So, without a proper customer acquisition strategy for your startup, you are going to run into various problems along the way, and it’s going to be very difficult if not downright impossible to grow your business both B2B and B2C.

On the other hand, figuring out which channel is the most effective and sustainable to use in generating new customers is often the biggest challenge for any business.

In this guide, we will discuss all you need to know about how to plan and execute a working startup customer acquisition strategy. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to recognize the most effective channels you can use to acquire new customers sustainable and how to properly execute your campaigns.

Let us begin by discussing the basic concept of customer acquisition for startups so we can be on the same page for the rest of this guide.

What Is Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition, in a layman’s term, is any effort and process of bringing in new clients or customers to your business. We say we have “acquired” a new customer when we have successfully persuaded a consumer to purchase a product and/or service.

So, a customer acquisition strategy is a systematic, sustainable process of acquiring new customers on a long-term basis, and this customer acquisition strategy should be able to evolve and adapt to new market trends and evolving customer behaviors.

Different startups with different revenue models might have different customer acquisition strategies. However, all effective acquisition strategies should begin by identifying quality prospects (potential customers).

Typically, all consumers must go through a customer journey or buyer’s journey before they finally purchased a product or service, which can be divided into three main stages:

• Awareness stage: they figured out a new business or brand, and gain awareness about this brand and its product and/or service
• Consideration stage: the prospect considers purchasing the product/service from this brand. They might compare it with other similar products and services during this stage, check reviews, and ask for recommendations from their peers.
• Decision stage: the prospect choose to purchase a product and converts from a prospect into a customer

There are typically more people in the awareness stage compared to those in the consideration stage, and only a select few of those in the consideration stage will enter the decision stage. So, if we visualize these stages, we can see a funnel-shaped chart similar to the image below.

Customer acquisition for startups typically refers to this funnel as a whole, but mainly the first two stages (awareness and consideration), which are often also referred to as the top (lead generation) and the middle (lead acquisition) of the funnel.

The bottom of the funnel—the decision stage— or lead conversion phase, is technically still a part of the customer acquisition but may be considered a separate initiative called conversion-rate optimization or CRO, especially for eCommerce startups.

Preliminary Step: Define Your Target Audience

As we have established above, all customer acquisition strategies for any startup should begin by identifying your target audience.

An important principle to understand is that your product or service won’t please and attract everyone. There are very, very few products that meet a universal need.

Instead, your product will be a solution for only a certain group(s) of people, your ideal audience. Discovering who your target audience is is the essential preliminary step of your customer acquisition strategy, so you can tailor your strategy and focus your efforts primarily on this target audience.

If you haven’t defined your target audience, you are essentially adding unnecessary handicaps to your customer acquisition efforts, and so they won’t be effective.

So, conduct your market research and develop your buyer persona. Find as much information as you can about who you should market your product/service to and how to attract this audience effectively.

This insight will be the strongest foundation of your whole customer acquisition strategy.

Customer Acquisition Strategies

What is the most effective customer acquisition strategy for startups? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best strategy for your startup will depend on various factors from your available resources, overall business objectives, and ultimately, your target audience.

Nowadays, however, there are only four main tactics or methods of acquiring customers: content marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. We will discuss them one by one:

1.  Content Marketing

In 2026, we can now safely say that content marketing is marketing itself, and in regards to startup customer acquisition, it is an effective method for virtually all kinds of startup.

The main idea in content marketing for startups is to consistently publish high-quality and relevant content to attract the target audience’s attention and drive them to your website. So, content marketing is especially effective in the awareness and consideration stage: the audience stumbles upon your content when they are looking for information and learn about your product or service (awareness), and they might consume more content when they consider between your product and your competitors’ (consideration).

Content marketing is the preferred marketing strategy today (in a concept we know as inbound marketing) because of one main reason: people are getting increasingly resistant to traditional advertisement and promotion. Traditional ads disrupt our initial activity. For example, we are browsing a website and then there’s a pop-up banner. Obviously, the ad is disruptive (and annoying).

