Give your brick-and-mortar business some local love....With BeesWax
Some sellers do all of their business online through e-commerce. Many dont. If youre one of the many sellers whos got a presence craft fairs, flea markets, bazaars, conventions, or local shops, your website should definitely talk about it! Search engines love to show local options first for search terms, so having an optimized website definitely gives you a boost in your hometown. And—lucky you—its very easy to do!
The first thing youll probably want to do is add an interactive Google map to where you sell stuff. Check out this quick video to show how to add a map of your own—it only takes a few seconds. You can add it on your”home” page, your”shop” page, your”about” page, or even on an entirely new page you create just for maps and local information.
The next thing youll want to do is go to Google My Business and sign up to get your business locally verified by Google (they send you a postcard in the mail and you just punch in a few numbers when it arrives—again, it only takes a minute or two to complete).
This will add a nice graphic business overview in the right hand column of local searches for your business, or for search terms that you rank high for locally. It shows Google reviews, shop hours, contact information, an address (with directions), and a link to your Google Plus page. Heres an example of what ours looks like at BeesWax. It took a few weeks for this business overview to show up, so if yours doesnt happen right away, just be patient! I suspect that some basic SEO best practices (having an active Google+ page, adding fresh and relevant content to your site regularly, not being spammy, having a few local businesses linking back to you, etc), may serve to speed up the localization a bit.
In addition to the cute righthand overview, your business will rank higher for local searches in Google for the same search terms, if youre verified locally.