Local Search Tips To Put Your Fort Worth Business on the Map

When done right, local optimization is an amazing digital marketing equalizer. Small Texas businesses can now go toe-to-toe with industry giants. However, what does it take to improve local search and finally put yours on the map?

A Fort Worth SEO agency creates a master plan that usually includes these ideas:

• Weed out suspicious, fake reviews.
• Set up and optimize Bing Places for Business.
• Complement search engine optimization (SEO) with paid ads.
• Keep content as local as possible.
• Create structured data.

Learn how to execute each of these in the article below. Let’s go!

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

1. Weed Out Suspicious, Fake Reviews

Many businesses and marketers desire reviews, especially if they are mom-and-pop establishments. These hopefully glowing comments about your products and services can:

• Help you become an industry leader.
• Increase your credibility and trustworthiness.
• Improve your local search rank by getting people to talk about you.
• Let you engage with your target audience so your business is always top of mind.
• Transform even one-time customers into long-term brand advocates.

However, not all online reviews are worth it. Fake ones can tarnish your reputation, make you susceptible to lawsuits, and kick you out of search engines, to name a few consequences. To avoid these fates, prevent fake reviews at all costs.

Here are some steps you can take:

• Follow the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines for gathering, displaying, and moderating reviews.
• Dispute any suspicious reviews on your page before search engines catch them. Otherwise, they might penalize you for violating their spam policies.
• Never pay anyone to leave a positive review.
• Regularly read and answer comments, especially when they are negative. Even if the user is real, the story shared might not be completely true.

2. Set Up and Optimize Bing Places for Business

Creating and optimizing a Google My Business (GMB) profile remains among small businesses' best local SEO tactics. However, this is not your only option. Signing up for Bing Places for Business also maximizes your brand exposure.

Although Microsoft’s search engine’s market share still falls significantly behind Google's, it has steadily climbed over the years. In March 2023, it hit 100 million active users after integrating ChatGPT.

In other words, optimizing your local profile for Bing means dealing with lower competition and riding its growth.

Here is how to set it up:

• Create a Microsoft account to log in to Bing.
• Allow Bing to import your business profile data from GMB.
• Complete the missing information.
• Verify the listing, usually through email, business address, or phone.

If you operate or serve several DFW locations, choose “chain business” among the options and upload the details in bulk to save time.

3. Complement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With Paid Ads

Local SEO delivers free organic traffic and is a cost-effective digital marketing strategy. However, seeing the desired results takes months, if not a year, especially since you might deal with algorithm updates or changes in between.

For this reason, a Fort Worth SEO agency supports local optimization with paid search. As its name suggests, this is a technique wherein you pay publishers, such as search engines, when someone clicks on your ads.

Although it could cost more than SEO, it is still worth trying because copies might appear in the search results in hours or days. Plus, ads usually appear above the organic search results.

Furthermore, the SEO team uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools that:

• Generate various ads (and their types).
• Perform split or A/B testing to see which ads can provide the highest number of clicks at the lowest cost.
• Create various copies from a few descriptions, landing pages, and titles.
• Track and analyze ad performance.

4. Keep Content as Local as Possible

Search engines, especially Google, want helpful, reliable, and relevant content. As a reward for giving this to them, they can display your pages on the first page or in the top spot on the search results.

However, even the best-written content will fail to rank if it sounds generic and unrelated to your local audience. How do you avoid this mistake?

Here are some tips to consider:

• Include distinct information about the location. This strategy especially works if you are into healthcare, real estate, construction, or travel. For example, what suburb has the best entertainment scene?
• Dig deep into the residents and their pain points. Colonial Hills is one of the most luxurious neighborhoods in Fort Worth, but even they might need your services. What problems do they face? What solutions do you offer? What do they get from using your products or services?
• Add visual assets that relate to the place. These can be photos of famous landmarks or attractions in the area.

5. Create Structured Data

Structured data is a method of organizing and labeling data using specific vocabulary and schema markup. As a result, search engines will better interpret the information's meaning.

It also:

• Triggers your appearance in the local map pack, a section of the search results displaying three or more businesses that best answer the search query,
• Enhances the user experience through rich snippets (e.g., rating, pricing, availability, and images),
• Optimizes the content for voice search, and
• Prepares the website to adapt to future local SEO trends and algorithm updates easily.

Many websites offer tutorials on creating structured data, but a Fort Worth SEO agency is better to avoid introducing technical errors that might delay or prevent your pages from appearing in the search results. They:

• Familiarize themselves with Schema.org, which provides the official schemas for structured data markup;
• Determine the specific content elements to mark up, including products, articles, events, recipes, and reviews;
• Select the appropriate markup format for your structured data, such as JSON-LD, which is the most popular and user-friendly; and
• Use structured data testing tools to validate the markup and help identify errors or warnings.

Summing Up

Local optimization helps your brand become as visible and accessible as your biggest competitors with their extensive advertising resources. These five steps can help you get started fast.

However, to truly maximize its benefits, work with Digital Authority Partners (DAP). As your Fort Worth SEO agency, we can customize a solid optimization plan according to your demographics, location, and marketing objectives.

Contact us for a free consultation.