Content, however, is not disruptive since the audience is the one proactively looking for information. In fact, if the content is relevant and helpful, they will perceive the brand (your brand) as trustworthy and helpful, so you are eliminating barriers rather than building walls.

Content marketing can come in several different mediums, such as:

Blogging

The most common form and arguably still the most effective, you can implement blogging as an effective customer acquisition strategy for all kinds of startup, industries, and audience types.

Blogging has two main benefits over other forms: it’s accessible (both for the audience and the publisher), and it’s versatile. You can easily explore different topics and content approach in your blog with minimum risks. On the other hand, if you’ve found any specific niche, you can be consistent and leverage it to build your credibility as an expert/thought leader in the niche.

Also, building a blog—even from scratch—-is very affordable. Your biggest cost here will typically be your investments in content creators/writers.

In-Depth text-based content

This can include forms like white papers, ebooks, research reports, guides, and others. Typically these types of content are delivered as “gated” content. That is, the prospect typically needs to provide their contact information before they can access or download the content.

So, these in-depth content forms are often very important in capturing leads. We won’t be able to acquire customers before we first capture them as leads or prospects, so this is a very important customer acquisition method.

The idea behind this method is to convince the audience that you are offering something valuable for free so the audience is willing to provide their contact information.A common tactic is to attract readers with a blog post, then offer a more in-depth ebook covering the same topic as the post. This way, if a reader feels that your blog post is relevant and valuable, then they might be interested in consuming the gated content (and exchange their contact information).

As we can see, these in-depth content forms have a different purpose than traditional blog posts, and obviously the production process is also different. We’d need more time and commitment to create this in-depth content, and they might also need a unique and specific promotional plan.

This method, called the lead magnet, is a very crucial lead generation device.

Videos and podcasts

We can’t deny the fact that more and more people are consuming video content as their main way to consume information. 85% of all U.S. internet users watched online videos in 2018, and nowadays it’s probably close to 100%. Also, podcasts are also rising as a medium since mid-2019.

Obviously, videos and podcasts are more complicated to produce than text-based content, but nowadays quality cameras, microphones, and other video and audio production equipment are now much more affordable and accessible. Also, there are now a lot of freelancers and affordable agencies, so producing videos and podcasts are actually easier than you think.

Remember that the content itself is always more important than the overall production quality of your videos and podcasts (but that’s not saying the quality is not important). Since videos are usually the most expensive to produce, it’s best to preserve your best content for videos first. If, for example, you are only going to visualize a blog post, you can use various animation software and even Slideshare to reduce production costs.

The principle of using videos and podcasts in customer acquisition is similar to text-based content: provide value to attract users, introduce them to your brand/product/service, and drive them to your website to capture them as leads.

2. Search Engine Marketing

It’s important to note that when we refer to “search marketing”, it doesn’t necessarily mean SEO.

Instead, there are two different sides to search engine marketing: organic (or free) search engine marketing, which is search engine optimization (SEO), and paid search marketing, which is PPC ads.

The case of PPC ads vs SEO is just like any case of paid vs organic efforts: it’s about time vs cost.

Organic efforts are (at least it should be) free, but it’s going to take a significant amount of time before you can get any significant result. In the case of SEO, it typically takes at least  6 to 12 months before we can get on the first page of Google’s SERP and gain a significant amount of traffic.

On the other hand, paid efforts like PPC ads will guarantee results, provided you have the budget. But, they can be extremely expensive if you are not careful.

Nevertheless, both sides of search marketing is a very important customer acquisition channel due to several reasons:

• There are over 3.5 billion searches on Google every day, and the number is still growing by roughly 10% every year
• 89% of B2B professionals use Google to find solutions and services that can help their business
• 95% of internet users will not go to the second page of Google, so investing in SEO is very important
• Traffic from organic search converts 566% better than traffic coming from PPC ads, so you can’t rely on PPC ads alone

SEO for startups is currently one of the most popular customer acquisition methods due to several reasons. First, it is relatively accessible and easy to implement (even if you are going to do it yourself), and it is cost-effective with relatively low initial investments and high ROI. However, as we have established, hiring an SEO agency or services for your startup and seeing the first results can take time, and this is where PPC ads can help.

