Would people search for “Seafood Restaurant” or “Greensboro, NC Seafood Restaurant?”
The answer is both ways. For those looking with the city included, you’ll find seafood restaurants in your local markets. For those who do not include the city in the search, the results may show locations across the country as a national search. As people review your local place of business, you will start to add more credibility to your local place of business and your local SEO (search engine optimization) will start to improve your rankings over a period of time. People will post reviews about your business based on their experience with your business.
As a local business, if you need local traffic coming into your place of business, a local SEO campaign can greatly improve your online presence as people search locally for your business category. They can use standard computer searches or various mobile searches. If they are looking for local services, they want something convenient and reputable to trust the company for their products or services.
As people search, most do their homework before buying and this is where customer reviews can greatly make or break your business. People turn to reviews to see what others have experienced. They want to know if they can trust this company to spend their hard-earned money. They want to make sure that people are satisfied.
You have several places for reviews:
- They are available on search engines directly
- And they are also available in third party search directories on your local profile.
Getting people to add positive reviews every month helps your business. You want the good reviews to keep coming every month and this is reflected in your customer service as a company. Good customer service is expensive, great customer service is more expensive, and poor customer service is more expensive. Depending on how customers are served at your workplace will determine what kind of reviews you will receive if people are so willing to post a review. The good news is that most people will describe their experience in detail. The bad news is that they will also describe your experience in detail.
If you have one or two bad reviews out of several dozen, it is expected. But a series of bad reviews can be devastating to your online presence and ruin your chances of getting new business.
If you have multiple negative reviews, there are some solutions:
- Implement a customer service program to offer rewards or discounts to your customer base in exchange for them taking the time to post a positive review for you. This will help counter negative reviews and make them look smaller in scope of the review’s overall picture.
- Ask your customers how you can improve your service and start implementing those changes. Over time, your customers will notice and start posting more positive reviews.
- Create a company culture for good customer service and make a plan for what you want to change and offer customers.
- Train your staff on how to give good customer service.
- Remove staff members who don’t buy into the positive new model of customer service.
- Turn your staff into a team by offering employee incentives for every positive review.
- Host a special event for key customers, vendors, suppliers, and media representatives and ask them if they had a good experience to share with an online review.
- Hire a company to manage business listings for your local directory. Currently, there are approximately 1,200 more search directories where your business can be listed to enhance your brand and image. You certainly want to make sure anything negative about your business is addressed so that you don’t have the negative repercussions of bad reviews. You also want to claim your local profiles so your business isn’t marked as permanently closed as some business owners within Google find it.
Your local SEO can be greatly improved with a few tweaks and improvements. Some marketing groups offer a service to list your business in over 1,200 search directories so you can claim your business listings and manage your local SEO efforts to generate more revenue. Another great benefit of being listed in all your local directories is that you will now be found in over 1200 directories where you weren’t listed before. If they can’t find you online, you’re losing business. If you appear on certain profiles, it is imperative that you claim your profile listings and verify that all information is accurate about your business.