No matter what industry your business is in, you will have competitors making standing out difficult without a proper local SEO strategy. But the London coffee shop industry is incredibly competitive, coffee shops are everywhere these days but only the ones that build a strong presence will thrive.
Because of this SEO for coffee shops is incredibly important and with such a competitive industry you should never risk trying the DIY approach. Instead, it is highly recommended that you use a professional SEO specialist to handle it for you.
With coffee shops, you are going to want to focus on building a local SEO strategy. But if you really want to beat your competition such a strategy will need to be carefully crafted by a knowledgeable and experienced specialist.
Let’s take a look at how a specialist SEO provider can build an effective local SEO coffee shops strategy in more detail. The mini-guide below outlines all the local SEO tips an SEO specialist will be able to help with. Some of these you might even be able to do yourself but remember utilising the services of a more experienced SEO specialist will always ensure better results.
Getting A Presence
The first steps of building an effective local SEO for coffee shops strategy is all about ensuring people can see you. With competition between coffee shops and other similar establishments being so rife in London you need a presence on the search results.
When people Google coffee shops London or even a specific area in London you want your coffee shop coming up in the results. So, ensure your business is properly registered this can be as simple as building a profile on the My Business section of Google or registering with Google’s local listings for your area of London.
This is a step you can complete yourself but it will only get you a presence on the search results. If you want to rise to the top of it then an SEO specialist will be able to help you by utilising more advanced techniques.
For example, now you are registered on Google people can review your business so by getting more positive reviews you can grow your presence. There are numerous strategies you can use to encourage customers to leave a review and an SEO specialist can help put these into practice.
Growing A Presence
SEO for coffee shops will require constant development if you want to stay ahead of the competition and attract customers. Dealing with all the work involved with this can be tricky especially if you have to run your shop at the same time. Which is again why using an SEO specialist is advised as they’ll be able to handle the workload leaving you time to focus on your business.
They’ll also be able to build a more effective strategy for growing your presence in London. There are multiple ways they can do this and a good SEO specialist will use a variety of techniques. Let’s look at some of the most popular ways they can use SEO to help you attract more customers.
Keywords are of course important and while a term like “coffee shop” is going to be searched a lot it will also mean a more crowded search results page. So, utilising lesser used longtail keywords could be advantageous especially if your coffee shop provides more unique or specialised services.
After all, a coffee shop won’t just sell coffee will it? You can use other keywords to attract visitors as well. The style of your website is also very important and an SEO specialist will be able to advise on how best to capture your brand’s unique identity.
Are you a classic London coffee shop, an artistic hipster-style establishment or are you going to be set up more like a restaurant? It’s essential that your website properly reflects your brand’s identity and an SEO specialist can help you bring that out through your website’s design and the keywords you use.
Using Coffee Blog
The final part of this mini-guide is focused on SEO for coffee blogs. Coffee blogs are essential for any coffee shops SEO strategy but in two very different ways. The first being your own blog, yes you should have one and it should be regularly updated.
A blog gives you content to share on social media and a way to build up backlinks and attract new customers. Blogs are essential to many businesses local SEO strategies and coffee shops are no different in that respect. However, coffee shops can also benefit from working with coffee blogs as well.
These blogs are often run by coffee lovers and are an excellent place to link your site to. If you can find local London coffee blogs ask them to link your shop or you could even invite them for a free sample and review. We’ve helped some coffee blogs like this one grow into a great hub for coffee lovers and it and blogs like it are a valuable way for coffee shops to improve their local SEO presence.