Local SEO for small business

It makes sense that a local business wants to increase its visibility to customers locally. That is exactly what pomegranate hopes to do for local businesses.

It’s that ‘... near me’ traffic that we want to introduce you to through our local SEO for small business services.

Local search engine optimisation services

Most of us have been a part of the ‘...near me’ traffic, whether we were wanting to pick something up from the shop or we just fancied a chinese takeaway. It doesn’t just stop at retail shops though; many retail businesses can find an eager and ready audience in the ‘...near me’ searches on google.

It does not begin and end at creating a website and a google business profile - though this is always a piece to the wider puzzle when considering local search engine optimisation services.

Local search SEO services

For SEO there is a general winning formula: choose keywords, create content, optimise that content and then acquire relevant links back to your content. 

The added piece with local SEO is staying on top of customer engagement across your google business profile reviews and across other social medias.

Local SEO consulting

Local SEO can be considered more of an art than a science, although there are particular steps that we follow in our method. 

The steps that we follow in our local SEO consulting are the following:

  • We first must decide which areas we are targeting

  • We then do thorough search term or ‘keyword’ research by researching your market, audience and the keywords that they are searching for

    We have a good think about what your customers are searching for to reach vendors like yourselves and note them down

    We also take a look at what both local and national competitors are doing; what keywords they are targeting and which local/national business directories they currently list in

  • When we have decided on the keywords that we are going to target we then optimise your google business profile and your business website around these keywords.

    There are some bricks and mortar businesses who do not have websites. If your competitors do not have websites, it’s understandable not to want a website also. However, in almost all modern day cases, not having a business website can be more harmful than helpful.

    This may include having to rewrite some or all of your core services/products pages.

    This may also include having to take photos of your business. The more photos available the better.

    We also ‘markup’ all relevant data such as address, service/product information and opening times for Google’s search engine

  • After (re)launching your website and google business profile we then take a look at and list you in all relevant local business directories

    Our goal here is to get you as many mentions and links back from as many relevant local business directories as possible

  • We then help you get set up on all relevant social medias

    Which social medias we set you up on all depends on the nature of your business - we believe it’s less likely that customers will look for a plumber on pinterest, for example.

  • Search engines rank websites heavily on the links back to their websites; so it stands to reason that the more good and relevant content that a website has, the more reasons that it gives to other websites to link back to it

    For example; a plumber website that contains ‘how-to’ DIY guides on their website (i.e. how to bleed radiators) gives DIY supply shops more reasons to link to their website, than a plumber who doesn’t create any content on their website

  • For several reasons, it’s important to get engage with your customers that are present on social medias

    This includes regularly posting content, attempting to acquire more followers, answering all customer queries and also answering all customer reviews - whether good or bad

  • Not all brand mentions and backlinks are created equal. Making an effort to partner with other local businesses can pay off in more than just one obvious way

    Aside from mentioning your business on their website it can unlock an entirely new way of generating business for you through referrals.

Local SEO marketing services

Although SEO may be confined to search engines, our aim by providing local SEO marketing services is to position your business well within your local community. 

Ideally we would like to be able to leave more of a benefit than just ranking in the ‘local pack’ (local search rankings) on google. This is why we put an emphasis on partnering with other local businesses - word of mouth referrals have worked for longer than our society remembers and will likely still be around for a long time. 

Google maps optimisation

Although SEO may be confined to search engines, our aim by providing local SEO marketing services is to position your business well within your local community. 

Ideally we would like to be able to leave more of a benefit than just ranking in the ‘local pack’ (local search rankings) on google. This is why we put an emphasis on partnering with other local businesses - word of mouth referrals have worked for longer than our society remembers and will likely still be around for a long time. 

Content marketing for local business

Not all competition in business is equal. 

The amount of work it takes to get an off-license to rank first for its relevant keywords, at this point in the 2020s, is not the same as for example a plumber. This is due to the fact that, at the moment, most off licenses do not even need to have a website in order to rank top for relevant keywords in local searches. We can call niches like this ‘less  digitally competitive’.

If we look at most plumbers however, they will usually have a website, be active on social medias, actively be partnering with other relevant local businesses and also be creating content and marketing that content digitally.

If we intend to rank well on Google and other search engines (in general) we should have a healthy mix of:

  • Optimised website (products/services pages) content and Google business profile 

  • Consistent citations in all as many local (and relevant) business directories

  • A consistent and responsive social media profile

  • A good link building (local partnering) strategy 

In order to keep being able to have links back to your website, it’s necessary to have content that other (relevant) websites can refer to - that’s not likely to be your services/product pages.

In order to keep being able to keep acquiring more and more links back to your website, it’s necessary to keep creating content and then marketing that content to:

  • Existing customers through e-mail marketing

  • Social media platforms 

  • Other websites relevant to your niche

This is where our content marketing for local business services comes in. 

Local SEO services pricing

Larger clients, in order to be competitive in their niche, are likely to need to have more SEO ‘bases’ covered to stay competitive locally, nationally and internationally.

Smaller clients are likely to need much less work to be done (in the first instance and ongoing) than larger clients to compete on a local level in their niche. 

Therefore we have decided in the interest of fairness, regarding our local SEO services pricing, we will adhere to our standard hourly rate across smaller and bigger clients.

For charity-based projects we are however happy to give a 10% discount on our usual hourly rate.  

There are several different tiers of package that we offer:

  • The core package includes keyword research and optimising both your website and Google business profile and then making formal recommendations for your week-to-week SEO efforts

  • Additional managed services include:

    Social media management

    Local partnering (link building)

    SEO copywriting and content marketing