5 Ways Social Media and Local SEO Build Value for Your Business
For years, many local business owners have relied on referrals, recommendations, and print advertising to bring new business through their doors. However, these traditional tactics just don’t work like they used to. Print media has experienced a 50% decline in the past decade, while email marketing performs 9,500% better than direct mail. Word-of-mouth recommendations are still important, but these conversations have shifted to the internet. If your business isn’t investing in local SEO and social media for marketing, you’re missing out on incredible opportunities to build long-term value for your brand, and here’s why:
1. You’re Owning, Not Renting
Successful SEO and social media marketing rely on creating and improving your content assets, which pay dividends over time. Most traditional forms of marketing are rented media. You don’t benefit from an advertisement in last year’s phone book, or a radio spot once it’s off the air. In contrast, there’s no time limit to how long you’ll win customers and leads from a well-optimized website or an engaging Facebook page.
2. Local Search Matters Immensely
It’s no secret that the internet’s massively disrupted the way we discover products and services. What’s less known is that SEO for local businesses may matter more than it does for national brands. 33% of search queries are local, and 72% of consumers prefer to research local businesses using a search engine. If your brand isn’t at the top of Google, you might as well not be online at all; pages ranked 5th or lower in search results each receive less than 2% of traffic for that query.
3. Social Media is Proactive Reputation Management
While social media marketing may have been a newfangled tactic a few years ago, it’s quickly become the norm. 93% of marketers are now using at least one platform to promote their brand. As Search Engine Land reports, a primary benefit for local businesses is your ability to proactively manage your reputation, and provide public customer service resolution when issues arise. In addition, optimizing your social media profiles for search will allow you to earn additional links and search results for your brand’s name.
4. Google Local is Incredible
Google Local represents a fusion of local SEO and social media marketing tactics. When it comes to building value for your brand, this platform is simply too powerful to ignore. Consider the following ways that an optimized profile in search results, like our example above, can benefit your company:
- Additional online visibility in search results
- An opportunity to request and showcase positive reviews
- Integration with Google maps to guide customers to your door
5. Social and SEO are Increasingly the Same
Can your business benefit from pure local SEO, or simply being on social media? Certainly, but you’ll reap a lot more rewards if you use the tactics in tandem. As Google continues to tweak and improve their algorithm, social media reactions have become increasingly important to your ranking:
Links still matter, but developing a presence on social media to distribute your content is a highly effective way to improve your site’s rankings.
Are you using social media or SEO to promote your local business? What do you think are the key benefits?
