Jumping into the digital waters can be intimidating for local business owners, especially for those who have never had a Web presence before.
Not only do these 'Net novices need to worry about things like domains, hosting and website design, but they also need to consider online visibility. Luckily, the 'Net is full of technology and service providers that focus on connecting local businesses to local audiences. The challenge, however, is finding the right platform to help your local business achieve greatness in its journey to Web success.
To help your business achieve greatness in its journey to local Web success, consider the five tech vendors below:
In addition to offering hosting, domains and website building technology, popular Web hosting company 1&1 offers multiple features that can help small businesses reach a local audience. For starters, 1&1 features a content delivery network (CDN) that is powered by CloudFlare, which leverages 23 data centers around the world to deliver content to site visitors. This means that when consumers visit a 1&1 website, the CDN closest to the consumer's physical location will serve them the content, which enables the site to load faster and perform better. Moreover, 1&1 offers a feature called ListLocal, which helps businesses attract local customers through advertising on major local directories, such as Google Places and Superpages.
GeoMarketing solutions provider Yext helps businesses update and sync their local listings across the Web. That said, the company also launched a new feature in December dubbed Pages, which enables businesses to add listings to their websites with just a snippet of code. Through Pages, site owners can create and add detailed listings to their website. Site owners can include five different types of widgets within their Page, including calendars, menus, bios, product lists and social posts. Then, any updates made to the business's geocontent within Yext Cloud also automatically appear in the business's local listings, on social networks and on the business's website.
GoDaddy has put a focus on local business, as the popular domain registrar and hosting company recently launched a local business feature called Get Found. Get Found can be used to publish important business information on a variety of search engines, social media sites and local listing platforms. Businesses are simply required to submit information like address, phone number and a list of services to GoDaddy in order to increase their local visibility on sites like Google, Facebook, Bing, Foursquare and Yelp. Plus, Get Found also publishes business information in mobile apps and searches in order to put its clients in front of customers who are on the go. In addition to Get Found, GoDaddy offers SEO services that can help its users increase their visibility to the right audiences.
Small business marketing platform Constant Contact offers a whole lot more than email services, and some of the company's products are perfect for local businesses. The company's local listing solution SinglePlatform, for example, helps businesses attract new customers with robust local search listings that can include content like menus, and lists of products and services. SinglePlatform enables businesses to update listing information across the Web through a single portal. Plus, businesses can embed content like menus onto their website from the platform, which means that any updates made to their listing will also update the content on their website. It is also important to note that SinglePlatform publishes business listing information within popular mobile apps, as well as offers its clients a mobile-optimized website that includes essential business information like address, phone number and menus. Moreover, Constant Contact features a deal service called SaveLocal, which allows businesses to create and promote shareable local offers. This helps businesses not only increase revenue, but also puts the business in front of a local audience.
With Web.com, small businesses can build their Web presence by creating a website and grow awareness by leveraging marketing tools to increase local visibility. For instance, the Web services company offers a platform called Ignite Online Marketing. Similar to some of the aforementioned platforms, Ignite helps clients promote their business in major online directories, like Google Places, Merchant Circle and Bing. In addition, Web.com offers SEO services to help small businesses increase their visibility in the SERPs by repairing broken code, optimizing content and building links. Also worth noting is Web.cm's Local Leads service, which helps small businesses obtain local leads by improving the client's local SEO initiatives. In addition, the Local Leads platform creates a "leadsite" for clients, which is a type of website that highlights the business's most important information and gets prospects to call the business.