Marketing Local Business Through SEO

We had an enquiry recently from a long-established local business. Well known in the town, they have been trading for over 30 years. With traditional marketing increasing in cost our client was beginning to look into digital marketing but did not know where to start.

Following some keyword research and on completing an analysis of the client’s internet presence we noted that their website was only appearing on page 1 of Google search for 1 out of the top 10 local keyword search phrases relevant to their business. Because of this they were losing out on potentially over 1000 localised monthly searches for their products and services.

The reason was simple for us to understand. Although the website (a standard html platform) was presentable enough, absolutely no basic SEO infrastructure had been done. Every page had the same title, meta descriptions were being pulled just from the content, and none of the content was optimised for the popular localised search phrases. This is very common, even on sites designed by experienced (and expensive) web design companies – most concentrate on pleasing the client with design, whilst skimming over the fundamental purpose of the website as a marketing tool.

Some further competitor analysis revealed only low-to-medium SEO infrastructure in place on competing business websites. The potential was there to gain a significant market advantage.
In this case there was no need to build a new website for the client. We corrected the faulty SEO infrastructure on the existing website to optimise it for local search relevant to the top 10 search keyphrases used. Whilst we were at it, we also changed one or two images and poor-quality logos that were present.

Within a week, the results staggered the client. For 8 out of the top 10 local searches, the website now ranked on page 1, with several top 3 positions. This ranking improvement has already resulted in sales, with several new customers having found the business through Google search.

Moreover, our analytics now report a four-fold increase in targeted hits to the website.

Moving forward, we now intend to begin a localised social media campaign including news releases, customer reviews and competitions. In addition, the increased internet traffic could easily now warrant upgrading the website to an e-commerce platform.

There’s more information here on website SEO Infrastructure and why we (and Google) think it is so important.