The rapidly growing culture of online shopping has changed the face of eCommerce. The phenomenal increase in the number of online stores is a witness to this effect. This demands a major overhaul of the way most of the setups are doing business if they want to stay relevant.
The post-Covid environment has incredibly increased the number of online stores. Hence, the businesses in Trinidad and Tobago that do not adapt to the new business norms are likely to be fighting for their survival shortly.
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The first and foremost step that any business must take to enhance its digital presence is to formulate and adopt a dynamic local SEO strategy. Local SEO is an offshoot of SEO. It is designed to optimize a website in such a manner that it appears prominently in the local or a specific area searches on the search engine.
When a user searches for a product or service in a particular geographic location, the relevant business setups appear in the search. However, the order in which they are listed or displayed is dictated by the efficacy of each setup’s local SEO strategy. Best SEO strategy means the company is shown at the top of the list, followed by its competitors.
The numbers say it all
Following interesting statistics elaborate the need for local SEO even further:
- Local business searches comprise almost 46 per cent of overall Google searches
- Before making a purchase, 97 per cent of the users research their local or area business.
- There has been a 500 per cent increase in the ‘Near me’ searches on Google.
- Within 24 hours of conducting a local business search, 50 per cent of the users visit or contact the store.
Power of local SEO
Due to an effective local SEO strategy of a business, its potential customers can:
- Discover the business
- Get relevant information about the business
- Locate the business physically
- Contact the business
On the other hand, business websites with excellent local SEO management can:
- Identify local customers
- Generate leads
- Increase their website traffic
- Enhance sales
Several local SEO techniques are used to boost an organization’s digital profile. Discussion of these techniques merits a separate and dedicated article. This article, however, lists and discusses the eight best local SEO tools to boost online business in Trinidad and Tobago.
These comprehensive tools encompass almost all the techniques that are being practised by individuals or companies in any form.
The ease of use of these tools, combined with highly desirable results makes them the obvious choice.
Yext
This is a comprehensive package of several powerful SEO tools. The software enhances your online exposure by offering numerous directories and thus keeps your business information current and up to date. Some of its most important features are:
Knowledge Manager
This feature provides auto-generated replies to user queries like business working hours, location on the ground and current offers etc. Apart from auto information, other information may also be added manually.
Yext Listings
Updated listing data helps the search engines. This feature helps in the update of business listings and their subsequent sharing with the search engines and social media platforms.
It gives the option of data update in real-time or as per any defined schedule.
Yext Reviews
This tool is for generating, managing and displaying reviews from customers on your website. Dealing with any negative customer reviews is an art. Refer to the link below to read more about this.
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Whitespark
It is another elaborate software suite to benefit your local SEO strategy. It comprises several tools, some of the notable ones are discussed here
Citation Finder
It is always on the lookout for any citation prospects to beef up the website’s SEO. It has both free as well as paid versions. The free version allows three searches per day whereas the paid version allows twenty. Moreover, the search results are limited in the free version but unlimited in the paid account.
Local Rank tracker
It is critical to have full knowledge of your website’s performance against your competitors in your local area. This tool gives you this picture, helping you in your monitoring and evaluation so that you can take timely corrective measures to stay ahead.
Reputation builder
Proactive interaction and communication with your customer are very essential for getting their reviews and feedback. This tool helps you reach your customer via email or messages etc. Moreover, it can calculate and provide your NPS (Net Promoter Score) which is a quantified picture of your customer’s dealing experience with your business setup.
Moz Local
This important tool makes your life easy by managing your listings for you. Just update your listings and hand them over to Moz local. The tool automatically sends these to all the important platforms, search engines and numerous directories. Any changes in the listings that may be required later can be made directly from the tool’s elaborate interface.
It also notifies you about posting a new review on all the major platforms and allows you to easily respond to these reviews through its panel
Synup
It is a dynamic and feature-packed tool for an effective local SEO strategy. Some of its practically useful features include the creation of SEO reports, creation and management of listings and tracking of analytics data.
Notifications regarding the posting of new reviews on key internet platforms are also generated for you to formulate and post a timely reply.
Review Trackers
As the name implies, this popular tool primarily deals with customer reviews. It generates an immediate notification whenever your customer’s review is posted on any platform. This helps in posting a prompt reply from your side, which is an important aspect of customer satisfaction.
The elaborate dashboard helps in the performance of all its functions easily and simply. Besides, to review management function, it has an elaborate analytical function as well which can identify inconsistencies in your listings so that timely corrective measures may be taken (if required)
SEMrush
It is an immensely popular SEO software suite, used not only by individuals and small / medium organizations but also by many major brands like HP, Quora and eBay etc.
SEMrush is popularly known for its powerful SEO feature; however, it offers equally proficient tools for social media marketing, content creation and research.
In collaboration with Yext, SEMrush has also introduced its listing management tool to facilitate the users in managing and improving their local listings.
SEO is the main power of SEMrush. Some of its SEO tools include ‘Keyword Magic tool’, ‘Backlink checker’, ‘Keyword gap tool’, ‘SERP feature filter’ and ‘CPC map tool’ etc.
Advice Local
Many setups prefer Advice Local for improving and consolidating their local SEO strategy. Advice Local possesses effective listing management capabilities. Moreover, it gives the user manual control to detect and generate local citations.
Active Local proudly claims to support more than fifty directories in all the packages they offer. Some of its most used features include syndicated data in real-time, listings in major search engines Google and Bing and of course citation management etc.
Bright Local
It is another very popular software suite preferred by users from diverse clientele categories. It is chosen for its excellent local SEO capabilities. Moreover, it is very effective in building and management of citations, enhancement of digital presence and boosting local rankings.
Some of its most admired features include new review alerts, an audit of GMB, SEO, citation generation and audit, elaborate and customizable dashboard and ranking indicator etc.
Conclusion
Local users and customers are critical for the growth of any business. A business must be prominently visible to its local audience to generate, an effective business community, and loyal customers. The tools discussed in this article provide an immense amount of help in getting a better local SEO ranking. However, it requires a continuous and regular effort in terms of time and data analysis to benefit fully. Professional local SEO help is not a bad option to manage the elaborate data and overall monitoring of your local SEO campaign.
bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an eCommerce platform purely focused on the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature-rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.