While content is a crucial element in any SEO strategy, creating content regularly can be daunting for many local businesses. While a B2B SaaS startup might have the resources and wherewithal to implement an enterprise-wide content marketing program, a local HVAC company, hardware store, or real estate agent simply won’t have the time or budget, or capacity to produce content regularly.
Following the advice to create content, many local business publishes a blog. However, the result is normally a sad handful of 300-word posts that get just three readers.
Local content is so much more than blogging on-site
Local content takes many shapes and forms, including product or service pages, case studies, and client testimonials.
These elements help to:
- Guide prospects through the sales funnel, nudging them further along in their purchasing journey.
- Appease their objections to overcome misgivings or doubts they may have about your product.
Encourage them to undertake meaningful actions that will move them closer to making a purchase decision.
The best thing with the local content is that it might come in so many different ways. It doesn’t have to be written text as such. Now, with the proliferation of smartphones, and very accessible editing software, the definition of local content can take on any form: images, videos, podcasts, or captivating stories on your website.
The core mission remains the same-creation of content that builds authority and builds trust with your prospects. Next, we flesh out what kinds of content a local business should invest in to reach those goals.
Content for your ‘About Us’ page
The age-old saying goes, “People like to do business with people, not just companies.” In truth, this does relate to local businesses. More often than not, locals will tend to favor products or services provided by local companies because they get to know the sales personnel, managers, and even owners.
Considerations for any local business website should be showcasing the business for real, allowing potential customers to know, like, and ultimately trust the company.
Use your website to introduce the following key components:
- Who: Introduce the people behind the business-the faces that make it all go down.
- What you do: Clearly describe the products or services that your business provides so that visitors understand what your business is offering.
- Why you do it: You can also share a mission of your business and the passion behind doing what you do, which might connect with a potential customer on a deeper level.
Your company’s story is one of the major factors that differentiates you from the competition. It’s the first thing that your website visitors should see when coming onto your site.
For an effective introduction to telling your company story, consider creating the following kinds of content:
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About Us page
What is the story your business tells? What’s special about you? Why should people trust you over big national brands or local competitors?
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Company Values and Beliefs
What does your company stand for? Share core values and your mission statement. Explain how these ideals are converted into reality on the daily shop floor.
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Company History
Is your company’s history exciting? Maybe you’re a fourth-generation, family-run business that has survived some pretty big industry changes. Or, maybe you’ve expanded from a tiny outfit into a major regional force. Emphasize the interesting aspects of your history that might interest the public.
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Community Involvement
If your company were to shut its doors today, would your community be affected? Tell the story of the ways your company has given back to your community. This can include charitable pursuits such as group or individual events you sponsor, scholarships you offer, and charitable agencies with which you partner.
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Our team
The public likes to know who they’re dealing with. Whether you are a retailer, a local manufacturer, or an HVAC service, this is the place for profiles about your public or customer support team.
Depending on the size of your company and the number of customer-support employees, you may want to feature your executive/leadership team, sales or customer support representatives, or individual technicians. For each member of the team, you may want to include a bio that focuses on their expertise and experiences, training, and contact information.
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Careers Page
Not every visitor to your website is a potential customer, but rather a potential employee. Create a page on your site where you have shared your story with candidates.
Here is your opportunity for your employees to speak about your company culture and what sets you apart as an employer. You can either list current job openings on this page directly or use the page as a means of linking out to your third-party hiring software or platform.
Write About Your Products and Services
This will ensure that potential customers searching on Google find your product or service. Remember that these pages should be in the search results.
One common mistake one sees with local service businesses is that only one page outlines all their services. For example, an exterior remodeling company will have one service page that includes a very short paragraph, sometimes with a bulleted list that mentions their offerings: roofing, siding, windows, doors, and decks.
It’s essential that you set up pages for each of the services, which are targeted for improving online visibility. Having deeper and more specific pages for sub-services further enhances this. That is to say, one must have different pages specifically for roof repair, replacement, hail damages, or types of roofing materials instead of a general roofing page.
You can also create a variety of content formats to support your product and/or service pages:
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Local Angle
Highlight services that are specific to your area. Consider offering information, specific details, or limitations of your services about the market that you serve.
Example:
- Pest control companies can focus on those pests common to their region.
- Builders and remodelers can mention building codes in their area to which they adhere.
- Pool companies in colder climates can stress pool winterization services.
This will help in making your product or service pages optimized to attract more prospects and result in betterment online accordingly.
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Showing Your Expertise
Glean valuable insights from your sales team’s knowledge, technicians, or customer service representatives regarding customers’ needs and preferences. Communicate to them how your solution outperforms others with their experience.
