What Exactly is Local SEO?
Whether you’re a craft brewery startup or a regional giant, local SEO is used by all business to get noticed in online search results.
And when it comes to local search, there are three main ingredients Google uses: proximity, prominence, and relevance.
Local SEO involves a wide range of technical and creative efforts to “persuade” search engines that a business should be prominent in their results as a relevant response to internet searches within a short distance of each business location.
Whether you're a local company owner or marketer, one of the most practical applications of local SEO is as a sort of customer service, ensuring that nearby internet searchers can find, like, connect with, and pick your local business.
The related and all-encompassing term "local search marketing" refers to all online and offline activities to promote businesses so that they become household names in the areas they serve.
Especially for a beginner, a local SEO campaign can feel like wandering in circles in a labyrinth. The path is full of pitfalls, but also incredible opportunity!
Why You Can’t Ignore Local SEO
While each craft beer brewery is unique, all of them require internet visibility to survive. Optimizing a website, developing local business listings, monitoring reviews, and gaining links are all practices that aim to promote online interaction.
And while Google isn’t the only game in town for local SEO, it might as well be. Why is this the case?
Google dominates the global search engine market share, controlling 92.06 percent as of mid-2020. While other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo, continue to play important roles, their market share pales in comparison to Google's—it is estimated that Google handles 2 trillion queries each year globally.
Most importantly, a Google representative stated in 2018 that 46% of Google’s searches have a local intent.
That’s a huge number of local searches being done every day—a statistic that makes it clear how prominence in Google’s local and localized organic search engine results can drive business to each location.
How Can You Optimize Your Local Craft Brewery Search Results
Here are seven ways for improving your chances of being noticed in local searches:
- Include the proper business address. You must include specific tags to the code on your website that contains your address. AIOSEO has a plugin that can help with this.
- Listing on Google My Business. Create a Google My Business listing, post images, and become verified. You may also obtain consumer feedback in this manner.
- Check that your address is listed on your Facebook page. You may use this page to create a page for a local company.
- Add your address to online directories in your area. Add your name, address, phone number, and contact information to your Yelp listing.
- Network. Request that other area craft brewery owners exchange links on their websites.
- Join an Association. Joining an association like The Brewers Association or The Home Brewers Association is a great way to gain exposure as well as a valuable backlink to your site.
- Examine your social media mentions. Check to see whether your company is being referenced on social media and respond to any mentions. Search engines will rank you based on whether your company feedback is good or bad.
- Write about your city. Mention your brewery's hometown in your website content. Write about why you make craft beer in this location and why you're the best brewer this side of the Mississippi.
These are the fundamentals. You're ready to take your craft brewery's SEO to the next level once you've established this digital foundation.
Once established, you can begin stacking up the building blocks of local SEO:
- Keyword targeting
- Content
- Links
Conducting Keyword Research
SEO optimization largely relies on keywords that are related to your website, popular with visitors, and have less competition from other firms.
Finding a keyword research tool online, such as Keyword Planner, SEMRush, or Google Trends, is a fantastic place to start. Use these to gather information on keywords related to your craft brewery brand and then include it into your local SEO strategy.
Create blog articles or landing pages on the topic, and include keywords in meta tags such as title tags and meta descriptions.
Create Long-Form Content
Longer material regularly rates higher than short-form content, and it receives more social shares.
This isn't a coincidence: in February 2012, Google introduced Google Panda, an upgrade to their algorithm that affected around 12% of all results and harmed sites with "thin content."
As a result, a smart content strategy prioritizes long-form material over a 300 word post on why beer tastes better from a glass bottle (it does).
Parameters for Long Form Content
Long-form material is 1200 words or more in length, whereas most short-form content is 500-800 words in length.
While some may claim that as audiences' attention spans shorten, a more snackable range of 500-800 is preferable for keeping their interest. We've found that longer articles are a better at engaging visitors and providing them with an informative, real experience.
This is where comprehension of user intent comes into play. Long-form material is essential if your visitor is seeking for an instructional guide. However, certain subjects, such as news articles or product sites, may not need a large amount of writing.
Consider the goal behind your keywords, and make sure you're providing the entire value intended.
Begin Creating Links
Link building may seem to be a perplexing strategy–why would you want to direct people AWAY from your content? However, it is vital for showing Google and other search engines that your content is relevant to a topic.
If you connect to high-quality sites, and even better, if they link back to you, Google will see your site as an authoritative source on the subject. Trusted sites prefer to connect to other trustworthy sites, but low-quality sites are seldom linked to.
Internal linking, guest blogging, and other strategies may help with this.
In other words, find people who love craft beer as much as you. Ask them to write about it on your website and share links with other sites that share your passion. You can always offer a sample pack of your finest stout in return!
That Sounds Really Difficult and Time Consuming...
You're right, but it's worth it. Local SEO is a marathon, and just like a marathon you'll get better and better results the more you train for it. Fortunately, it's not something you have to do alone. At Malts & Mash, our Local SEO experts can take care of driving traffic to your website so you can relax and watch your sales grow.
If that sounds good, get started today by booking a 15-min virtual coffee with us.