Website Development and Digital Marketing for Local Businesses

HOW TO USE LOCAL SEO AND ORGANIC SEO FOR LOCAL SUCCESS

Small businesses make up 90% of the American economy. In 2020, most small businesses in the United States have been profoundly affected by the Coronavirus slowdown. Those small businesses that seem to have fared the best in the current environment have embraced the Internet and have been utilizing it as a powerful tool. As a result, those small businesses that are not yet online are racing to establish their presence.

The team at Lokalyze has been doing website development for almost 20 years, digital marketing for nearly 10, content, and local SEO for seven years now. Since that time, the importance of the Internet has only increased.

In 2020, consider that:

• Google dominates the search engine market, maintaining an 88 percent market share.
• As many as 46% of all Google searches are local.
• “Where to buy” and “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200%. Over 50% of ‘near me’ searches result in a physical store visit.
• 74% of in-store shoppers search for information such as the closest store near them, locations, in-stock near them, hours, directions, and contact information before going to the store.
• 70% of consumers will go to a physical store to find search information relevant to their search results.

Hopefully, I have made a case for just how important Google and the Internet are to small businesses.

Small Businesses and Digital Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, 92% of small business owners think that having a website is the most effective digital marketing strategy. However, when it comes to websites, only 64% of small businesses have one. 35% of small business owners feel that their operation is too small to warrant having one. In my opinion, every small business should have a website because it is the only form of media that you own. Paid and earned media is owned by other parties and can be taken down at any time by the platforms’ owners.

Success online is all about two things: traffic and conversions. Website traffic refers to users who visit a website, while conversions represent the percentage of visitors who convert to customers.

There are two types of traffic, organic and paid. Organic traffic is used to describe visits to a website from search engine organic results and not paid ads. They are calculated algorithmically. In contrast, paid traffic originates from a paid advertising campaign. Examples of paid traffic include Pay per click (PPC) advertising, banners, advertisements, pop-ups, and video ads.

Organic traffic vs paid traffic and other sources of traffic

Organic traffic is growing and makes up 53% of all in 2020, with paid search traffic consisting of 15% of traffic. If you are a B2B small business, organic traffic is even more critical because more than 75% of B2B traffic coming from paid and organic paid search.

Other channel visits consist of traffic generated by social media and “other” channels. Less than 5% or 4.7% of website traffic originated from social media. “Other” channels consist of direct visits and traffic generated from marketing campaigns such as email and newsletters and drive 27% of traffic.

Why focus on search?

The fact that over 75% of traffic to the average B2B website comes from search engines should be sufficient to make the case. 53% of traffic comes from organic search, while 15% of traffic is from paid search.

There is another significant reason for doing SEO.  Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads such as cold calling and direct mail have a 1.7% close rate.

Marketing a local small business online calls for two forms of search engine optimization (SEO): local SEO and organic SEO.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO refers to the process of ‘optimizing’ your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches. While there are other search engines, Google is the 800- pound Gorilla accounting for almost 93% of the global search market. Of that, 46% of Google’s searches are local and represent many searches with local intent.

Google implements local SEO primarily through Google My Business, a tool that enables businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.

Google My Business uses the address where your business is based. If there is a lot of competition, it can be challenging to rank in cities and towns where you don’t have a physical address. Unfortunately, many local small businesses target prospects and customers across a state, several regions, cities, or towns. For these small businesses, local SEO is not going to be enough. How do you rank for regions, cities, and towns where you don’t have a physical presence?

The answer is with City Pages.

What are City Pages?

City pages are pages on your website targeting specific cities, towns, zip codes, and geographical areas. They are optimized with relevant content to that particular city, town, zip code, or geographical location to increase organic website visitors and generate more leads, customers, and revenue from local markets.

Local SEO and city pages

We have made the case for search, defined local SEO, and city pages. How does this all fit together?

In the example below, our small business is located in Phoenix, Arizona. The orange area is the City of Phoenix whereas the gold area represents surrounding towns and cities. All told, there are about 20 cities or towns surrounding Phoenix.

In this example, the area in orange is covered online using local SEO, specifically Google GMB and Google Maps. The area in yellow is covered by City Pages, one for each town and city. As a result, the digital footprint covering our small business is essentially doubled than if they were using local SEO alone. This means access to twice the number of potential customers, translating into more conversions, sales, and revenue.

Ready to learn more about city pages or increase the reach of your business with city pages?  Order a city page or several for your website.

Interested in local digital marketing or software development for your business or project?

Contact us with your project needs.