Are you a business owner in the St Louis area looking to boost your online presence and attract more customers? Local SEO is an essential element of any digital marketing strategy, and it’s becoming even more important in today’s competitive online landscape. If you’re looking to improve your local SEO in St Louis, there are many steps you can take on your own to get started. From optimizing your website for local keywords to promoting your business through online directories and review sites, there are plenty of opportunities to improve your local SEO and reach more potential customers in the St Louis area.
Outperform Your Top Competitors with a Comprehensive Audit:
Stay ahead of the competition in your industry by conducting a thorough audit of your competitors’ marketing strategies. By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ campaigns, you can learn from their successes and mistakes and come up with ways to improve upon their approach. Whether you want to increase website traffic, generate leads, or drive conversions, a competitive marketing audit can provide valuable insights and help you stay ahead of the competition. Remember, the best way to learn is by doing, so don’t be afraid to study what your competitors are doing to find out where you fall short. While it may be tempting to view competition as a threat, it’s important to understand their perspective and how this information can be used to build a stronger business. Embrace the competition and use it to your advantage with a thorough marketing audit.
If you’re looking to conduct competitor research on a budget, Google is a great free option to consider. While SEO agencies often use specialized tools that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month, with a little know-how, you can utilize Google’s capabilities to gather valuable insights about your competitors. Keep in mind that investing in high-quality SEO tools can be beneficial in the long run, but if you’re just starting out or looking to save money, Google is a reliable choice.
Let’s say we are a plumbing company in St Louis. We need to conduct research on what other businesses in our industry are doing. One easy way to gather this information is through a simple Google search. By utilizing this tool, we can easily discover what strategies and tactics are being used by our competitors and adapt our own strategies accordingly.
In the image, you can see how they use the keywords, how they place them, and how they use the featured snippets.
We are not going to tell here which part can be improved on your side to outgun the competition but there are apparently multiple of them. You possibly can find more if you go to their website and run a speed check and on-page SEO check. These are little technical terms but there isn’t any easier way to do it. Just go into their website and surf just like a regular person and feel like a customer and think about what would make your experience better.
Plan & Create Your Website Content:
When people in St Louis search for a local business, you want them to find you. And, if possible, you want them to find you quickly so that they can get the information they need without waiting. Creating a digital marketing strategy for that is essential. The secret to ranking high in search results is to create content that your customers will want to read. That means writing for your audience, not for the search engines. Search engines will rank you higher if you can keep your visitors attracted anyways. We cannot show you how to create a web page, article, or blog post here but we will show you the steps that will rank for local keywords with a little bit of explanation.
Step 1: Make your keyword research.
Google Keyword Planner is a great free tool for it.
“St Louis Plumber” might be a good keyword to start. While you are selecting keywords, select the ones with high average monthly searches and low competition. Keep generating keywords with the new combinations until you find at least 3 long-tail keywords with high search volume and low competition.
Step 2: Create the structure of your blog post. (Wireframing)
A wireframe doesn’t have to be perfect. Just grab a pen & paper and draw. This will help you visualize the outcome and make some changes to serve better UX before you put some time and work into it.
A wireframe doesn’t have to be perfect. Just grab a pen & paper and draw. This will help you visualize the outcome and make some changes to serve better UX before you put some time and work into it.
Step 3: Optimize your SEO title with the keywords you found.
Titles are very important for on-page SEO practices as well as a coomplete local digital marketing strategy. Make sure to use your keyword at the beginning of your title. Using numbers and power words will help more.
For example;
- St. Louis Plumbers: How to pick the right guy?
- St. Louis Plumber: Professional service guaranteed.
- Top 10 questions asked to St. Louis Plumbers
These are just basic examples to get more creative. Just keep it consistent with your blog post. Do not even try to stuff it with keywords.
Step 4: Write your content.
Make it long. Longer the better while keeping the sentences and the paragraphs shorter. So shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences, many subtitles, and overall longer content.
Use your keywords. Do not overuse them. It is called keyword stuffing and search engines call it blackHat SEO and penalize the website with that type of SEO practice.
Do not try to advertise your company aggressively. Do not forget, this is not a paid ad and people are here for information. They are not clients, yet. You should convince them seamlessly.
For example; you know we are a digital marketing agency in St Louis. You know we are creating this blog post to advertise our digital marketing services as well as our affordable website design, and SEO services for small business owners in St Louis. Have you felt like we are trying to sell anything?
This is what we are trying to explain. Good marketing doesn’t feel like marketing. We know we are one of the most valuable and the most affordable digital marketing agencies in St Louis. We do not need to sell our services. The purpose here is to show people what we are doing. The same applies to your blog posts.
Write to inform, not to sell. It is called inbound marketing.
Let’s Watch the Explainer Video to Better Understand What Inbound Marketing is and Why It is so Important:
Let’s Watch the Explainer Video to Better Understand What Inbound Marketing is and Why It is so Important:
Step5: Add links and rich media.
Add at least one link to another page on your website and one goes to another website. Use the same window for the one you are linking to your website and open a new window while linking to another website.
important: add rel=noopener to the link you are sending out for the safety of your visitors.
