As an inbound marketing company, we provide clients with tools they need to help their businesses succeed. AbilitySEO’s company identity is based on helping our clients add value for their existing and potential customers. We want to make ourselves available to those who need our help, and that’s where search-engine optimization, or SEO, comes in. As I explained in my post about blogging for SEO, SEO is essentially allowing web searchers with a specific problem come upon your solution to that problem in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Problem

As our name suggests, one area in which we excel is SEO. As a Baltimore-based company, we have a lot to offer to local Baltimore businesses. Recently, we began paying attention to the keyword “Baltimore SEO”. Although metrics differ according to keyword metric platform, Hubspot gave us the most specific number, placing the number of monthly searches for the term at 4,400. According to our research, it also has a low difficulty rating, which means that a relatively small amount of businesses are addressing the term. This means that approximately 4,000 people per month have a problem that they very likely are unable to find an answer to! Having those answers, we realized we need to try harder to show up on SERPs for the term “Baltimore SEO”.

Solution

It was time for us to buckle down on our SEO strategy. We decided to focus on local SEO in Baltimore. First step was to create a pillar page. With the way that search engines are changing, they would rather see a group of related website pages over scattered ideas. On the page, we describe how Baltimore businesses can increase their SEO, and linked various blog posts of ours that discuss the specifics of how to do that.

Those blog posts were also part of the strategy. By writing about SEO in general, local SEO and local SEO in Baltimore, we’re aiming to answer some of the problems people searching for “Baltimore SEO” are encountering. Blogging is a large part of SEO strategy in general, as it gives your website more landscape, so to speak, on the web, and makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for.

Google my Business and Google reviews are another big piece in showing up in local search results. We optimized our Business profile by making sure our name, address and phone number (NAP) were all correct, as well as additional information such as opening hours and pictures. The more high-rated reviews a business has, the higher they likely will show up on a Google results page, so luckily we have a bunch of positive Google reviews.

We also host monthly marketing breakfasts (click here to sign up!). This way, local business owners can meet us in person and hear about what we offer. Another part of local SEO is citations, or links from other reputable and preferably local sites. Once we build a rapport, we can then mention each other on our respective websites, helping both of our websites out.

Conclusion (For Now!)

So far, our Baltimore SEO campaign is still in its beginning stages. We’re looking forward to keeping you all updated on how it progresses. If you have any suggestions for us, we would love to hear and try them out, so drop a line!