Search marketing works in combination with content marketing (as discussed above). You won’t rank on Google unless you have relevant, quality content, while your content won’t get any traffic if you don’t have enough search presence.

3. Social Media Marketing

Similar to search engine marketing, social media marketing can be divided into two: paid and organic, and the same case also applies: time VS cost.

Organic social media marketing is about growing your own followers on social media and posting your content regularly. This is obviously cost-effective and when done right we can do it for absolutely free. However, growing followers on social media can take years before we get a significant amount (say, above 10,000), and obviously it’s not always successful even after we’ve regularly published high-quality content.

Paid social media, on the other hand, is about using paid advertising and other paid promotional channels provided by the respective social media networks. For example, on Facebook and Instagram, we can invest in various Facebook Ads.

Again, while investing on these paid options can guarantee short-term and even instant results, they can be very expensive to invest in. The current average CPC (Cost Per Click) for Facebook ads is $0.97 or if you prefer CPM, it’s around $7 per 1000 impressions. As you can see, the cost is pretty high.

So, as with search marketing, finding the right balance is very important here.

Organic social media efforts are especially important in building awareness and to develop an online personality. This is a great opportunity to establish your position as the thought leader and expert of your industry, especially when it’s paired with effective content marketing–as discussed above.

You can also use social media to share content you’ve published on other platforms. So, we can think of social media as an amplification of your other acquisition tactics.

There are several reasons, however, to why social media is now increasingly more important as a customer acquisition strategy:

• Reach: a viral social media post can reach a lot of people in a very short amount of time, making. The virality factor is a very important advantage of social media as a customer acquisition channel, as you
• Targeting: another great advantage of using social media in generating leads and acquiring customers is the transparency of the platforms. We can easily know the demographics of a social media account (if it’s not anonymous) and decide whether it’s a good fit for your company.
• Two-way: you can use social media channels to gather feedback from your customers, and at the same time can provide suggestions and promote your brand.
• Big data: social media actively generates massive customer data with the sheer number of posts, videos, pictures, mentions, and so on. You can collect, analyze, and leverage this data to custom-tailor your customer acquisition strategy.

In general, there are several ways we can use social media to generate leads and acquire customers:

• Drive your social media audience a lead-capture landing page or your website. It’s relatively hard to capture contact information straight from social media posts, so it’s more efficient to drive them to a web page instead.
• You can include links for opt-in forms on social media posts, so people can sign-up for your newsletters.
• Include CTAs in your social media posts as natural as possible, but don’t be afraid to use it.

The secret to useful utilization of social media as a customer acquisition channel is to develop a strategic plan to tackle three core issues:

1. Choosing the right network(s) you are going to focus on, and which ones to avoid depending on your customer profile
2. Developing the brand voice on your social media, and establish a person/team responsible in delivering this brand voice and managing content
3. Developing a crisis plan to tackle issues like backlashes and negative feedbacks

For example, if you are a B2C startup, then nowadays you should mainly focus on Instagram and Facebook, probably YouTube. On the other hand, if you are a B2B startup, you should focus on LinkedIn.

4. Email Marketing

Even with all these newer platforms and communication technologies, email marketing is still the top-performing digital marketing channel with the highest ROI of up to 4,000%.

The main role of email marketing, especially in relation to the three channels discussed above, is that the three channels will involve building an email list. Leveraging on this email list to nurture prospects and convert them into customers is the key to a successful email marketing strategy.

Although this might seem like an obsolete acquisition method, the truth is that is is still a very effective way to stay engaged with your customers by promoting content through your newsletter, informing them of the launch of a new product, discounts, events, and so on.

