Channel Marketing Solutions That Drive Local SEO Results

Time and time again, we’ve heard from dealers and corporate stakeholders that local SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the biggest requests or pain points for their channel marketing efforts. Making the most of your keywords, content opportunities, and best practices is a great start – but leveraging a digital knowledge management (DKM) platform to take control of your local SEO efforts can be game-changing.

Help people find your business every time

Every minute of every day, millions of people use Google, Bing, and other online listing platforms like Yelp, Angie’s List, and Foursquare to get business information. Often, the information they see about your company during those searches is your best chance to get their business.

A digital knowledge management (DKM) platform is a single place where you can actively manage your SEO information like phone numbers, addresses, and business verticals to provide consistency across over 150+ online locations, like Google, Bing, and other search engines. That means dealer networks and local company locations can ensure that whenever their customers search for their business online they’ll find the correct information — every time. A DKM platform also lets you monitor and respond to reviews and comments about your business posted on various social media.

Major benefits of using a DKM platform for local SEO optimization and local listing management include:

• Brand consistency in messaging and information — This system ensures your location or locations will appear the same way every time. If you have more than one location, the level of consistency also helps Google and Bing quickly differentiate between locations and provide the most up-to-date and accurate information to your searchers, even when that information changes. This is especially important should a national disaster occur or during a pandemic like we are experiencing now. Be proactive, as the system can’t be set up at the last minute when a crisis strikes. The information is also important during the holiday season, when hours may change.
• Lead gen tracking through local listing management — We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of inbound leads just by creating consistency of information and correcting addresses and phone numbers. After all, understanding where you’re getting the most quality leads from allows you to focus your efforts on those fruitful acquisition sources.
• Trackability, analytics, and insights — Almost more important than getting leads is tracking where leads are coming from. Through enhanced tracking and analytics, you’ll be able to see which platforms among hundreds are providing your locations with the best quality leads.

What are the benefits of DKM services?

Your DKM services can include dealer marketing best practices and local SEO services. These services assure you that no matter where your potential customers are searching for you, they can find you.

• Understand your current state — As with any new service, the best place to start is by understanding your current state. The Two Rivers local listing evaluation and management tool, for example, helps you know if your information is consistent across your entire dealer network. It also gives you the best strategy to boost your local SEO across your entire dealer network.
• Create NAP consistency in local SEO services — Your NAP information is the Name, Address, and Phone Number for each of your local business locations across your entire location network.
• Enhance results with technical, local SEO optimizations — Providing each of your locations with a technical SEO backup for the local listing optimization is a powerful combination. Tactics like adding local business Schema — tags or microdata that you can add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent each of your locations — can give each location the best chance to succeed in an online search, whether they’re a new location or well-established.
• Review response— Timely and consistent response to online reviews can build an incredible local presence for your locations. Your DKM system allows you to review, monitor, and promptly respond to reviews, both good and bad, and provide a consistent experience across all your locations.
• Q&A management — It’s not uncommon for customers to pose questions to their favorite businesses. Whether it’s about new products, existing services, or business information, providing clear, timely answers provides the best results. Full Q&A monitoring lets you be the single source of truth online for your locations.

Helping future-proof your local SEO optimizations 

While optimizing your existing and new locations for local search performance, planning for the future is imperative. Using local listing management alongside other channel marketing services ensures that you’ve set up your locations for the future of local search. Here are two emerging local SEO trends that you need to be on the lookout for in the next few years.

1. Keeping position zero accurate — Position zero is the concept that a local business’ location information will appear above any search results within Google search. Frequently, your locations’ information would be the first, and only thing a user might see within a search result. If your local location or contact information is incorrect, you may lose your only chance to capture that customer’s business. Local listing management and other channel marketing services can guarantee that information remains correct.
2. Optimizing for the coming mobile and voice search boom — Mobile and voice search are already happening, and we expect the use of those types of searches to eclipse that of traditional desktop searches very soon. That means it’s important to be ready to keep your locations’ services optimized to succeed in the coming mobile-first world. You can create that optimization through HTML Schema and technical SEO, as well as local listing management.

Taking the next step

If local SEO and listing management are services that you’d like to provide to your network as a part of your channel marketing offering, we can help! Check the health of your online business information using our diagnostic location evaluation tool, and contact us to talk about your options.