Welcome back to another Tactical Tuesdays with Wiki! In this week’s video, we’re taking you back to school and doing some math to help prove why your business absolutely needs to be doing Local SEO.
I speak at a lot of conferences, and I always hear that it’s hard for attendees to go back to work and get buy-in from their bosses to start doing Local SEO. I get it, it’s hard to pass along all the awesome info you hear at conferences, and changing tactics can be scary, especially when it’s this Local SEO thing that your boss has never heard of before.
So I made today’s video to help you! Whether you’re a doctor, or lawyer, or plumber, or locksmith, or cannabis dispensary, or car dealer, or any of the hundreds of other types of local businesses that serve customers in a particular geographic area, you need Local SEO to gain more visibility in local searches.
You can’t be successful by just throwing up a website anymore – if no one can find you in local searches, you’re not going to get any customers. Check out your Google Analytics – unless you’re spending ridiculous amounts of money on pay-per-click ads, your largest source of traffic and leads is organic visits from Google. For the noobs, that’s people coming to your site because it showed up in Google search results.
So – showing up well in Google is your biggest source of business – yet so many local businesses STILL don’t invest in SEO.
So you need help getting your boss or owner on board – or maybe you’re the decision maker and you’re still not sure if you really need Local SEO. You should start by showing your boss (or watching for yourself) last week’s pizza video – it’s a perfect way to explain HOW local SEO works.
And after that, you need to explain WHY Local SEO is necessary. I’m going to share a simple match equation to help make the case.
For the example, let’s say that you’re a craft brewery – but the example works for really any type of business – car dealers, lawyers, doctors, dispensaries – just tweak the example for your own vertical when you’re making your case for your boss.
But for the example, you’re a craft brewery. Since craft beer is so popular lately, there are 20 breweries in your town.
There are 10 possible spots in the organic listings on page one of search results, and since Google uses the local algorithm for your vertical, there are 3 additional spots in the map pack. That’s 13 possible spots on page one.
But, in every vertical, you’ve got the aggregators and third party sites that also show up – in this case, we’d see Yelp, and probably TripAdvisor and Tap Hunter. Typically we see 4 or 5 of these types of sites in local results, so let’s yank them out. That leaves us with 8 spots remaining that are possible for you to show up on page one.
With 20 breweries fighting for those 8 spots, that means 12 won’t show up on page one. Page two only has 10 spots, so that means 2 breweries will be all the way back on page three, where no one will ever find them.
You need to be one of those 8 that shows up on page one if you hope to attract new customers. That’s proof enough right there that you need Local SEO…
But in reality, most businesses are in metro areas, so let’s expand the equation a bit. If there are 6 suburbs in the main metro area, and each suburb has 20 breweries, we’re now talking about 120 breweries fighting for those 8 spots on page one. But we also have the main city in the metro, which is always bigger than the suburbs – let’s say it’s 3 times bigger for this example.
That adds another 60 breweries, giving us a total of 180 breweries fighting for only 8 spots on page one of Google results. For the noobs, that’s 172 breweries that won’t show up on page one search results. If you’re not doing Local SEO, you’re never going to attract new business.
You would attract me, though, cause if there’s 180 breweries in your metro, I’m totally coming to visit…
So take this simple equation and use it as ammunition to help get buy-in from your boss – prove that Local SEO is an absolute necessity, and when you switch strategies and start showing up better in local searches, you’ll be the hero.
So now it’s time – put your hand on the screen right here…
BOOM! We totally just high-fived cause you learned something awesome.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Tactical Tuesdays with Wiki, and don’t forget to come back next week for another awesome video. See you next Tuesday!