts around and they lived up to this. From my first conversation with them I was impressed with the depth of their knowledge of the field. I got an education on local SEO! Once I engaged their services they met every deadline and exceeded my expectations in every way. They made the process simple for me and now after only a month I’m already on page two of the local listings and I’m in a highly competitive area in a large city. I expect to be on the first page soon, since I’m diligently following their recommendations for moving up in the rankings. They laid the groundwork. Also, I’m very concerned about “white hat” SEO and they are 100% white hat.”
– Steve Lampert, eNanny Source
“The ranking results are higher which have resulted in more business. You are a fabulous alternative to AT & T online Yellow Pages.”
– Cathy Wong, Champion Mobile Notary
“We couldn’t have done this without your creative ability and technical knowledge. We couldn’t be happier with the finished product. Thanks for providing exactly what we asked for and more.”
– Jeremy Spencer, Colorado Fireside
“Solas Web Design really knows their business and gently guided us in the correct way to make our website score well with the search engines so that our website could do everything we need it to do for our business.”
– Larry James, High Country Stoves and Chimneys
