How to improve your local SEO in under five minutes

The Marketing People

Burntwood-based in-house marketing agency The Marketing People have recently released a series of short videos to help fellow Chamber members get the most out of their business.

In their latest offering, they show you how to dramatically increase your local web visibility immediately. If you are looking to improve your company’s local search rankings, use Google My Business. It’s easy to set up, it’s extremely effective, and best of all, it’s totally FREE.

The Marketing People’s SEO Manager John Hoey shows you the simple steps to set up your Google My Business account and quickly connect with customers based upon your location. Easily add your e-mail address, phone number, cover photos and other information contained in the business profile. This can be done once you have verified your account to improve rankings.

Don’t miss out. Watch their quick video here:

For your convenience, please find below step-by-step instructions from the video on how to get your business live on Google:

Google My Business is a free piece of software that Google offer, so anyone around the world can set up their business.

By searching The Marketing People in Google, look at the box on the right-hand side with our logo, telephone number, opening hours and reviews included.

Go to www.google.com/business and sign in. The first thing it asks for is your business name, so type that in and click next.

Next, do you want to add a business location where customers can visit you, like a shop or an office? By typing in your business address, this allows Google to display your location on Google Maps.

Now it will ask, do you serve customers outside of this location? If so, it will prompt you to specify where. Be selective with the areas you include and don’t flood it with every city in the UK; this won’t improve your Google My Business listing.

Your business category is next on the list. Google will copyright you for the categories that you input, so make sure you select the most relevant one.

Next up is your contact details. Add your telephone number and website address. If you need help with designing and developing a new website, or you need some changes making to your existing website, please call The Marketing People.

Once you have clicked finished, Google will send you a postcard through the post to your physical location. Once you have received this, go back to www.google.com/business and enter the code that’s on the postcard. This will complete the optimisation.

Now it’s time to populate your page.

You’ve got all this information down the left-hand side, including your address and your service areas. You can add your opening and closing hours and any special hours for Christmas, Easter or any religious celebrations. You can also easily post photos, blog posts or anything else that may help your search results.

So there you have it, there’s a really quick and simple, free business tool to improve your Google rankings.

SEO is a fundamental part of the overall process of delivering inbound enquiries, engaging effectively, and convincing and converting those visitors to customers.

Take advantage of our free SEO audit to discover where you are listed on Google, and how to appear ahead of your competitors.

For an SEO contract that provides a return on investment (ROI) call The Marketing People now on 01543 495752 to find out how we can help.