Even if you have an excellent content marketing strategy in place, ignoring local customers will make you invisible in your own backyard.

Ecommerce is has made distance irrelevant because it connects customers with products no matter the distance to physical store locations, but local search is becoming a bigger player as mobile queries are set to eclipse desktop searches in the near future. 

According to a Search Engine Journal report, one out of three Google searches involve a place or location. It’s somewhat surprising, considering how much information about the entire world is available on the web. Still, people want to know about their area, or some place they happen to be visiting when they’re ready to make a purchase decision. Missing out on this potential business would be a tremendous mistake.

Don’t hide yourself in plain sight

What can companies do to avoid being invisible? A survey by BrightLocal lays out a simple solution: Optimize your website for local search. One third of respondents said they were more likely to contact a business if they could find them online. Considering that 43 percent of companies have incorrect contact information or addresses on their websites, according to Yext, this is a bigger problem than you might think.

It’s also important to register your company on Google+ Local Pages. This way, the search engine knows your company is a local business and displays it as a result in relevant searches. Even if the majority of your clients or customers interact online and from a distance, it never hurts to identify your company with a specific geographic area.

Augment your local website with the right content

Throwing together some contact information and putting it online won’t solve all of your content marketing woes. The same BrightLocal survey found that one third of customers also said clear and smart websites give businesses more credibility. Many companies already know they need to present strong content and be active on social media networks. However, if they’re not sharing their location information,  they might not be reaching leads on the verge of conversion. 

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.