The secrets to modern email marketing as a customer acquisition method are personalization and automation.

We can use the above channels to gather more customer data, and leverage on the data to create personalized email messages: sending the right message to the right people at exactly the right time.

Startup Customer Acquisition Strategy Best Practices

An effective customer acquisition strategy must follow three important principles:

• Highly Targeted

It’s obvious that not all consumers are the right fit for your startup. Customer acquisition can be a lengthy and expensive process, so we’d need to make sure that our resources and time are focused on the right people.

The secret to a targeted customer acquisition strategy is to do your market research, and there’s no shortcut around it. Figure out your target audience, and assess your available resource to develop a tailored strategy focused on your ideal customers.

• Diversified

We can’t rely on one channel and strategy alone to sustainably generate leads and acquire customers. You’d have a better chance of reaching new customers with more channels, and at the same time, can mitigate your risks on a channel/platform.

• Adaptable

The world is rapidly changing all the time and so does purchase behaviors. Consumers are now increasingly resistant to promotions, and more than 80% of consumers trust social proofs and advice from friends over brand claims. Gone are the days when we can have one sustainable acquisition method and rely on it. Now, we have to always be on the lookout for new opportunities, adapt, and be flexible

End Words

Customer acquisition is not only about getting more customers, but also about acquiring the most valuable customers that can stick around with your business, and ultimately can act as an advocate to convert even more people.

Every effective customer acquisition strategy must start with defining your target customers, and only then can we create a highly targeted, adaptable, and diversified strategy to effectively convert these target customers while working with a digital marketing consultant.

Consistency is always key, so it’s always important to monitor your customer acquisition methods, evaluate, and adjust your tactics whenever required.

The post Effective Customer Acquisition Strategy for Startups appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

In 2025, however, we can almost expect bigger—and ‘weirder’ — changes to hit the digital marketing world, some might be very relevant to change the digital marketing ecosystem as a whole.

What are they? Below, we will outline 7 of the most prominent ones.

9 Top Digital Marketing Trends In 2025

1. The Domination of Zero-Click Search

In the past recent years, there have been very significant changes in how we use Google as a search engine:

Our main lead generation method for years is to get people to visit our website in one way or another, and get them to give their contact information (mainly email address). We can then follow them up with email newsletters, show them display ads (via remarketing), and other efforts. In short, them visiting our website used to be the core of the strategy.

Nowadays, however, only less than 50% of Google searches now result in a website visit. Think about it, nowadays, we spend more time on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media networks over any ‘real website. If we want to read something, even, we probably go straight to Medium and search.  We can certainly expect this trend to continue and become even bigger in 2025 and onwards.

While this is certainly a good thing for the users/consumers and for Google, small businesses and marketers must adjust to this fact by:

• Find ways to extract value and generate leads from featured snippet results—or zero-click results—, a thing that is still a mystery for many marketers today
• Find and target keywords with higher CTR (but naturally, the competition for these keywords will be very high)
• Publish content on Google’s platforms (YouTube, Google Maps/Google My Business, etc.)

These are still easier said than done today, and in most cases, we can only take the ‘wait and see’ stance.

2. Maturity and Saturation of Video Marketing

For half-decade or so now, we have always seen “video marketing” on basically everyone’s digital marketing trends list.

However, video content and video streaming have rapidly matured this past couple of years or so. In 2022, according to HubSpot’s content preferences survey, 54% of US consumers are already preferring video content from any brand.

Nowadays, video marketing is no longer a luxury, but a necessity, with video production, also getting more affordable and faster than ever. In 2025 and onwards, we can expect the trend to continue, but the question is: with all the videos out there, how can we get ours noticed?

With video getting more saturated as a medium, it will be interesting to see how it will continue to evolve, especially due to the next trend we’ll discuss right below.

