Small businesses have a lot on their plate, especially with all the competition they have to face online. With search sites like Google having great power to make or break online marketing and business operations, constructing and maintaining a strong, solid website is now, more than ever, critical. Local SEO is complex and there is much room for mistakes, hence it is important to make sure that you have a solid campaign to keep your website afloat. Here are some common mistakes that can break your local campaign when not addressed immediately:
- Lack of business listing –A common rookie mistake, not creating a business listing can definitely hurt your local optimization, simply because search engines have no way of detecting you in their radars. Creating business listings not only on Google, but other major engines is critical to getting indexed in these search sites.
- Few, if any online reviews –Creating a strong website plays a dominant role of an online strategy, but activity shouldn’t be limited to your little corner on the web. Achieving ubiquity through online reviews and mentions is important if you want a successful local SEO campaign. This means encouraging consumers to write reviews and spark up conversations about your brand everywhere on the web, which will significantly raise your social signals, and in turn your credibility and authority, given that they talk about your business on a positive note.
- Poor keyword strategies – Keywords are fundamental to SEO. This is a fact that will be hard to change no matter how many updates search engines make. Not using regional or location-based keywords can mean a great deal of loss to your business, especially with users being more location-specific with their searches.
- Lack of competitive analysis – Ignoring how well competitors are doing online is also a huge mistake many online businesses make. Monitoring competition is important so you are always up to par with what others are doing in their local campaigns.
