The way people do searches online is changing. Now searches are looking for companies and recommendations from people they know in their area. This is where local merchants SEO comes into play and local businesses now have a wide array of resources available to them that will allow them to connect to their customer base in new ways. I’m going to go over 5 key tactics to make any local business a superstar in the eyes of their customers and gain more exposure for their business.

1. SEO- ready site design and architecture

You might not think so but how your site looks plays a huge factor on SEO. Not so much your rankings but instead your conversions. Your HTML code, navigation layout, color scheme and more will increase your SEO conversions. Keeping a clean but professional and easy to navigate site is key for a local small business to be successful online. Be sure to test your design by asking others to visit the site and try to find the product they are buying. Offer them a discount for doing so and use that feedback to create a better well organized site.

2. Local Search Engine Optimization

While SEO for marketers is about hitting major keywords that generate a lot of traffic and buyers building SEO for local search engines becomes a bit more tricky. Instead of targeting major keywords you are targeting city and making sure your site shows up for that result.  A large part of doing so is creating Facebook fan pages and placing your city and what your business does within the description. Search engines love these types of fanpages to direct searches to finding a quality company in their local area.

3. Social Media Marketing

Building a solid interactive social media presence in your local area provides a huge impact. By having your company in the spotlight for events and allowing others in the area to comment on your fanpage by leaving feedback about your services can build loyalty. This also as stated above increases the likely hood of those searching for your service in the area to come to you creating foot traffic for your business.

4. Geo-Targeted Paid Search

Search engines along with Facebook allow you to target customers within your city. This provides your ads only to those within the area who would likely come to your business. For example if you are selling jewelry but are a small store and do no business online then you need more foot traffic from locals in your area. You can then target cities around you and show what your store has to offer to get people to visit your store and start buying. These paid ads are based per click and you can expect quality results because of the amount of targeting  you can do with them. Age, Gender, City, other likes etc are some things you can use to target your ads.

5. Conversion Rate Optimization

Understanding what your visitors want is key to improving your conversion rates. The main goal of increasing your conversion rates is to target your ads enough that more people take action on the ad they are seeing. While many people fall in the trap of the more clicks the better it’s further from the truth when it comes to local marketing. You don’t want to be paying money out for people who will never step foot in your door.

Some ideas of ads could be click-to-calls, redemption of online only deals, requesting directions, reviewing or endorsing your product. Customers will begin to fuel your online advertising and simply clicking to like your fanpage will now increase traffic coming to your store.