3. Podcasts Steal The Spotlight

Since the end of 2022 and throughout 2023, podcasts have grown tremendously and stolen a lot of market shares from other channels.

The sudden rise of podcasts might partially due to our increasingly busy lives: we can consume podcasts while doing daily chores and commuting— and even when we work, to some extent—, but we can’t consume videos during these cases. In short, practicality.

We will see more podcasts being published—and listened to— in 2025, and marketers must start to find ways to integrate their existing marketing strategy with the podcast format—or even probably start their own podcasts—.

4. Rapid Implementation and Evolution of AI

Similar to video marketing, AI has been the major buzzwords of digital marketing for the past few years, and 2025 might be the year when we truly see the explosion of AI in digital marketing and any other fields—the true ‘rise of the machine’ —.

The thing is, we can almost certainly predict that AI will make it big in 2025 and onwards, but it’s much harder to predict how AI will be implemented, simply because of its endless possibilities.

We might see a wider adoption of chatbots in more businesses. Back in 2022, a survey by Oracle pointed out that 80% of surveyed brands expect to serve customers via Chatbot by 2025, and 40% of millennials have reported that they have interacted with chatbots daily in 2023.

We might also see more implementations of AI in email marketing and social media marketing: from automation, user segmentation, personalization, scheduling, and other possible applications.

Last but not least, we might also see radical innovations from some of the prominent AI startups trying to make their big break.

5. The Deconstruction of Marketing Funnel

The mobile devices, the changes in Google search, and the saturation of social media, among other factors, have changed the customer journeys—and the marketing funnel— significantly and radically in 2023 alone.

The customer’s journey is now scattered and fragmented: we can purchase almost anything directly from our website, bypassing any other steps of the journey.

This phenomenon has caused a boost in impulse shopping, which surely can benefit many businesses. However, it’s now harder to engage with customers and retaining them. Marketers must develop a ‘new’ version of the marketing funnel that can tackle the scattered, non-linear customer journey with one purpose: creating a unified customer experience.

This will be the trend of marketing going forward, no longer focusing on each channel/campaign, but looking at the overarching, fragmented customer journey across the different marketing channels and devices, while at the same time personalizing and optimizing our message to align with various touchpoints.

Automation, obviously, will be a key in achieving this, and AI (as discussed above) might play a big role in 2025 and onwards.

6. Marketing as An Experiential Activity

Still connected to the evolution (or devolution?) of the customer journey, now marketing is no longer solely about advertising our product/service and building awareness. It’s no longer enough just to show them your brand, but they have to experience and feel it in order to trust your credibility.

Interactivity and engagement will be even more important than before. It’s no longer enough for customers to see how great a product/service it over an advertisement or probably a video—no matter how well-produced the video is—, they need to experience it somehow.

Checking for social proofs—online reviews, peer recommendations— is also an aspect of this experiential marketing as a whole, so working with (the right) influencers can help brands to engage with customers and get your voice heard.

7. Customer Data Onboarding for 1:1 Marketing

1:1 Marketing—or one-to-one marketing, is essentially a CRM strategy focusing on personalized (one-to-one) interactions with each customer. The main idea is that personalization can help us cut through all the noises of the saturated digital marketing world, while at the same time improving customer loyalty and better conversion rate—maximizing marketing ROI—.

Data onboarding, on the other hand, is the process of bringing offline data into the online realm, and in this case, transforming offline customer records into online customer datasets.

Data onboarding is a tech field that is growing at a rapid rate throughout 2023, and is expected to hit the $1 billion market cap in 2024. In practice, we can, for example, study the offline customer database (i.e. business card information) and use PII (Personally Identifiable Information) to find a similar audience online.

In general, however, data-driven marketing or insights-driven marketing will be even bigger going forward in 2025.

8. Google Gallery Ads

As a response to Facebook Carousel Ads, Google recently launched Google Gallery Ads.

