It’s mid-November here in Dallas, which means that the weather is cooling off, the shops are all blaring Christmas music, and (most importantly!) families and friends everywhere are preparing for a Thanksgiving feast!
Thanksgiving is a great opportunity for friends and family to get together and show appreciation for what they’ve got; however, an unprepared Thanksgiving can be fraught with chaotic commotion and panicked last-minute oven roasting.
Make sure that you’re treating your business’ local search engine optimization (SEO) strategy like it’s a Thanksgiving feast: be prepared well in advance, let everyone know where (and when) it’s going to be, and make sure each that everyone’s got food to eat!
Start Cooking Early
If your usual Thanksigiving experience is anything like mine, you’ve probably grown accustomed to panicked family members dashing around the kitchen to get everything ready in time.
Don’t wait to get started with your local SEO efforts. The number of tasks just to get started with local SEO can seem daunting, but if you put it off until the last minute, everything could fall apart.
Take the time to do some research on what kinds of strategies will work well for you. Don’t start your cooking endeavor with the turkey main course (hiring a digital marketing provider or a local citation service like Moz Local); take small steps to optimize keywords and location information on your website.
Put Food On Everyone’s Plate
Eventually, you’re going to want to serve your food (i.e. content creation, products/services, etc.) to the masses. Whether you’re feeding local citation directories like Moz or Yext or getting your business’ information directly to search engines, make sure that everyone is getting the same thing on their plate!
Leaving someone out is never a good idea: when customers can’t find your business or feel that you’re not delivering the same experience to them as others, they’re going to be upset. Upset visitors are going to let their friends know not to come to your place (i.e. leave bad reviews) and probably won’t come back themselves. Be sure to check out some of our reputation management guides to prevent that from happening!
When everyone is sitting down and ready to eat, it’s customary to serve the head of the table first. Your local SEO strategy should be no different: Google sits at the head of the table. Make sure that your NAP+W data is correct with Google and everything else will fall together!
Make Sure To Send Out The Invites
You’re going to a lot of trouble to put together a beautiful feast for everyone, so make sure that they show up! This means you’ll need to make sure that any guests have accurate location data for your business. They’ll need your name, address, and phone number (and sometimes your website, too!), otherwise known as NAP.
You’ll want to be sure that this information is consistent across the web and maybe even use some simple coding tricks like Schema markup code to make sure that search engines accurately reflect who you are.
Save Room For Dessert
We’ve all made the mistake of eating way too much way too fast during a Thanksgiving meal. When you’re working on your business’ local SEO, pace yourself. Remember that having a relatively complete local online presence is only the beginning: there is always something that can be further optimized!
Most importantly, though, don’t forget to enjoy the meal. Local SEO can be a lot of hard work, but the payoff and sense of accomplishment that you’ll feel by pulling it off is huge.