SEO Columbus Ohio | Ohio Small Business Strategies

A Message From The Columbus SEO Guy

For local businesses, developing effective strategies for SEO in Columbus, Ohio is vital to long-term business success. There is no shortage of data that underwrites the claim that SEO is immensely important for businesses that are attempting to increase their online exposure. Developing an online presence is a vital part of any contemporary marketing and branding strategy.

Forbes magazine recently released a short report that revealed that the success of any business is greatly affected by its capacity to effectively reach its target audience online. What this means for small local businesses is that developing a strategic and effective local SEO strategy is a vital element in the equation of achieving longevity.

Why a Strategy Focused on SEO in Columbus, Ohio?

There are a number of ways that business can drive traffic to their site, but the key is to drive targeted traffic to their site. What this means is that a business owner wants the traffic that arrives at their site to be people who are in need of or desire their products and services. Although there have been multitudinous trends that marketers have followed as a part of their overall strategy, one constant has been investing in effective SEO. For the Local business in Columbus, it is also extremely important to understand the need for optimizing the site for local traffic.

Local SEO in Columbus, Ohio for a specific business will help ensure that people in Columbus who are looking for a particular product or service locally will be able to easily find that business in an online search. For many Ohio small business owners, local SEO can be a confusing topic. For the business owner or marketing director that finds this topic to be too perplexing, it is probably a good idea to seek the help of a professional Columbus SEO expert that will help develop a strategy for optimizing their local SEO in Columbus, OH.

For the small business owner who wants to give it a go with little or no assistance, there’s a number of steps that will help ensure that the local SEO in Columbus, OH is done correctly.

Create Local Place Pages

One of the first steps that should be taken is to create a Google local business page, and this should be done for all three major search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo. What this means is that there will be three different dashboards and listings that will have to be managed. The business owner will have to go to each individual search engine to set up a listing, but it will be well worth it. They will be able to list all of their pertinent information. Using this proper strategy for local SEO in Columbus, Ohio will definitely get a business off in the right direction.

Accurate Business Citations

Something else that many businesses may not think is important is the use of accurate business citations, meaning that all of the business’ information is filled out accurately. This is especially true for the Name, Address and Phone fields. Failure to use accurate and consistent NAP data can limit the success of the overall SEO campaign. Find out how your business citations look across the board by using a brand managment tool like SEO Power Sync. 

Use Online Reviews

Recently, Search Engine Land published an article that revealed that Google gives significant gravity to online reviews of a company for the purpose of ranking; however, the primary purpose of the reviews are actually for the users who are conducting the searches. When they conduct the search, they will receive a number of results. Of course, the first goal is to be in one of the top three spots on the front page, but that is not enough. The company will have to also find a way to distinguish itself from the other top results. This can be done with some rave reviews from past customers. This can also be a powerful branding tool when used properly. When considering local SEO in Columbus, Ohio, it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of customer reviews.  

Quality Photos Play a Major Role

It is important to understand that people are, by nature, highly visual, meaning that images play a significant role in portraying the image of a business. When people are conducting online searches, they will be looking for a visual confirmation of the level of quality of the business. The type of photos, and the level of quality of those photos will play a major role in how that customer views the company. The overall image that the photo creates will weigh heavily on the decision of the customer when they choose which business — out of the top results — they will go with.

Properly Optimize and Categorize the Page

Competition among local business owners in the same industry is fierce, meaning that local SEO in Columbus, Ohio has to be precise and comprehensive to place a business owner on a level playing field. Optimizing and Categorizing pages will go a long way in enhancing the overall SEO results.

First, to optimize the local pages of a site requires a significant amount of high-quality photos that will help detail the services and products offered as well as the business hours operation.

Second, effectively categorizing the business is one of the most critical steps in the optimization process. Some local search engines will offer the ability for a business to place their page into as many as two to five categories in order to help them gain an understanding of what that business does.

When the aforementioned steps are followed, along with other steps such as using local directories, business will be able to benefit immensely from search engine optimization in Columbus, Ohio. The key is precision and diligence. SEO is a dynamic force, and inactivity can be fatal. – ©The Columbus SEO Guy