Being visible on search engine results pages (SERPs) is more important than ever, especially for businesses that have physical, brick-and-mortar locations.
Local businesses such as Richmond music school, Richmond arts school, and Richmond dance school benefit tremendously from engaging in local SEO and improving their visibility on SERPs because these businesses will gain more organic traffic from parents or families who are seeking music, arts or dance lessons for their children.
Here are four local SEO tips you can use to improve your school’s SEO:
1. Create and Optimize a Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is a Google-powered listing platform that lets you show your business on Google Maps and Google search results. If you are not using and optimizing your Google Business Profile, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to get your products and services visible where it matters the most.
When optimizing your Google Business Profile page, make sure you fill out all the information you can. including photos, menu items, descriptions and service lines. Additionally, make sure that your Google Business Profile is using the right category. For example, if you are a Richmond music school, choose “music school” as your Google Business Profile’s category.
2. Gain Google Reviews
Having positive reviews and providing a good customer experience is critical to ranking high in the local Map Pack. There are countless companies that have negative and positive reviews with no responses from the business.
If someone is looking to hire a piano teacher and found one with 20 one-star reviews and five unanswered two-star reviews, they might be understandably hesitant about hiring that piano teacher.
People trust reviews, and bad reviews are worse when the owner does not take the time to respond. If they do, that response potentially builds up more trust from other users and could also possibly help generate more business.
Hence, it’s important for your school to continuously earn positive reviews and be responsive.
3. Add Products and Services in Your Google Business Profile
List out all the different programs that your school offers. Examples include summer camps, culinary classes for kids or STEM classes for kids. Adding these programs as products or services on your Google Business Profile will help it appear on search results for local search queries related to your programs. For example, by adding “summer camps for kids” as a service that your school offers, your Google Business Profile is more likely to appear on search results for search terms related to classes for kids such as “summer camps for kids in Richmond” or “summer camps Richmond”.
4. Earn Quality Backlinks
Always get high-quality links by researching local and general sites, blogs and more. Getting high-quality links from reputable sources with good content and helping users solve problems creates trust and credibility.
Aim to get listings from locally targeted listings and blogs, too. It is still a very important factor that can improve your visibility. Having a strong local search presence is more important than ever given today’s competitive SERPs.
Consumers are searching for products and services related to your brand, so you need to be visible.
Following these proven tips can help you get to the top of the SERPs and dominate the local results.
