Local SEO Opportunities Are Important For Small Businesses

Are you making the most of your local SEO opportunities?

How do customers find you?

By guess work, by map, by sat nav? Ok how about search engines?

Does your website contain not only your full postal address, but also several very detailed sets of driving instructions, as well as walking instructions from the train station or bus stop?

it will take a little time to compile this, but it is well worth it. Go out and drive all the main routes from the motorways or main A roads in your area through to your premises. I am not recommending you drive and write at the same time, so please take someone with you. Also walk the routes from the train station and the bus stop.

Make good, detailed notes including landmarks on the routes and specify
· travelling from ‘A’
· travelling from ‘B’
· travelling from ‘C’
· travelling from ‘D’

Make these separate, easily printable pages and remember to add the full address and telephone number to every page of directions; it’s amazing how many people forget to do this!

Not only will this help your customers but will also help with local SEO, this tactic means you will come up in searches where long tail keywords including street names or landmarks are used, so a double benefit for a little time out on the road on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

A good example might be:
"XYZ Company is conveniently located on the High Street, next to the XXX public library and opposite the ZZZ shopping centre; our full postal address is XYZ Company, 123 Street, Any Town, Any Where, XX1 2YY. Our telephone number is 020 1234 5678.
Directions from all major motorways, 'A' roads, bus stop and train station are also provided for your convenience in easily printable pages". (Add travelling from links in here).

This will then enable you to be found when searches are made on the local area, for a street name, a train station, the library, the shopping centre, the motorways and 'A' roads, as you can see this gives you many more opportunities to be found.

Every business wants to be found by it's prospects, customers, partners, suppliers and visitors, so make sure it is your business they find.

As A Small Business Owner Motivation Is Key

How motivated to succeed are you?

Self motivation is one of the key elements to the success of your new business.

You may have been very motivated and excited as you were putting your idea together, but as we all know that was just the start.

Now, you have opened the doors and nothing much has happened……., it did not take off as you expected, people did not keep their promises, people haven’t paid you, it’s harder than you thought.

There are many reasons you may be feeling a bit down, it all rests on your shoulders, so it is vital you dig deep, keep focussed and stay motivated.

Now is the time to motivate……..

• Think positively, see how far you have come, remember you had nothing to start with
• Congratulate your self on your successes
• Make a list of your achievements
• Find a mentor, if you can
• Spend time with positive people, family, friends who support you
• Set your self some sensible realistic targets to change your current circumstances
• Visualise your success not what you perceive as your failure
• Appreciate what you have learnt so far
• Identify what motivates you and set a goal around this
• Look after yourself & your health
• Spend time away from work, get the right work life balance
• Take some breaks, coffee, lunch etc
• Take time away from your workplace to think, you will be more productive outside your work environment
• Remember you started this because it’s something you enjoy doing
• Acknowledge what is stressing you out and find a way to lessen the effects
• Take a holiday, even if it is only one day and leave it all behind
• Give a member of your staff or hire someone to do the thing’s you do not enjoy or are not good at
• Finally take positive action, play to your strengths

Need a boost, need to bounce some ideas around to get things going again, I am always happy to help, so get in touch and together we will kick start the process.

Who is your prospect in your target market?

Having taken into account the 7 key areas, which I discussed in more depth the previous blogs, listed here as a quick reminder:

1. Worries
2. Age
3. Gender
4. Education
5. Relationship/marital Status
6. Income
7. Location

Now it is time to construct a specific profile for your target market and make it really personal, this will then provide you with a picture in your mind, you will now be talking to one specific person and we all know its much easier to talk to just one person, than stand up in front of an audience of thousands.

Your reader will also feel like you are really just talking to them, and them alone, you know their circumstances, you can empathise with them, you are on their wave length, speaking their language, understanding their needs and wants.

Now imagine how well you message will be received, you are appealing to their emotions, they want what you have to offer.

So, bearing all this in mind get started with generating your person, give them: a name, age, gender, marital status, occupation, home, location, children, pets, hobbies etc

Some examples might be:

John is a 22 year old single, care free, no responsibilities, university student, who lives in a shared flat with two other guys. He lives a short distance from university and uses his bike to get to and from lectures. He is into facebook, twitter and the internet and only opens his post if it’s vital and important, conducts his life online and on the phone. Is into sports and fitness, goes to the gym, plays football and cycles. Plans to go around the world when he qualifies in 4 years time before starting work as an accountant.

Sally is a 35 year old married working mum with two children, a 5 year old boy David and an 8 year old girl Jane. She and her husband Paul have their own business in landscape gardening, Paul does all the gardening and Sally runs the office, so she can be around for the kids. They live in a small house in town, run two cars and go abroad once a year in the school summer holidays. They have a cat, a dog and two rabbits. All the family use computers and the internet regularly for work, pleasure and school work, Sally books the summer holiday online every year.

You can expand your prospect profiles with as much detail as you feel is suitable to enable you to picture this person in your mind’s eye; I hope you find the two examples useful and a good starting point to get your thoughts flowing.

You can quickly see from the two examples above how different your messages would need to be to make them interesting and attractive to either John or Sally and her family. You can also see how sending a message that suits John would be a complete waste of time and energy if it was sent to Sally, more importantly Sally may be turned off from one of your products or services in the future because she has already received something from you that is of no interest to her. However had you sent out the correct profile message you could have kept her interested for something in the future.