Digital Marketing Agency Near Me – Say What?
“Digital marketing agency near me”. At first it seems like a very weird turn of a phrase but then you realize that it encapsulates much of local marketing today.
For the majority of America’s small businesses and enterprises, their service areas are highly localized and typically include an
area of about 100 miles around their operation. When consumers are trying to find service providers with the products and services, they use search engines and type in things like “digital marketing agency near me”. This extends to nearly every business with the “near me” search. “Dry cleaner near me”, “landscaping near me” and “take out near me” are all the top searches by consumers looking for those types of businesses. It has only been in the last 3 years that the “X-near me” search has become the primary driver of traffic to local business.
Before we go further, it is important to clarify that this is for a website’s Search Engine Optimization or “SEO”. SEO is the science and art of getting a site to rank highly for phrases related to the thing a site is selling or the service that is being offered.
There are many SEO best practices that a site can use to get a site ranked highly in search for the phrases that are important to it. Some of these are technical and wonky but, in our experience, having optimized content is the most powerful driver of organic traffic to a site. This content can include videos and still images that are optimized for search but one of the most durable and productive forms of SEO is written.
The ”X-near me” search phrase can be difficult to shoehorn into much written content. In this post we tried to do it a little playfully, but it can be hard in a literary sense. Our best advice to incorporate this type of phrase into your SEO content is to just do it and not to worry about clunkiness. Just write “Looking for drycleaners near me? Then you’ve come to the right place”. It may not meet Strunk & White levels of prose but for most business people and their purposes it’s fine.
There are other content tactics that should be used by people who want their enterprise to rank highly on local search. Optimizing still images and videos is important for many businesses. Written content is also very important because of the ability to include search traffic keywords into blog posts and news items.
Creating written posts for your site offers the dual benefit of getting you to rank on search and to also communicate how your enterprise approaches these issues. It can take some time to create this content, but it is worth it in the long run.
Some of the elements of your written SEO content should include
- A good title that includes the keyword
- 300-word minimum content
- SEO-optimized images with URLs that include the keyword phrase
- SEO title and meta descriptions that also include the keyword (these are what Google displays to web searchers)
- Links to other related content on your site
- Links to quality 3rd party sites with relevant content
- A final URL for the post or news item that contains the keyword phrase
In order for this content to register with search engines, it is critical that your site be set up so that they can find it through spidering. You can find YouTube videos on how to do this or ask your web developer.
The next step that is critical in local search is to post this content to as many other sites as possible.
For most companies these sites include:
- Yelp
Posting to each of these that you are a part of is important because Google reviews them for your domain’s content. When
Google sees you posting on these sites it reinforces for its algorithm that you are an engaged marketer, and it boosts your domain’s authority score.
For many of our clients there will be an important specialty site that they also need to have a presence on. For instance, for home improvement and design firms, Houzz is incredibly important. Houzz is one of the dominant discovery sites for consumers looking at home improvement ideas and being on it can drive significant traffic. Pinterest and other sites also perform this function.
Another critical site that must be catered to is your Google Business listing. A recent analysis by Google found that 60% of smartphone users contacted businesses directly through the Google Business listing’s “click to call” feature. Grey Matter Direct is seeing rates like this for our clients too.
Google Business is important because it’s often the first thing your customers notice when they search for your business.
- A well-made Google Business listing can single-handedly improve a business’s local SEO ranking. This is because Google is trying to dominate this space and rewards site’s that feed their listing.
- A Google Business listing creates the first impression for searchers who see your business’s essential info listed on the right-hand side of the search page.
- Google Business integrates Google Maps, which helps consumers find your business on the world’s most widely used mobile map and directions app.
- Customers can send messages directly to your company phone or email via the GMB interface if you choose to allow direct messaging.
- Customer reviews are prominently displayed under your Google Business profile, giving your business social credibility that rivals Yelp or Trustpilot.
In terms of boosting your local ranking, make sure your business is properly categorized. In your Google Business admin panel, go to the “Primary Category” box and select the category that best describes your company (i.e., “dry cleaner” or “casual dining restaurant”), and add a secondary category if needed. You can also add products and services that will boost your local ranking as well.
If you are looking for a digital marketing agency near me or would like any help with your local SEO, please contact us today at: 856-465-6300 or send us a Text Message