Emphasize the common challenges customers face and point out from it, how your services provide the best solution. This could lead to a generic feel-one that doesn’t communicate your business well because of its inability to replace deep personal understanding using an agency, freelancer, or ChatGPT alone to build a service page.
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Leveraging Brands
If your store carries specific brands or prefers particular manufacturers for your materials, creating content based on these brands will help your local search ranking for brand-specific queries.
Talk about why these brands are superior to others, detail how long you have been with them, and mention why you like them more. This will not only build up your credibility but also develop a closer rapport with potential customers who like these brands.
Show Proof
On the websites, any business can make bold claims like “We are the best,” “We are the most affordable,” or “We are the most responsive.” However, what distinguishes exceptional local websites is their ability to substantiate these claims with social proof.
Social proof is a psychological motivator in which the action of others encourages people to take action. It shows that other customers have bought and are happy with the outcome.
If you want to embed social proof onto your website, here are some techniques you could use:
- Testimonials: Ask previous customers to provide feedback about their experience buying from you. Publish these testimonials to answer questions of potential buyers, reducing doubts and building trust.
- Case studies: Compelling case studies of the work you did and your design aesthetics. Depending on the industry you operate in, it could also mean a B2B case study, featured projects for construction/remodeling, before-and-after transformations for lawn care services, or a gallery for bespoke furniture or roofing projects.
- External recognition: Improve your credibility through the use of trust symbols. Add industry awards and recognition, manufacturer certifications, and local business awards that separate you from local competitors.
By using each of these types of social proof, your website won’t just say it, but it’s going to prove to anyone interested in your business that you’re trustworthy, reliable, and a company capable of doing what it says.
Explain what sets your business apart from others
What sets your business apart, and why should a customer choose you among the others? Your website should define who you are, what you do, whom you cater to, and why you are different from everybody else.
To effectively communicate such differences, consider including the following in the content of your website:
- Process: If your product or service is something that people don’t buy very often-things like cars, divorce services, or kitchen remodels—then you want to educate the customers about your process. Clearly spell out the steps from start to finish. Give detailed answers to the most common questions people will have throughout the course of your process.
- Competitor Comparison: Consciously or unconsciously, when customers are in research mode, they will be exposed to your competitors, whether other local businesses, national brands, big box stores, or online e-commerce. Identify what sets your company, product, or service apart from all those. Bring out the strengths and attributes that separate your business from the rest.
- Comparison to Alternatives: Oftentimes, your competitor isn’t some other business like yours down the street, but other options are available to your customer. For example, if you’re a contractor, your competition may be do-it-yourself or handyman options. If you’re a retailer, your products could be competing against similar items at higher or lower price tags. Addressing these comparisons head-on, make the case for why your product or service stands above the rest.
Clearly articulating these points on your website will communicate your value proposition and tell the prospects why they should do business with you and not your competitors in the competitive market.
The Pricing
One thing is for sure: pricing can be the trickiest aspect to tackle in local content, especially in service businesses. Sure, there might be great reasons for not having exact pricing on your website; still, you also have to take into account the fact that potential customers are searching for this information.
Controlling the discussion of pricing is vital; after all, wouldn’t you rather help your potential customers justify their budget than allow them to do so from some competitor down the street?
Even though it’s not possible to quote exact pricing, there’s a litany of ways one might refer to pricing in more general terms. It sets proper expectations and can be an effective way to pre-qualify prospects-leading to higher quality leads.
Here are a few content ideas for effectively handling pricing for your services:
- Provide a Price Range: As opposed to an exact amount, you can give a range in which the prices exist for typical projects. Of course, this can work with a combination of featured projects.
- Price Breakdown: Break down several steps that come into play when pricing your product or service. You can first talk about what goes behind pricing: explaining how A and B can positively affect the cost of something, but other factors will negatively drive the price of your work up or down.
- Additional Fees: Elaborate on any other extra fees that most customers would not be aware of, such as taxes, permits, delivery charges, or installation costs.
- Price Discrepancy Explanation: Explain price gaps between other companies. If some firms charge very cheaply, it would be the best time to show your value and justify why you could be more expensive to say why it would matter.
With these tactics, you will provide helpful information to your pricing strategy, and that will enable your customer to assist and make better choices regarding your services.
How Important It Is to Create Extraordinary Local Content
Local content creation must not be all about creating reams of spammy content pages in gaming the search results. Neither should this be about creating thin, boring blog posts that nobody notices.
Rather, the aim of this article is to equip you with enough content ideas to fuel your local content strategy properly—and to speak effectively both to Google and to your future customers.
