When a customer is in your neighborhood searching for a car wash, how do we make sure they find us first? It’s all about local search ranking. Don’t miss my top six tricks to getting customers to your wash.

Hey guys! I’m Mike Berlin from Slam Carwash Marketing. Back again to bring you some fresh ideas to drive more traffic to your wash. It’s the Slam Six—six tricks to boost your Local SEO.

You’re probably thinking, “What the heck is Local SEO and why do I need to know it?” When a person in your area is looking for a car wash and searches “car wash near me” or “best car wash in town,” Google will show them the top three car washes. How do we get in that top three? It all has to do with Local SEO or search engine optimization.

For instance, did you realize that 78% of consumers use “near me” searches to find local businesses? That’s 229 million people in the United States looking for local businesses on Google search and Google Maps. If you’re not on the top of the list, it’s time to get to work. But, how in the world do we get to the top of this list?

Well, there are a few ways. One being a digital ad campaign. We can buy your way to the top but sometimes you don’t want to always have to pay to play. However, there are ways to play the Google game and get to the top of the list organically. It takes time. Here’s six tips to help you get there. If you need help with this, you can always give us a call at Slam. Not to mention, we’re doing this for a lot of clients these days.

1. Claim Your Google My Business Listing

Do it right now and fully fill it out. Upload some pictures of your wash, pictures of the outside, shots of your menu, cars inside the wash, customers using the free vacuums, customers inside the car enjoying the tunnel bling, and shots of your crew. So, go give your Google My Business listing some love right now.

2. Reviews

Reviews are a bigger determining factor these days with Google and how they rank you. You want to make sure you get as many five-star reviews as you can, and you also want to respond to every review. Recently, Google has even started measuring how fast we respond to those reviews. When you respond to a review quickly, it shows that you’re engaged with the customer and Google ranks you a little higher. That’s kind of why we created sync, which is our review management software that makes this easier. However you do it, either with sync or something else, just make sure that you focus on those reviews because now it affects your Google ranking.

3. Local Citations

Google likes to see that your business is listed consistently across the web and across various sites. It shows them that we’re more legit and validates your local business. Obviously, going in and creating these listings manually is a pain. Instead, sync. Our platform allows you to do this and synchronize your information instantly across 35 listings online essentially helping to boost your ranking. You can click on the link in the description and learn more about that.

4. Keywords

Ensure that your website copy uses the right keywords in the header tag, h1 tag. What we’re doing is putting keywords there that someone might put into their search or on their phone in order to find you. Keywords are the phrases that a consumer will type in to find your website. So, the text that you put on your website is very important.

5. Embed a YouTube Video on Your Homepage

Google owns YouTube and wants to see, what they call keyword crossover, between platforms. Make sure the title of the video includes your business name, category and location. Producing short videos about your unlimited plan or ceramic x3 service to use on your site educates the public and also appeases the Google beast, which helps to rank you on top.

6. Google Maps Embed

Using another Google product, embed the map on your home page. This shows your exact location, so make sure that the location is copied exactly as it is on your Google My Business listing. This gives Google and your customers cues of your location.

Now look, there’s a ton of other factors that determine your local search ranking, but these are my top six. I hope you find these helpful and hope gets you fired up about driving more traffic to your wash.

If you want some advice or need some help, email us or call us at Slam. We’re here to make car washing easy(er)!

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