How Can Local SEO Help Your Online Reputation Prosper?
Online reputation management (ORM) comes into play wherever people are talking about your business, and involves analysing and maintaining your reputation on the Internet, with existing and potential customers regarding your product, services, or stores, across a variety of channels.
Local SEO as a part of reputation management strategy
With Local SEO, companies seek to optimize the online visibility of each of their local sites, targeting users who are searching online for products and services in their area. Among the measures of an effective Local SEO strategy is the creation of correct and consistent listings for all locations on all relevant online platforms.
The number of listings and consistency of location information have a direct impact on location rankings in Google and other search engines. This allows you to reach targeted consumers who are near your locations and searching for products and services you offer.
Local SEO exceeds mere entries in yellow pages and sometimes includes measures such as:
- business listings in the search engines,
- creation of location-related subpages on the website,
- social media marketing with location-based tagging for social signals.
While the social media measures in the context of Local SEO are controversial in terms of their impact, the first two key points are clearly related to optimizing the ranking in search queries from customers with a local connection.
The connection to online reputation management is that several reputation management measures can be taken in business listings, which include reviews, Q&As, photos as well as videos.
Another essential aspect of Local SEO for reputation management is that there is often personal contact with local customers. This has the advantage of a personal and interpersonal impact on the customer to make a good impression. In addition, word-of-mouth advertising spreads effectively locally. Local SEO as part of a reputation management strategy provides for optimization of business listings in search engines.
The top priority is the creation of a Google My Business profile. The profile offers extensive opportunities to optimize the reputation on Google and to leave a positive impression on customers:
- Reviews
- Photos and videos
- Questions & Answers
What seems like little can tip the scales in marketing. Reviews are a prime example of a company’s reputation. Nowhere is reputation reflected more strongly with customers than in 1 to 5 stars, complete with review text.
Through photos and videos, companies have the opportunity to provide internal insight and reflect a local connection. It is conducive to specifically post the photos and videos that show positive involvement in the local area, such as donating to a hospital or helping to plant new trees.
Lastly, Q&As as a feature in business listings are an indication of how intensively companies care about customers’ concerns. If all questions are answered, customers are given the impression that they are important to the company.
So how can you get the most out of this? It’s quite simple — integrate reputation management into your marketing strategy. Make proactive engagement with your customers a goal of your team. Ask your customers to rate your business and locations, and then respond to all reviews in a timely manner. To make this easy and efficient, it’s a good idea to use software that can centrally manage all customer reviews across all platforms. This way, your team can manage all reviews in a centralized manner, saving an enormous amount of time.
