Business Times - Improving Your Search Engine Appearance For Brand and Local Terms

Just before the Christmas break, SilverDisc launched a new Business Times website. For those of you not in Northamptonshire, Business Times is a long standing, trusted business news source - with a large circulation and high editorial standards. Traditionally, if you're a business in Northamptonshire and you want to know what's going on in the world of local businesses – then picking up this month’s Business Times is your best bet. Equally, if you want others to know what's going on in your industry, Business Times is the way to get your voice heard by the right people.

Yet, their online offering only provided a small slice of what was published in the paper, and while you can be certain that the paper can put across your business's good news effectively, you may have been missing out on some of the potential online exposure.

The new site not only includes all the articles from the paper, but provides businesses with a profile page where all of their stories can be found in one place. For example, here's SilverDisc's company profile page.

It's an excellent way to show off your business's rich history in the county, and hint towards your bright future. But what else does it do for you?

Profile pages like these should produce positive search results for your business, across a few types of search terms. This includes local search terms (like “biggest digital marketing company Northamptonshire”) and brand terms (“SilverDisc”).

But why would you care about either of these?

Improving Your Local Rankings

"Local" and "online" have seemed like very different - even combative - modes of understanding businesses. Online meant Amazon, local meant your local book store. One of these is trying to eat the other - and it doesn't seem that there's much locally which can offer competition. It can seem like people want online giants, presumably for their convenience and efficiency.

But that's not what our searches are telling us.

The number of "local" searches has risen, including people searching for "solicitor in Corby" and "solicitor near me".

above: increase in interest for “near me” in Google search strings.

Information which can tell Google's spiders (other spiders are available) that your company is in Northamptonshire, associated with local towns and villages, and is connected to other entities in the local area, will be beneficial for those searching within that area.

A company profile page on Business Times is further indication to search engines that yes, your business is near me, and yes, it is relevant. If your business is one which could benefit from being found for a search where locality is important, investing in local keywords can pay back dividends.

Improving Brand Rankings

The networking power of Business Times is well recognised, as it helps businesses express their triumphs to an audience who understand the unique challenges of working in the East Midlands. Naturally, one of the challenges online is getting your name turning up positively.

Which is to say: there’s a chance that a search for your business might turn up negative results. These results can come in the form of a negative review, previously unhappy customers venting their anger, or a troublesome former employee causing mischief on a forum. Sometimes, these pages can turn up higher than we’d like in our brand term search results – long after the issue has been resolved and everyone has moved on.

Brand searches can be enhanced with a Business Times profile listing. Whether this is just a good way of showing an independent and expert website has featured your company, or pushing down unwanted search results, there’s a benefit to having another high-quality collection of articles about your company online. It can help improve your reputation, and be reassuring to new customers who might not yet be familiar with your company and its offering.

The new Business Times is an opportunity for all local businesses to boost their online presence, while staying up to date with all the business news that effects our region. Get in touch with Julie at Business Times to talk about building up your local business profile on the website, placing an article, or advertising in the paper itself.