A. The shortest answer to this question is that 80% of consumers use online searches to find information on local businesses. If you have a brick-and-mortar location or provide a service at the homes or businesses of local customers, local SEO helps make your company more visible when consumers start their searches.

Search engines look for signals that your business is local in order to provide searchers with the most relevant results possible. Local SEO is all about providing those signals.

A: The power of local SEO is that it capitalizes on your specific local area, no matter the size of your marketplace. As consumers search for products and services nearby, they’re more likely to engage with companies that rank well in local SEO search results. In addition, local SEO results show up before other results at the top of the list on mobile searches, so you’re missing out if you’re not represented in the local results.

A. A complete checklist of local SEO strategies includes dozens of tactics, both technical/on-site tasks and off-site tasks. Here’s an overview of just a few of the local SEO tactics every local business should have on its to-do list:

• Optimize for Google My Business (GMB): Considering that Google has more than 90% of the search engine market share, it’s essential to take advantage of the business tools it offers. GMB is one of the most important, because Google uses it to gauge the authenticity of your local business and rank it accordingly. Make sure you create or claim your GMB page and verify your local business listing on Google. Complete your profile with as much information about your business as you can.
• Name, address and phone number (NAP) consistency: NAP is one of signals search engines look for when ranking local businesses in search results. Having the same NAP information across all of your profiles and in directories is a must, and that information must match exactly. If one of your listings displays “Harry Keen’s Heating & Air Conditioning” in one place and “Keen’s HVAC” in another, search engines won’t see them as the same business and you’ll lose an important local SEO edge.
• Location website pages: Do you have more than one physical location? If so, add a page for each location on your site. You don’t want to duplicate the content on these pages—make each page unique with information that’s relevant to the location, such as store hours, address, phone number, etc.
• Be mobile-friendly: A majority of consumers use their mobile devices to get all types of local information, from directions and store hours to phone numbers and reviews. Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly and that your phone number is clickable.

For more information on DAGMAR Marketing’s comprehensive local SEO services and our customized strategies for Jacksonville businesses, get in touch for a free consultation.

A. It is. Let’s say you’re in Sandalwood and you operate a pizza place called “Joe’s Pizza.” If you’re concentrating on Jacksonville SEO, you might use the phrase “Joe’s Pizza Sandalwood” as a descriptor on some of your pages or in your title tags. This is especially true for businesses that operate multiple locations throughout Jacksonville.

A: Reviews are today’s version of word-of-mouth advertising. And just like the old-fashioned version, today’s online review system helps consumers in your neighborhood find you. Getting the people you serve face-to-face to review your business should help your Jacksonville SEO efforts. We can help you come up with a review acquisition strategy. The better your reviews, the more likely a potential customer is to click on your listing. BrightLocal’s most recent Review Survey found that 93% of users look to reviews to determine if a business is good or bad.

A. You definitely could benefit from taking steps to make sure your franchise location comes up when people in Jacksonville search for services such as yours. Not all franchise organizations optimize for every location they have, so it may be up to you to make sure your Jacksonville location is represented in local search.

A. Many local SEO tasks, such as those in the answer above, are time-consuming but yes, you can do them yourself.

There are a number of tactics that are more extensive and that you may want to consider having a local SEO service provider take care of. Here are just a few:

• Technical on-page optimization
• Getting relevant and authoritative local links back to your website
• Consistently publishing high-quality localized content
• Encouraging, monitoring and responding to customer reviews
• Research into your competitors’ local SEO strategies

DAGMAR Marketing was founded as a Jacksonville SEO company and local SEO has become one of our specialties. Contact us with your local SEO questions and to find out how we can help you get more from your digital marketing budget.

A. This is definitely a good idea, as it helps strengthen communities when people shop locally. There are economic, environmental, and civic benefits to a local shopping movement and, as members of the Jacksonville community, we here at DAGMAR Marketing fully support this movement.

But, as marketing approaches go, Shop Local isn’t the same as an SEO Jacksonville campaign. We can help you with both but the best way to be sure you’re getting the full benefit is to schedule a chat with us or give us a call at (904) 474-5704 for a consultation. We can talk about it and decide what will work best for your business.

A. The enterprise mindset is certainly different from small and medium-sized business mindsets. That’s also true with the approaches to local SEO used by each type of business. Many of the concepts that shape SEO strategy for enterprise-level organizations are very different from local SEO strategies our smaller customers can benefit from.

For example, as a small or medium-sized business, a major concern is “data standardization” — such as your Name, Address, Phone Numbers (we call these “citations”). This data is used by directories and especially Google when deciding to show your business in the search results based on local search queries. If your citations are incorrect it tells Google and other search engines the information about your location isn’t trustworthy. Also, potential customers may try to go to the wrong address, call the wrong number or visit your location when you’re closed. None of these things are good for business.

Data consistency is extra-important if you operate several stores across Jacksonville or you’ve moved your location in the past, making sure your citations are accurate will be even more crucial.

A. We can definitely help your business. While most citation sources require an address, there are some that allow a workaround. There are indeed techniques we can apply in cases like yours, where you want your address to be hidden. We also know the best citation sources that allow you to keep your address hidden if you don’t serve customers at your location.

Call us or contact us to schedule a consultation and discuss a strategy that would work best for your business. We always create a custom local SEO plan for all our clients, and this would be just another example of something that works for some businesses but not for others.

A. At DAGMAR Marketing, we use a blend of value- and cost-based pricing for our local SEO and national SEO services, so we provide each client with a customized estimate of costs.

Whether you need national SEO or local SEO for your Jacksonville company, you’ll find that pricing varies greatly across digital marketing service providers. That can make it difficult to compare apples to apples when you’re getting quotes for local SEO work, so it’s important to be prepared to ask questions like these so that you fully understand what you may get for your investment:

• Does the company specialize in SEO? While a service provider can certainly be very good at more than one thing at a time, a company that has local SEO as its core service is likely to be able to create the most comprehensive strategies and campaigns. It’s also more likely to be keeping up to date on this fast-moving marketing discipline.
• Does the company offer customized local SEO campaigns? Some providers offer a single off-the-shelf solution that’s the same for every client. This may work for a short time for some businesses, especially those just starting out in digital marketing, but a plan that’s tailored to your business, your local customers, and your industry will garner you long-term, sustainable results.
• How often does the company provide reports? One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing practices such as local SEO is that everything can be measured. A local SEO provider should regularly provide you with reporting that shows you where every dollar of your investment is going and how well it’s performing.
• Will the company share references? A company that’s proud of its track record will be more than willing to provide references. Since you’ll be working with your local SEO practitioner for some length of time, make sure to find out what it’s like to work with a prospective company before signing on.