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Expertise is the First Step in Claiming the Top Spot on Google – Learn More

 

Is your multi-location business seen as an expert in your industry? If you are, continue crushing it! If you’re not, now is the time to start building your expertise. Not only will creating expertise propel your status among consumers, but it will also help boost your local SEO. 

 

When it comes to local SEO, there are three areas your multi-location business should strive to stand out in – expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT). Expertise is a great place to start. To be an expert means that you are very knowledgeable or skillful in a certain area. To be seen as an expert in your industry, your multi-location business must have in-depth knowledge about the product you’re selling, but also know how to communicate your knowledge effectively. Within this blog, we’ll break down step by step how you can start building your expertise and stand out as a leader in your industry.

 

 

1. Include Content From Industry Experts

 

 

An easy way to start strengthening your credibility is by highlighting content from industry experts in your own content. When you’re looking at the content you create for your website or local pages, are you backing up your claims with data? Are you citing other well-known experts? Are you tying in themes that others in the industry are discussing and linking back to those articles? If so, this will help boost your expertise. Google analyzes the links that you have in your content. If your multi-location business is sharing content from other sites that Google knows and respects, this helps boost your expertise. If you can get inbound links from companies with a high EAT score, this looks even better. 

As you begin to plan your content strategy for the new year, it’s essential to consider what type of insights you want to include in your blogs and other content. If you want to be considered an expert in your industry, you must align yourself with other experts. 

 

 

2. Ensure Your Content is Accurate

 

 

This may seem like a no-brainer, but Google also cares about whether or not the content you provide is accurate. Are you making claims based on facts? Do you back up your claims with cited data? These are things that Google takes into consideration when determining how your multi-location business will rank in search results. The same goes for your local listings through Google My Business. If Google finds any information that you’ve provided that is inaccurate, this will hurt your expertise, and ultimately negatively impact your ranking. 

As a multi-location business, it’s essential to ensure that your local business locations share accurate information and cite their sources. It’s a huge challenge to monitor all of the content your 100s or 1000s local business locations are producing, but SOCi is here to make the impossible possible. On the social side, SOCi has social media management software that empowers enterprise and local teams to publish localized content, manage content libraries, respond to social engagements, and analyze performance — all within one powerful platform. This software allows corporate to see the content before it gets published, ensuring that all of the information is correct.

 

Similarly, SOCi Listings can help ensure that your listing information is updated and accurate across all of your business locations, saving you time and effort – giving you more time to focus on what really matters. Through SOCi Listings and our social media management solution, you can ensure that the content your multi-location business is providing is accurate, further boosting your expertise. 

 

 

3. Take Charge of Your Brand

 

 

Another excellent opportunity for your business to build your expertise is to take charge of your brand. Before your multi-location business can be seen as an expert in any way, shape, or form, your business’s brand must be consistent and recognizable. As a multi-location business, you have endless business locations across limitless cities and states. Is your brand consistent across all of these locations? Is your reputation positive as well? These are things to consider when taking charge of your brand. 

For instance, if one of your business locations has an outstanding reputation in California, but your Texas locations are lacking, this could hurt your overall brand, as well as your expertise. While you might be including thoughtful, localized content, which cites industry experts through some of local locations, it must be consistent across all locations if you want to maintain brand consistency. Similarly, if any inaccurate information is shared from one of your location’s social media accounts or local listings, this will hurt your overall brand and expertise. In the new year, it’s essential to take time to set goals for your business’s brand and determine how you can stand out against the competition. 

 

 

4. Meet and Exceed Your Audience’s Needs

 

 

The final way you can build your expertise through Google is through meeting your audience’s needs. If you can anticipate what your consumers are searching for, and provide them with that type of content, you will be seen as an expert. You can determine what your target audience is searching for with keyword research. For instance, if you’re a restaurant burger chain and see that many people are searching for the term “best cheeseburger near me” or “best burger place to watch sports,” you can then adjust your content to highlight how your business provides both of those key phrases. 

If your multi-location business is staying on top of what your local audience is searching for and adjusting your content to speak to the terms used within those searches, you will further increase your expertise because you’re providing what the consumers need. Similarly, you must be thoughtful and anticipate what queries consumers may be searching for next, and develop content around those terms. If you’re always staying on top of the search trends around your industry and your location, Google will notice this and further increase your visibility on the search engine result pages (SERP). 

Building your multi-location business’s expertise isn’t something that can be done overnight. Now that you have the tools needed to get started, it’s time to put in the work. Becoming an expert in the eyes of Google will help improve your brand’s visibility online, which will ultimately generate more leads and sales, catapulting your business and career to the next level.

This is a daunting task – we get it. You’re so focused on the day-to-day of running your brand or business – at the enterprise or local level. Local SEO can be a beast that you do not want to attempt to manage. If you need assistance strengthening your local SEO strategy and other aspects of your localized marketing strategy, SOCi is here!

 

SOCi is the central command for multi-location marketers and the all-in-one platform for your multi-location marketing needs. From local listings to ratings and reviews, to local social media, SOCi is for you. We save you time and money by consolidating all components of a successful localized marketing strategy into one centralized dashboard. For more information on how SOCi can take your localized marketing efforts to the next level, request a demo today! Don’t forget  – we’ve only touched on one component of a successful local SEO strategy – the E of EAT. We have two more blogs that you won’t want to miss! Check back in soon for our next blog post on how to build your multi-location business’s authority with Google – we want to give you all the pieces to a very complicated local SEO puzzle.