Rich media means video and image. Add some related images and videos to your article. Make sure you use the proper alt tags with your keyword and consider ADA compliance. ADA compliance also is a very serious matter.
Step 6: Write your Title Tag & Meta Description
The title tags and the meta descriptions are one of the most important on-page SEO factors if not the most important ones. Use your keywords in both. Do not make them too long or too short. They both have their sweet spots. Do not check their length by character count. Check it by pixel because search engines display these on the screens.
Congrats, your blog post/article/web page is ready to publish.
Don’t forget that SEO experts never add things to add things. There is always a reason for an SEO expert to add additional materials to their work.
Create your rich media
We learned before what rich media is. Creating your rich media (videos, images, pictures, etc.) is very important for your branding. While saying “create your media” we are not talking about subscribing to expensive software, taking classes to learn how to use it, and working for days or weeks to create 30 seconds of animation. You can simply hire someone to do these for you and save lots of money and time.
The important thing with rich media is copyright laws. [H.R.2281 – Digital Millennium Copyright Act] Trying to save a few bucks may cost you a lawsuit. So always keep it original, keep it licensed, or create your own. Also, be careful with overseas creators because you will be the one sued, not the creator since he is living in a different country with different laws. It is always better to work with local or at least national creators/designers to protect your business from copyright claims.
Create Your Social Media Pages/Business Accounts
Marketing your business is one thing, but you need to be able to reach a wider audience. One of the best ways to do that for free is through social media, especially if you’re trying to make a name for yourself in the local community. The right social media accounts can pave the way to local success and put you on the radar of your regional community, and help you sell more products and services.
Having a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account for your business is considered a necessity for even the smallest businesses. It’s not just a matter of providing your audience with a quick way to learn more about your business. It’s about getting your name out there so that people will recognize your brand. Just as importantly, these pages allow you to interact with your customers, and can even be used to arrange in-person meetings.
Why Social Media is So Important:
Why Social Media is So Important:
Google My Business
Google My Business account is crucial for local SEO. It is the best tool for helping local businesses to be found online. Just like the other Google services, it is free to sign up for and use.
Google has been using its map and search results to help local businesses for years, but recently it has ramped up the efforts. The company revealed earlier this year that it will be using web results from its map listings to help rank local businesses. Since then, its increased the reach of its local business listings. If you don’t have one yet just like most other local St Louis businesses, get it now. It is FREE.
If you have it already or planning to get it soon, do not forget that Google is your best friend. Be active with Google My Business. Update your hours regularly, share posts, deals, updates with your customers, and so on. Google My Business is not a set-and-forget type of platform.
Citations & Local Listings
Today local search engine results may play an increasingly important role in local businesses and products. This is especially true in the case of a city with a large digital presence like St Louis. In the early days of a new business, the keywords in Google’s local listings are only a small part of your marketing campaign. However, it is important to recognize the value of local listings later on. For example, local listings can be used to gain new customers even after the business has been established.
It is difficult to follow up with the constant changes in search engine algorithms. It is overwhelming for most small businesses. And, it’s not just about getting your business to appear higher in the search results – your listing on the search engines needs to be accurate and up-to-date for a better local ranking. This is one of the main reasons why so many business owners choose to hire a local search specialist to help them with their online presence management.
Create your email marketing strategy
We would love to talk about email marketing funnels here but that is just another level in the advertising industry. To keep it simple, we will just talk about simple email marketing.
To market your product or service by email first you have to have an email list. You can either buy it or build it. We always recommend building your list but buying is always an option.
To build your email strategy and list, we recommend using third-party software called MailChimp. It is free to start your email list and charges you when your email list is larger. We won’t go deep into MailChimp and show you how to create an account, campaign, or embed it in your website but we can say MailChimp has a very good user interface and millions of really good resources out there already. No need for another one. Just take note and make your research when you are ready to build your email list.
PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaigns
PPC campaigns are also known as paid ads, search engine marketing, or SEM. The most popular ones are the ones by Google and Facebook/Instagram but many platforms are offering a similar service. At Design Media Center, we always put our effort into organic growth but it may be time-consuming sometimes. Some certain levels of PPC campaigns may help speed up your online presence.
Local Influencers
This may not be an option for a plumber always but an option for local businesses selling products. Especially, beauty or personal care products. It doesn’t harm anyone to try. Try to work with the ones with video editing skills so they can make awesome videos for your small business. Don’t forget to ask for a copy from them so you can share it with your audiences.
Copyright laws come in handy in this part too. Always ask for permission and attribute the creator/influencer. Remember their business is themselves and their product is their name. Make it a win-win situation for both of you and be willing to pay for their service if they ask.
Conclusion
That was all for this post. This is just the beginning of digital marketing especially if you are doing this at a master’s level and people have expectations from you.
If this is just too much for you, there is no shame. This is our expertise and you have your business which we think is magical to do what you are doing sometimes but it is just a daily routine for you.
Reading the article and running your digital marketing campaign is an option but just in case you will need professional help just Book an Appointment. Our marketing team is always ready to help.