How a Chamber of Commerce Helps with Local SEO

As local SEO continues to evolve it’s always nice to take a look at tips and trick that may help you get your business on Google’s map. After all, that 3-pack gets approximately 80 percent of the click-throughs. So how do you get your business to be on the map?

Historically it was the consistency of your name address and phone number. or the NAP. As time has gone one that remains one of the fundamental ways to get on the map and we have our Citation Lock tool that will assist local business owners to correct that.

Next, we all know reviews are important but the thing is, that you can’t fake those although many will try. But we all also know that soliciting good reviews is hard. People don’t want to be bothered unless they are mad and then they review like crazy and say crazy things. We’ve all been there.

But there now is an inclusion of links as a ranking variable on local search and map results. So what are local links? Well, they are the links that come from your kid’s swim team or your church. But they are also local things you join such as a chamber of commerce or BBB.

The Chamber of Commerce is particularly interesting because the BBB is a bit onerous for local business. They have rules and often create sitatuions which cause business owners to take a loss and the smallest business cannot take that loss.  But the local chamber of commerce is great.

For starters, they are reasonably simple and inexpensive to join, around $300 a year on average. But if their website is set up properly they will allow local links to be made to your website. This is a golden signal to google that it is a safe assumption that your business is located right where you say it is and that you are not playing a game for rakings.

These chambers if they are taken care of well, also help pass value over to your website and the better taken care of the website is, the stronger the value of your link is. And if your page is soft put out a press release and point it to the page on the chamber of commerce that mentions your business to make it have more power.

Often, especially with new members, we hear the question of how to make sure you are getting an ROI on your chamber membership. And if you are only vetting it through how many dollars you make you are missing an integral point if your site is ranking on Google especially in the map area.

So if your looking for a quick effective LEGITIMATE link a chamber of commerce is definitely a route to consider. It doesn’t require a lot of upkeep and it is a safe way to get a reasonably high powered link pointing back to your site. And best of all it is a link that can deliver traffic back to your site through that link simply because often chamber members rely on each other for referrals.

So a chamber link will check several local SEO boxes and should be one all small business owners can get and keep with very little expense or overhead. And if you are so inclined you might even choose to network with these folks and find a few new prospects. Win win for all.