Gallery Ads is essentially a new version of paid search, featuring swipeable image-based ads (just like Facebook Carousel Ads), with the main focus of meeting the user’s search intent with visuals. In essence, providing users with images and interactivity, two key ingredients to capture user’s attention in this very saturated world.

While the adoption of Gallery Ads is still fairly low in 2023—it launched in beta just back in August—, we can expect it to grow even bigger in 2025 and onwards, as many marketers become aware of its existence (and more case studies of its usage being published).

9. The Importance of Customer Privacy

User privacy and data security have been major issues in 2022 and 2023, mainly due to repeated privacy blunders by Facebook, but also other tech giants like Google. Reactions in the form of privacy regulations like GDPR and more recently CCPA ) have been enacted, and record fines regarding data privacy have also arisen in 2023.

As the internet grows bigger and faster than ever before—especially with the launch of 5G and WiFi 6—, the risks associated with data privacy and security breach will also grow bigger. While it’s not directly the job of marketing, marketers must work with other teams to minimize the potential risks of a security breach, while at the same time ensuring consumers about the company’s policy regarding security.

Emerging technologies in data security might be a viable solution in 2025. Know Your Customer (KYC) technologies will be even more important in 2025, both to better protect your existing customers and to detect potential threats.

End Words

The upcoming digital marketing trends in 2025 emphasizes one thing: the interaction between artificial intelligence and humans, in so many different ways. On the one hand, customers are demanding more personal, human touch from growth and digital marketers, but on the other hand, the demand for machine learning, new technologies, and data analytics are rapidly increasing.

In our opinion, 2025 might be the transition year in digital marketing, as a new foundation for the new era when digital marketing reaches yet another maturity level.

The post 9 Digital Marketing Trends, Tips and Strategies for Small Business appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

With this phenomenon, more and more people are using “near me” queries to find local businesses. This doesn’t only include queries like “restaurants near me” or “bookstores near me”, but will extend to queries like “where can I buy flowers near me”.

For local businesses, optimizing your presence online to target these queries will bring significant impact to conversion rate—and thus, revenue—. These optimizations come in the form of local SEO, and in this guide, we will learn all of its ins and outs.

What Actually is Local SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the efforts to optimize your site, as well as its external factors to rank higher on Google SERP for your target keywords.

So, based on that definition, what is local SEO? Local SEO is SEO that is specifically tailored to target local-focused keywords—keywords that are searched by people when they are looking for local businesses—.Most of the time, these keywords are “business name” followed by “location” like “bookstores in Los Angeles”.

In the past, there are  not many differences between ‘regular’ SEO and local SEO, with the main differences being the content and target keywords. However, nowadays there are two major changes we should observe:

• Nowadays, many people use “near me” search queries, including when using voice searches when searching from mobile devices.
• Google now feature results from Google Maps on the very top of the search results page just below the paid ads. Google Maps’ results will require different optimization approaches.

Since Google Maps’ results are very significant for local SEO, let us dig deeper on the concept.

Understanding Google Maps Results

Let’s try searching for local keywords, for example, “restaurants in Toronto”. You will see a result page like this (it might vary depending on your current location)

As we can see, there are clear differences compared to the standard results page. We can see the business hours of the featured businesses, review ratings, and photos. We should also notice that there are only three businesses featured on the results page before the searchers need to click “more places”.

To be featured on this “3-pack”, you will need to list your business on Google MY Business. Google My business will play a very significant part in local SEO, so again, let us dig deeper.

Understanding Google My Business

Google My Business was previously known as Google Local (and for a time, Google+ Local). Basically, Google My Business is an online directory where you can list your business profile.

Registering for a Google My Business account is totally free, and you can click here to get started. You can then follow the steps instructed, and you are good to go.

Also, you will need to verify your business listing. Usually, Google will send a postcard containing a PIN which you can use to verify your business address. Depending on your business types, you might be able to verify your business through an email or phone call.

There’s also the matter of optimization. The more optimized your GMB listing is, the higher it will rank. We will discuss these important optimizations further below. First, let us learn about the factors affecting your Google Maps ranking.

