Using Hyperlocal Marketing To Get Found In Local Search

As a local or small business, it’s likely that you’ve been advertising on a city or area basis. That’s a great first step, but for some businesses that range is not even close to how extra-local you need to advertise. For your law firm, you might need to get Hyperlocal with your marketing and advertising. Hyperlocal marketing and advertising drive traffic to your location and bring new clients who are looking to hire an attorney – right now and near them – with “near me” searches. Depending on how far a net you need to cast to reach your ideal client, hyperlocal marketing can be the key in maximizing your marketing efforts and budget by targeting prospective clients right where they are – at home or work.

More Foot Traffic and Local Customers with Hyperlocal Marketing

Increased mobile device use and an intensified emphasis on local search by Google and other search engines make hyperlocal marketing a cost-effective and efficient way of attracting new clients to your physical locations. With hyperlocal marketing you target prospective clients in a highly specific, geographically restricted area. Your area could be just a few blocks from your location or the streets surrounding the courthouse or major highway. At its core, the point of hyperlocal marketing is selecting your specific area with the intention of targeting people conducting “near me” searches on their mobile device. You are capitalizing on people who are looking to visit a location and make a purchase or appointment immediately. As mobile device use, and “near me” searches increase, hyperlocal marketing has become even more critical. You’ll need to participate on a highly-targeted level as Google prioritizes location-based search results, emphasizing fewer and higher-quality Google Maps and Google Search results.

How to Rank Higher in Hyperlocal Search Results

Let’s take a look at specific factors that act as ranking signals for hyperlocal searches.

Optimized Google My Business Listing

Claiming and verify a Google My Business listing for each location of your business is the first and most essential step to local search engine optimization (SEO). This is an easy way to ensure your business shows up in local search engine results. Optimizing your Google My Business listing helps you rank higher in results, above competitors who don’t have a local SEO strategy. Google My Business is where Google sources most of the information it gives local searches and Google Maps users in results. This includes many of the details that appear in listings of individual businesses in Maps results and the Knowledge Graph data points such as when a business is busiest.

Gathering and Monitoring Customer Reviews

Sometime today your next client is researching to find the best attorney near them. They are relying on online reviews and ratings to help guide their decision. With the explosive growth of mobile web searching and increased development of review apps, consumers are making their spending decisions on-the-go and faster than ever. Client reviews are an important ranking factor in local SEO, and when it comes to hyperlocal marketing, they can be among the most effective tools at beating the local competition. Actively gather more and more reviews to show up higher in Google search results – where many consumers look first when searching for a an attorney. Research is an essential step in the buyer’s journey, and online review monitoring allows you to have a say in what future consumers are reading. There are online review monitoring services and tools that let you know what consumers see online.  You can opt to do this yourself manually, but whether you automate or D.I.Y., you should monitor your online reviews. Remember, online review monitoring allows you to be part of the conversations going on when people are making their decision.

Accurate and Consistent Business Listings and Citations

Location data such as city, address, neighborhood, and landmarks should be consistently and accurately be a focus of all on-site and off-site local search optimization activities. The first priority for showing up in local and map search results is to optimize your Google My Business Listing by filling it out in its entirety, adding photos with your location in the tags, and getting continuous positive reviews posted to your Google listing. When a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are inconsistent across the web (meaning there are different spellings, addresses, or phone numbers), search engines don’t want to use that business in local results and possibly give their search users bad information.  That means your business won’t rank in local searches if your business listings are inaccurate.  Ensure your business listings are accurate, consistent and everywhere they need to be.

Establish Proximity for All Locations

Proximity is the distance between the search engine user and your office. When you’ve optimized your Google My Business account and ensured the pin for your law firm is in the correct place on Google Maps, you are verifying for Google that this is the location to give in local results to people near you. For law firms with more than one location, it is more complex to hyper-localize your website.  Instead of stuffing your pages with half a dozen geographical keywords and tags give each location its own hyper-local page:

• Each location page should be linked to from a high-level navigation menu.
• Make phone numbers highly visible and clickable on mobile devices.
• If you have just a handful of locations, fit the full NAP of each location in the footer of your website.
• When you have specialized services that people search for like sedation for pediatric dental patients or local delivery services, create pages specific to those services as well with internal links to your location pages.

By having a dedicated page for specific service and each location, you let your website pages provide location-specific information that internet searchers are looking for.

Hyper-Localize Title Tags, Videos, and Images

Title tags are the actual words of the anchor text in search results that links to your website.  Be sure the title tags make sense to local customers.  Use your keywords and location in a logical way that matches how consumers would pick your firm as relevant from a list of results. Use hyper-localized tags with real words and the neighborhood names, street names, and landmarks that people will enter when looking for a place close to where they live or the area they intend to be in to in title tags and to label your images and videos.  Consider publishing a transcript of the video when posting for keyword rich text content.

Create Hyperlocal Ad Campaigns

A business that has a consumer base focused within a specific radius of the business can target their ad campaigns to reach a highly targeted audience more inclined to respond to your ads. Remember the importance of your ad keywords and how they match the intent of people using search to find what your business is selling. Your ads need to convert consistently, and a smaller radius allows you to personalize ads to engage a highly specific target audience. Additionally, a smaller radius allows you to identify negative keywords to exclude from your campaigns you don’t want to bid on like major city names outside of your radius. To make your Google Ad campaigns hyperlocal you will focus your ads on highly specific geographical areas in your campaign settings. The simplest option is to include “radius” as an ad target in your campaigns. Radius targeting (also known as proximity targeting) allows you to choose to show your ads to customers within a certain distance from your business, rather than choosing individual cities or regions.

Will Hyperlocal Marketing and Advertising Help Grow Your Business?

As local search and micro-moments gain momentum with consumers, hyperlocal marketing becomes an increasingly effective strategy for local consumers looking to increase online and offline traffic from consumers in a position to hire an attorney immediately. Edward Lott, Ph.D., M.B.A. President and Managing Partner ForLawFirmsOnly Marketing, Inc. Ed can be reached at (or visit his website) edl@forlawfirmsonly.com 855-943-8736 ext. 101 www.ForLawFirmsOnly.com

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/using-hyperlocal-marketing-to-get-found-in-local-search/