Consumer habits linked to the use of smartphones and online searches are forcing restaurants and local shops to fine-tune their online presence through local SEO. This technique is a branch of SEO that enables your store to appear in Google results for local or geolocalized queries.
Local referencing has become the marketing lever par excellence for local businesses, enabling them to remain visible, attract consumers and stay ahead of the competition. Local SEO practices are constantly evolving.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO, as part of SEO (the free optimization of your presence in search results), serves to optimize the natural visibility of your business, but taking geolocation into account. This technique is a powerful marketing lever for local businesses, enabling them to stay in the consumer’s line of sight when they are looking for information on a product. Your goal is to get them to consider you among the choices available to them.
When people search for a place or town name on search engines, your website or merchant page should appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages, especially Google). Queries can be more or less precise, with just a city name or with additional information such as opening hours.
Consider that 95% of searches are carried out on Google, and of these, 70% are local, i.e. Internet users search for “boucherie Angers” to find out about butchers in their area, and not for the name of your establishment.
What’s the advantage of local SEO for retailers?
The aim of this strategy for local businesses is to make your company, your store, your restaurant, your mini-market… known to new customers, to be visible when they do an internet search. To bring them into your store or to your website, which offers online sales. Local SEO has a double impact on your business: more visits directly to your physical point of sale, but also to your website. That’s a lot of sales opportunities.
Local referencing applies to all local businesses, from traditional restaurants to new dark kitchen concepts, and every establishment can benefit from this marketing lever.
Many Internet users quickly perform a search on search engines to find a nearby food business that opens on Sundays, offers special deals, and so on.
This marketing strategy is a real lever for improving visibility, boosting business and increasing sales. DOOD supports retailers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs in the food retail and CHR sectors, helping them to deploy all the digital strategies they need to accelerate their business and position themselves ahead of the competition.
Unlike general SEO, local SEO isn’t limited to technical optimization, fresh content generation and site popularity. Above all, it implies your presence on all local queries such as the Yellow Pages, Google Maps and GPS. Fortunately, you can take advantage of the DOOD tool to centralize the management of these different channels and be in the top positions.
How can you improve your local referencing with the Google My Business listing?
Google is the leading search engine, accounting for over 90% of all queries. To attract more online and offline traffic to your store, business or restaurant, you need to optimize your positions on Google. Google My Business is one of the tools developed by Google that enables you to be visible on results pages and Google Maps at the same time.
Your Google My Business listing lets you share all the current information web users need to choose the right merchant for them. You’ll need to present your business name, address, opening hours and telephone number. It’s also a good idea to include a redirect link to your website or e-commerce site.
Google My Business works like a social network. You can interact with users, as they can leave reviews, comments and photos, and can also ask questions of the community.
Local referencing via Google My Business offers many advantages:
- Increase your visibility on Google
- Highlight your customer reviews
- You add a new channel of interaction with web users
Your listing can appear as the result of a variety of queries, such as a local search for a type of business, a product or service search, a search for opening hours, and so on. To ensure that your store or restaurant appears as frequently as possible in search queries, there are a few criteria to consider.
- The fill rate of your site must be effective to provide maximum information to customers.
- Keywords must be relevant, including your main activity, the specificity of your service and your location. Example: Vegan restaurant in Lille
- The gallery should be regularly updated with recent photos.
- Google favors businesses with detailed ratings and reviews. Encourage satisfied users to leave comments.
- Thanks to the Posts feature, you can post one-off information such as a promotion or a new product in this section.
DOOD in partnership with Partoo for your local referencing
DOOD is constantly innovating and developing its partnerships to offer the most complete solution to local retailers. We work with Partoo (European leader in e-reputation support for all businesses) to help you optimize your local SEO strategy.
Partoo is the ideal solution for local retailers and restaurateurs to control your image, improve your visibility and attract more customers. Our strategy is based on the massive, automatic dissemination of information about your establishment on all web networks and platforms: search engines, Google Maps, Google My Business, social networks, directories, GPS and review sites.
There are many advantages:
- Massively distribute information about your establishment all over the web.
- Update this information regularly, as a guarantee of professionalism in the eyes of our customers.
- Control your information from a single interface via the Partoo application.
- Track updates in real time.
- Measure the impact of mass broadcasts, such as the number of views, the number of actions or your ROI.
- Get regular reports on customer reviews and analyze them to adjust your strategy accordingly.
- Interact with your customers by responding to comments and managing negative reviews.
DOOD has teamed up with Partoo to help food entrepreneurs and local merchants gain greater visibility and awareness among their target audience. The two partners are implementing an e-commerce and marketing solution designed to boost the sales force of local retailers through online presence, customer interaction and a high-performance tracking tool.