Digital marketing plays an important role in promoting your vape shop in Australia even when you’re only running a brick-and-mortar business catering to local customers. These days, with the pandemic restricting movement, people are browsing for information online more often than they used to be.
In essence, having an online presence is the first step for vape shop owners to adapt to modern times when they want to succeed in their business. But having a website is not enough. You should also consider boosting your local search visibility on search engines most especially on Google. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling the best vape brands Australia has to offer, or the trendiest vape liquid brands and the latest vape tanks Australia mods to be offered to customers in and around your city. If you’re not visible on local searches, you might miss out on many business opportunities.
What is Local Search?
Local Search is when people use the Internet such as Google Search to find businesses, services, products and other information related to a specific location. Your target customers will use localized search keywords like vape mod brands in Victoria, vape juice brands in Melbourne, vape juice Australia shop and even as specific as “buy vape juice near me.”
On Google search result page (SERP), a local map is featured and it highlights the top three businesses related to the local search keyword used. This SERP feature is generally located below the paid/sponsored results and above the organic search results. Sometimes, the sponsored results aren’t shown, which means that the local map feature becomes more visible. In short, being featured in the local map and listing provides great opportunities in promoting your business.
Why should you care about local search?
As a vape shop owner catering to a local market base, you might think that you don’t need online visibility since your customers know you already. However, having an online presence provides many opportunities in terms of retaining your existing customers and gaining new ones.
- Strengthen brand loyalty and retention because you’re always visible to your existing customers online
- Increase brand awareness because people within your city, especially the shy and introverted ones, can learn about your shop and the top vape brands you’re selling without having to physically go inside your shop first
- Potentially gain new customers especially because people who are new in your city can simply use their phone to look up keywords like “vape shop near me”
- Attract high-quality targeted traffic into your website, and thus, increase the conversion rates from web visitors to loyal customers
- Build community trust and boost your credibility
How to boost local search ranking?
There are many ways to do this, but here are some of them:
- Claim your Google Business Profile then complete and optimize your business information. This is a free service from Google and is said to be one of the main factors for Google to identify your relevance for specific localized keywords.
- Have your vape shop listed on other online business directories and citations, but focus on ones with high domain authority such as Bing Maps, Facebook and Yelp. Also consider listing your business on niche directories such as vape business listings/citations.
- Ensure that your NAP (company name, address and phone number) is consistent and correct in all of the online business directories.
- Seek genuine reviews from your customers on your Google Business Profile and other online directories.
- Optimize your website for localized keywords as part of your onsite Search Engine Optimisation strategy
- Focus on local link building for your offsite SEO strategy
For more business and marketing insights for your vape shop business, check out our other blog posts.
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