Step 1

Google My Business

Set up, claim or amend your Google My Business page.

Ensure that this page has the correct details on, including the right address, contact numbers, opening times, reviews and a link to your website. Upload relevant photographs which could include your staff, building or pictures of your products or services etc.

 

Step 2

Dedicated Contact Page

Create a dedicated contact page on your website, which should have contact details including your address, telephone and email and a map outlining your location. If you have multiple locations, then each one should have its own dedicated contact page which should be optimised locally. Your main address should be also located within the footer, along with a phone number which should be localised rather than an 0800 number.

 

Step 3

How to Guides / Advice / Ideas and Inspirations

Either written or video guides are a great way to build high quality content and increase your Google rankings. Start by creating relevant content guides that answers the questions your customers are asking. Ask your sales team, customer service team or receptionist for the most common questions they get from your customers, then create a video or write a guide on these questions and how your product or service will help. This not only provides relevant content but it highlights to your customers that you’re the expert and can guide them to the right answer.

And finally make sure that all your articles are optimised, include targeted key phrases in your copy, title and meta descriptions. Use quality images and don’t forget to include call to actions so users know what to do next.

 

Step 4

Write Quality Content

Google rates your site on the content within it. So if your content is poor then you will often find your rankings are poor. If your site is rich in content, and it’s relevant and valuable to your audience you will find that Google rates your site high and in turn ranks you high on their search result pages.  Writing content for the web is a skill, and if your budget enables you to hire a professional writer then it will be money well spent.

 

Step 5

Go after Keywords that big brands do not target

Ranking on Google is hard, especially for keywords that the big brands are ranked for. It’s virtually impossible unless you have an enormous marketing budget and huge resources. The way around this and what the majority of smaller and localised businesses do, is try and rank for long tail key phrases, usually 3, 4 or 5 word queries which brings in less traffic but these visitors are much more likely to convert.

For example, a web company based in Hull might want to rank for websites or web design but the competition is huge and their main target audience is based in Hull or East Yorkshire. The key phrases which would work better would be web design Hull, web design agency Hull, website design Hull, web design company Hull. These key phrases are less competitive and drive less traffic but convert much more as users are ready to get in touch or make that purchase as they know exactly what they’re looking for.

When you’ve decided on these long tail key phrases it’s important to incorporate them into your content which help Google identify the subject of your page and rank your page in their search results. However, the balance has to be right, too many will tell Google you’re a spammer and too few will leave Google wondered what you do and who you are.