Google is used a lot. Like a lot, a lot. The search giant gets over 60,000 searches every single second. That’s over 5 billion searches every day. Did you know that half of those searches have some form of local intent? Half of the people using Google are looking for something near them. That’s how big the local SEO market is.

It’s also why so many businesses invest time and money into local SEO. There is a lot of traction to gain and a lot of business to win. Optimizing for Local SEO doesn’t just mean getting customers to your website, it also means getting people through the doors of your store.

There are many strategies to achieve local SEO dominance. Most of them are focused away from your website. But that doesn’t mean your website isn’t important. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your website plays a crucial role in how well you rank locally. That’s why you need location pages.

What is a location page?

A location page is a separate page on your website that is dedicated to your business’ location. If you have several store locations, each store will need its own location page. Your location pages contain everything a customer might need to know about each store or office. This will include:

• The address of your store
• Contact details such as your phone number
• Opening hours
• Anything else that customers might need to know such as directions

But that’s not all your location page should include. It should also include lots of information on what’s available in your store or office, what services you offer there, who works there and what makes it different from your other locations. It should also include pictures of the premises.

It doesn’t just have to be a single page, either. If you have a very large business with lots of locations and a lot of distinct news and information for each location, you may want to turn each page into its own microsite.

Why location pages are important for SEO

Google uses dozens of factors for ranking local businesses and your website is one of them. If you want to rank well locally, you can’t get away with just putting your business’ address and phone number on the bottom of your website. Google needs more information than that. That’s why you create location pages: so that Google has loads of information to use to determine where to rank you.

Not only that, but location pages also give you another chance to rank in the search engine results. Having location pages will help you to rank higher in the map pack, but they can also give you another bite of the cherry in the organic results. That’s because you’re creating another URL for Google to rank. So both your homepage AND your location page could be shown on the same results page in Google.

So what are you waiting for? Get started creating location pages for your business today!

SEO is crucial no matter what kind of business you are or where you are based. Without it, there’s a good chance that you’ll struggle to get a lot of people through your front door. Normally, local SEO focuses on ranking one business in one area. But did you know that local SEO can also be carried out for businesses with multiple locations? That’s right, if you are a chain or franchise, you’ll need to do local SEO for every single one of your locations.

Here’s how you can do it.

Set up web pages for each location

When ranking a business with a single location, it is best practice to put your address at the bottom of every single page of your website. Obviously, this doesn’t work if you have several different business locations. As a result, you’ll need to create separate location pages for every one of your business locations.

On these pages you’ll want to include all of the information that you possibly can about your location. This includes the address, the phone number, the business’ name (if it has a different one). You could also include any special information that is different about this store from your other ones. Essentially, the more information you can provide on each store, the better.

Optimize GMB for each location

You’ll now need to create a Google My Business page for each physical location your business has. These profiles can be managed from a single business account, but you must create or claim every individual listing for each unique address. This can be time-consuming, but it is important to have a local presence for every store.

You’ll also need to optimize each of these listings. First, this means filling out every piece of information that you can on each profile. But it doesn’t stop there. It also means you’ll have to create citations for every single location, too. Citations are references of your stores on directory websites. Specifically, you’ll need to include each store’s Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) so that Google recognizes all of these references and uses them to rank your local GMB pages in its search results.

Build links to your location pages

Just as with organic SEO, link building is also an important part of local SEO. As such, you should create links that point to each of your location pages on your website. Part of this will be done by the citations you create if you include the URL to each of your location pages within your citations. But you’ll also need to write blogs and guest posts and carry out other link building tactics to create more.

Manage and improve your reviews

Finally, you’ll need to encourage, monitor and respond to reviews on each of your Google My Business pages. Reviews are one of Google’s biggest ranking factors for local SEO. Again, this is something that you can’t ignore. Ask all customers to leave a five-star review when they come into store and make sure to respond to every comment.

Businesses invest in Search Engine Optimization for a variety of reasons. The main reason, however, is acquiring new customers. Ranking highly gives you the best chance of getting as many people as possible to visit your website. It even works with physical stores as a huge amount of people who do a local search on Google end up shopping in-store.

Positive reviews are a great way of getting more customers. That’s because most consumers read reviews before making purchases online or in-store. In fact, people are trusting reviews more and more. That means having lots of positive reviews about your business is essential.

Getting reviews can be tough, however. That’s why we’ve written this guide to help. Let’s get started.

Launch an email campaign

The first and easiest way to get more reviews is to email your current customers. Good news, if you already have a list of customers on record, you’re way ahead of the competition. It doesn’t matter if everyone on your email list isn’t a customer, emailing them is still a great way to get some reviews.

First, you’ll want to sign up for email marketing software so you can start sending emails straight away. You’ll also want to create a landing page on your website to get more emails.

Once you have your software and email list set up, start sending out emails. You’ll also want to automatically email customers asking for a review whenever they buy from your store.

Ask for reviews in person

You should be asking any customer that shops in your physical store for a review before they leave. Many brick and mortar shoppers won’t think about leaving a review but that doesn’t mean they won’t be willing to. All you need to do is ask.

You don’t even have to ask them in person. Just setting up a sign at checkout can be enough to persuade customers to head online and post a review on Google. You can also use your social media accounts to ask for reviews, too.

Engage reviewers

Not every review your business receives is going to be positive. There are always going to be some negative reviews that you need to deal with. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them. Instead, you should be responding to every review whether it is good or bad. That way, whatever else happens, you show that you are a communicative business owner.