Google Maps Ranking Signals

There are obviously a lot of different factors that can affect your Google Maps ranking. However, according to a study by Moz, here are the top six factors that will affect your Google Maps ranking:

1. Your location. When there are two businesses with similar optimizations, same target keywords, and similar level in all other factors, the business that is located closer to the searcher will rank higher.
2. Google My Business listing optimizations. Many factors are included here from how complete and accurate your information is, photos and videos optimizations, keyword density, to optimizations on attributes and categories.
3. Backlinks. The quantity of inbound links to your website (since your website URL is also listed in GMB, and therefore indexed by Google). The quality of the backlinks also matters.
4. Number of positive reviews. Google will take account of the number of positive reviews you have both on your Google Maps listing and on third party sites (Yelp, TripAdvisor, other business directories depending on your niche).
5. On-page optimizations both on your website and your GMB listing. This will include keyword density, NAP information consistency, mobile-responsiveness, page load speed, and so on.
6. Local Citations. Citations are any mention of your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) on the internet, which is mainly achieved by listing your business on various online directories.

Based on these six factors, we can summarize that there are three most important elements of Google Maps ranking:

• Position: how close your business is to the searcher’s location
• Credibility: what other consumers say about your business, and how many consumers are talking about you
• Relevance: how relevant is your business, product, and/or service for the search query

More About Local Citations

If you are already familiar with the concept of SEO, you might have realized that local citations have a similar principle to backlinks in regular SEO.

As we have mentioned, a citation is a mention of your business’s NAP information on the internet, and both the quantity and quality will matter in determining your Google Maps ranking:

• Quantity: the more sites and directories that mention your NAP, the better
• Quality: the more relevant/authoritative the platform/site that mentions your NAP, the better

There are generally two different types of local citations: structured and unstructured.

Structured citations are citations that appear in business directories and listings. Usually, you will need to fill out a form to claim a listing on these platforms.

To build structured local citations, you can start by claiming listings on major business directories like Yelp and Facebook Places. This list by Hubspot might be helpful in this process.

You can also look for various local online directories according to your location and niche/industry. Again, check out these lists to get started:

• Moz’s list for top local citations by category
• Moz’s list for top local citations by city

What about unstructured citations? By definition, unstructured citations are any mention of your NAP information in social media, blog posts, or social media posts among others. In short, if it’s not on a business listing, it is unstructured.

To get unstructured citations, you can use similar approaches to influencer outreach. Build relationships with press, authoritative blogs, and local social media influencers in your area, and ask them to mention your business (with the NAP information).

While building local citations is not a difficult process—technical-wise—, it can require a tedious process especially since you will need to maintain consistency in information. Your NAP information should be consistent across all of your listings, as misinformation can significantly hurt your Google Maps ranking.

On the other hand, local citations are really important in improving your ranking. This is likely the area where you’ll need the help of local SEO services.

Key Steps In Improving Your Google Maps Ranking

Based on the factors discussed above, here are the key steps required if you want to improve your Google Maps ranking:

1. Local optimizations for your website

When claiming your Google My Business listing, you will need to include your business’s website URL. Google will then use this information and crawl your site to determine whether it’s relevant and credible for your local audience.

The process of “localizing” your website can vary between businesses according to their needs and current assessments. However, generally here are the key areas to optimize:

• Including the name of your city, county, or region as keywords, where these names are mentioned naturally throughout your site with an optimal density.
• Depending on your target locations, this process might require creating specific pages for each individual location.
• Another popular tactic is to include local-focused content on your site. For example, including articles about local community events, local tourism spots, and so on.

This step will also require the usual technical optimizations for SEO. For example, ensuring your site is mobile friendly, optimizing the internal linking structure, and improving the page’s load speed, among other optimizations.

2. Claiming, verifying, and optimizing your Google My Business listing.

Above, we have covered how you can claim and verify your Google My Business listing. Google will use the information you’ve put on this listing to determine your business’s relevance and credibility.

