If you’ve been a part of this industry for a while, you know that most small businesses are focused on local markets. Some newly established businesses are online and have national reach, but most don’t look beyond their town or city.
If then you think that the SEO and digital marketing involved would be easy and getting visibility for a small, local business wouldn’t require much effort, you’d be wrong. The local business industry is also highly competitive and search is one of the most important factors to consider.
How does this connect to mobile, then? The answer is simple. Mobile search is gaining speed. While people still use their desktop and laptops to perform searching, Google claims that mobile search has surpassed them in terms of queries and volume.
The Connection between Mobile and Local
Did you know that most people who conduct mobile search are likely to visit a local store within the same day? For example, if a person has performed a search for a clothing store at Old Town, Ipoh on their mobile phone and your business’ name popped up, it’s very likely they’ll visit your business that day. The benefit of local search as well as GPS would allow them to get to your business location easily.
As you can see, mobile will lead customers directly to your door. It would serve local businesses well if they turn their entire attention towards local marketing and mobile instead of national marketing and desktop.
How to Optimize for Mobile
Now that you know the benefits of mobile search, you need to understand how to optimize your marketing and your website for mobile searches. Here are some tips that would help you get the best results.
The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for mobile viewing. There are some businesses that create a separate website specifically designed for mobile viewing, but that’s not really necessary. You can create a website that’s compatible across all platforms. You should also make sure that you get a good designer to design the mobile website. It should have the following features to ensure that the user experience is good.
- The website should load very quickly on the mobile, without any lags. To ensure this, you should make sure that there are no heavy images on the website that would take a long time to load.
- The structure should be streamlined so that users can quickly access all the information they need. The content should be sorted according to a fixed structure.
- The website should be easily viewable on different sizes of screens. Some of your customers might have a smaller iPhone 5 while others might have the large Samsung Note phablet. The website should look great on all those platforms.
- All the links on the website should be clickable. In essence, your website should be touch-screen friendly.
If you follow these tips, you’ll be able to take advantage of the mobile platform and local SEO to surge ahead of the competition.