When you respond to bad reviews, you open up a channel for communication and a way for customers to change their mind. If you can find out what went wrong and rectify it, there’s every chance that a customer will be happy to change their review from a one-star review to a five-star review.

Plus, by thanking customers for their positive reviews, you encourage others to leave positive reviews knowing that they will get acknowledged.

Share your reviews

Whenever you get exceptional reviews, you should be sharing them on your website and social media. Not only will this encourage more positive reviews in the future, but it also helps to show off what a great business you have and will encourage people to try you out.

Previously, I discussed how you should construct your FAQ page. Both users and search engines check the FAQ section of a website.  This is a great place for you to show how you really care about your customers. For sure, when your customers buy your products, they will have questions and only you can answer them.

Most business owners don’t know that an FAQ page can bring in a high volume of traffic.  If you take the FAQ page seriously, you are surely have a winning strategy. In many cases, business owners have to use it as a winning content marketing strategy. A SEO-friendly FAQ page will surely do the following:

• Helps in all customer service related questions,
• Invites potential customers,
• Enhances customer relationships, and
• Boost your website’s SEO rankings.

So, here are the other 3 tips in creating an encyclopedic FAQ page:

1. Add the structured data.

• To make your FAQ page more appealing in the search results, you better add the structured data of your FAQ page. Today, Google now supports structured data for FAQs. This is both applicable in Google Search and Google Assistant.
• When you implement your FAQ structured data, answers to your FAQ questions will show up on the Google Search results. To know more about this latest development, read Google’s instructions on how to enforce it on Google Assistant.
• If there are FAQ issues you want to report, you can report it in the Google Search Console. Google will show you the errors and warnings regarding your FAQ page.

2. Make your FAQ easy to navigate.

• Now, you know that you need to structure your FAQ page well. You should also address the navigational concern of your FAQ section is. At the end of day, if your customers can’t find your FAQ page, it’s all useless.
• Providing a clear navigation will help in building customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and SEO of course! If you have lengthy FAQ pages, it’s better to have categories and subcategories.
• When you group related FAQs, searching for the right answers will be easier. If one user is looking for shipping option, he/she would find it under “SHIPPING & DELIVERY.” There’s NO need to browse for it on the documentation section or the email support section.
• Aside from dividing your FAQs into categories, it’s also helpful to add links to subheadings. Users will just click on the specific question, and he/she will be redirected to that exact answer. Skip the unnecessary questions, and go straight away to the questions you want.
• Lastly, edit your URLs too. The URL for each FAQ section should be relevant to the given question. Make it short, and do not add gibberish words to the URL!

3. Check your analytics regularly.

• Once your FAQ page is live, check the stats. Start checking the analytics if the FAQ page is helping in the overall website traffic.
• Ask these questions:
  • Are the web visitors reading your FAQ page?
  • Is it getting enough views?
  • How long do the web visitors stay?
  • What pages do they view after the FAQ page?
• To get your website analytics, Google Analytics will give you a head start because checking your analytics will help you shape your FAQ pages better.

Now, this is the last post on the 3-part article regarding the different ways to get more reviews on Google. If you need to review, here’s the link to: The Different Ways to Get More Reviews on Google (Part 1) and The Different Ways to Get More Reviews on Google (Part 2).

Train your employees to ask for reviews in a polite way.

Your customer service representatives are on the frontline of your business. Each day, these employees will encounter various customers so you need to give them the right tools on their arsenal. They should understand on the best way to handle product-related queries. Without your customer service team, your business will not be able to acquire the much needed positive reviews.

• They should follow a script.
  • Guide your team on should they ask for reviews. Providing real-life scenarios will help because asking directly might be an obvious move on your end. Instead, develop their social skills so they can form a connection with the customer.
  • If you say “Please leave a positive review on Google.”, it just sounds demanding of you. Anyone who would hear that line would be offended. So, try to say something like, “Thanks for contacting us, Ms. Lane! I am happy to know that you are very much satisfied with your recent purchase. If you want us to continue our manufacturing products that you love, please share your review on Google.”
• Reward their efforts.
  • In part 2, I mentioned offering gifts to customers. This also applies to your employees as well! Yes, you should reward your customer service representatives who are doing a good job in acquiring positive reviews. By doing this, you are encouraging everyone to go above and beyond the call of duty.
  • If an employee’s name is mentioned, it’s a sure sign that you should reward that employee. It simply means your employee was able to meet the expectations of the customer. Hence, take time to appreciate all your productive employees.

Add a Google review link to your website or app.

• Merely copying and pasting reviews will not convince other people to buy. Instead, you should collate all the positive reviews and feature them on your website. In fact, you can make customized images and share the overwhelmingly positive reviews on your social media accounts.
• Once you highlight all these reviews on your website, add a convenient link like “Read what the other customers are raving about.” This way, potential customers can easily access all the reviews posted.

Host events and conduct giveaways.

• Remember, not everything is about business! So, take time to develop your relationship with all your customers. By hosting a giveaway, you are showing your appreciation to your customers. This is your way of showing your gratitude for their years of patronage to your business.
• To be included in the giveaway, you can add certain condition such as sharing a product review. The goal here is not to make more money, but to experiment to the ways to widen your audience reach. If you think hosting special giveaways help you in increasing brand awareness, then make it a regular event.

Wrapping up

Google is number 1 in the world of search.  In fact, they are constantly developing new ways to make search easier for all. You can’t just ignore the influence of Google in strengthening a website’s reputation. The more Google reviews you have, the more it is good for business.