Google’s fan-named “Pigeon” algorithm update tell us that local searches are now more important than ever with regards to your SEO rankings – and it can make or break your website.
Corny as it is, websites are called ‘digital business cards’ for a reason. Your site is your most important tool to attract customers in your city. If your site is functional and answers the questions the viewer has quickly, your site can bring you more traffic, customers and ultimately revenue.
But be careful. If your site is slow, difficult to navigate through, and has incorrect information, you could get hidden from public view, buried deep beneath pages and pages of unloved websites from the 90s. You don’t want that.
Getting seen by customers
If your site is not optimised, there’s a high chance you won’t appear on Google’s first page, or sometimes even at all. This means when potential customers search for a term relative to your business, they’ll find your competitors instead, and you’ll lose out on business.
No effort = No result = getting lost in the results and dying
As so eloquently put by Britney Spears in her single ‘Work’, “You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work ****”.
One doesn’t appear on the first page without trying. Those who are there have put in great effort and time to make sure they get there and frankly, those who don’t do the same will get lost in the search results because they can’t compete.
Negative ranking factors and Google indexing
Negative ranking factors like conflicting information and incorrect NPA (name, address, phone number) are often present on unoptimised sites and really do affect their rankings. These factors take Google’s crawlers longer to understand and index what’s going on on your site, which they penalise you for with lower rankings.
Proximity searches on mobile
Every year, the percentage of people searching on mobile becomes greater and people are searching on-the-go. They want their needs met more immediately, which Google has to accommodate.
Local is lekker. Proximity has become a huge ranking factor in Google searches because of this and not being close enough to the person who searched the term can affect your local businesses’ search engine ranking for that result. Not having a clearly stated and correct business address on your website and everywhere else applicable (which is often an issue on unoptimised sites) can also cause lower rankings with people searching in your area as well.
You don’t have the time to update every part of your website, and SEO seems really daunting.
This sounds a little salesy but that’s where we come in. Oonie, small businesses and SEO in Cape Town are friends.
We’ll help you rank well locally because that’s what we’re good at.
Have a look at our SEO services here.