So, here are the key areas where you can optimize your Google My Business listing:

• NAP information

We can’t stress enough how important your NAP information is in local SEO. Your NAP will be your business’s main identity on Google Maps, as well as on other third-party sites.

Make sure your NAP is complete and accurate. If you’ve recently made any changes to your business’s address, for example, make sure to update this information.

• Optimizing descriptions

Remember that your GMB description should be about what your business is, and not what you sell. Include your target keywords here naturally, but make sure this content is comprehensive for human readers.

• Optimizing categories and attributes

Similar principle to descriptions above. Choose the relevant categories according to what your business is. You can choose more than one category, so pay extra attention to choosing all the possible categories you can, as long as they are relevant to your business.

You can use attributes to highlight unique values of your business, for example, if your restaurant has an outdoor area, you can put this information as an attribute.

• Optimizing images and videos

Using well-taken photos and professionally-made videos won’t only help your listing’s relevance for ranking purposes, but can also boost conversions. According to Google, businesses that display photos on their Google My Business listings get 42% more request for directions and 35% more site visitations.

You can also upload videos up to 30 seconds in length. Use this opportunity to attract more audience by posting engaging and informative videos.

You can also use EXIF metadata to further optimize your images for easier indexing.

• Business hours information

It is very important to display accurate business hours at all times. Again, Google simply doesn’t like misinformation, and when you put wrong information, it can significantly hurt your ranking.

Whenever you made any changes to your business hours, make sure to update your GMB listing. Also, people can suggest changes to your GMB profile, so check your dashboard regularly whether someone suggested any changes as Google can approve it without notifying you first.

Google does offer the feature to customize business hours for holidays, weekends, and special events. Use this feature to your advantage.

3. Citation building

As mentioned, there are two main focuses when building local citations: quantity and consistency.

Citation building is a very important step not only in improving your Google Maps ranking, but also to help more customers in finding your business.

4. Encouraging positive reviews

The quantity of positive reviews both on Google Maps and (major) third-party sites is one of the most important ranking signals for Google Maps results.

On the other hand, more and more people nowadays will check for online reviews before making any purchase decisions. This is especially true for local businesses. So, if you can get more positive reviews, it can significantly boost your conversions and thus, revenue.

There are two main approaches to encouraging more positive reviews from your customers. First, is to offer incentives. This is a relatively common and effective strategy, you can offer discounts and even freebies for existing customers who are willing to leave reviews.

Second, is to respond to your reviews, even the bad ones. This way, people who see that you responded (properly) to past reviews might want to voice their own concerns or even show appreciation through a positive review.

5. Link building

Although not as prominent as in regular, organic SEO, backlinks are still very important in local SEO as a ranking factor.

While link building can be a pretty broad topic on its own, here are some common approaches you can implement:

• Build relationships with local press, local influencers, and authoritative sites. Sometimes, all it takes to get a backlink is simply asking for it.
• Content marketing. If you can produce relevant, valuable content, people will naturally link it.
• Guest posting. When done properly, guest posting can be a very powerful link building tactic. Remember, however, that the key is to build relationships and not solely focusing on getting backlinks.
• Utilizing influencers. If you can work with the right influencers, you can get relevant backlinks while they can also help in promoting your business.

For local SEO, links from local press, local authoritative blogs, and business associations are the most valuable. Citations can also act as high-quality backlinks, so make sure to focus on both citation building and link building equally.

End Words

The trends surrounding local search are really strong today, and are still growing strongly for the years to come. In fact, the internet will continue to be a more localized place, and Google will continue to focus its efforts on a better local experience.

So, local SEO, in the near future, will no longer be a luxury, but a necessity for businesses that are trying to attract local audiences. If you haven’t already, there is never a better time to start investing in SEO consultant.

The post How to Improve Your Local SEO and Rank on the First Page of Google appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.