How long does it take to rank in local search?

The question we get asked most often!

One of the most important developments for local businesses in the last couple of years is how you can build a customer base, manage your reputation and promote your brand in local search and through social media. Google has made huge progress in recent months in this area but many businesses in the UK have still to catch up.

Staffordshire Business Photos is primarily concerned with helping small and local businesses get found by customers, help promote their brand, build reputation and hopefully increase turnover. Our Engage More Customers and Google Business Views is designed to complement Google’s approach to the way local and mobile search works.

That said all our clients experience varying degrees of success in both quantity, quality and specifically temporally. Time! That measure that is important to Chief Executives and sole traders alike. How quickly can we see results from all this work. Well its complicated comes the reply and the look on the clients face is always the same accompanied by a big sigh.

But of course it is and often focussing entirely just on local search factors is a fool’s errand as so many other factors impinge on the ability to get the clients business ranking well in search. To be honest I try to avoid making false promises-unlike all those so called expert SEO companies from warmer climates. However there are some broad guidelines that suggest what might be possible given the prevailing circumstances. This research from Bright Local is the first that I have seen that provides the answers to these questions that really makes sense. How long does it take to rank in local search? is a result of research undertaken by Bright Local with the contribution of some of the best local SEO experts around today.

They started with 5 key scenarios that cover, I think, most circumstances that we have faced: –

• Scenario 1 – A brand new business
• Scenario 2 – An existing website with some optimization
• Scenario 3 – An existing website with poor optimization
• Scenario 4 – A site is hit with a manual penalty
• Scenario 5 – An existing client stops investing in SEO

Issues of new v established businesses, competitive markets and those hit with an SEO penalty are all covered here.

Take a look and see where your businesses might be in each scenario, look at the timescales and perhaps consider getting an expert to start helping your business today. Because if you don’t your competitors probably already have. Contact us for a no obligation assessment of how we can help.

NB:-

Bright Local are a provider of some of the best SEO tools for local business available today. We use their tools daily for ourselves and our clients.