Great websites do a lot more than represent your brand, because they also allow local leads to find and trust you!

Key Takeaways 

• Website design and local SEO are best when they’re carefully planned together, instead of being treated as separate marketing efforts. 

• Your website needs to be both easy for search engines and customers to navigate. 

• Local content helps Ohio businesses connect with nearby people searching for relevant products and services.

• Page speed, mobile optimization, clear CTAs, and genuinely useful content all build a brand’s online presence. 

• Professional websites from the Big Fish Local experts provide all sorts of local SEO benefits that give businesses opportunities to convert search visibility into actual customers. 

Your Website Is So Much More Than Just An Online Business Card 

For a lot of Ohio businesses, your website is the first genuine interaction with potential online customers. 

Someone searching online for a local service provider, contractor, retailer, or professional will easily discover a handful of similar businesses before making their final hiring decision—which means your site will get a closer look alongside your competitors. 

This essentially means that website design and local SEO strategies are very closely connected, because local SEO helps your site appear in high-stakes Google real estate and your website design determines how visitors will experience your brand once they arrive. 

A good way to think about it is SEO gets people in the door, and website designs convince them to stay.

Below, we’ll be detailing how the Big Fish Local experts approach website design as a key component for much broader digital marketing strategies! 

Building Websites Around What Local Customers Search For 

Impactful local SEO always starts with understanding what a company’s potential customers are actually searching for online. 

This is why Ohio businesses shouldn’t necessarily build their sites around generic keywords that apply everywhere, because your site structure and content should instead reflect how your products/services serve communities. 

A good example of this would be a local roofing company having individual pages targeting roof repairs and other pages that naturally incorporate their local community as appropriate. This content approach subsequently creates great landing pages for both customers and search engines.

Great Site Navigation Helps Search Engines & People 

Websites can have incredible content and still end up underperforming when visitors aren’t quickly finding exactly what they’re looking for. 

Clear site navigation gives users clear paths to contact information, service pages, about pages, and various other informational resources. Maintaining a logical structure is also important in terms of helping search engines better understand how each of your pages relate to each other. 

This essentially means any visitor who lands on your website should be able to quickly understand the following:

• What products/services you offer
• Where you do business
• How to contact you
• Why they should choose your brand
• What they should do next to reach you

Local Content Gives More Context For Search Engines 

Location-specific content is especially valuable for Ohio businesses that serve defined geographic markets.

This doesn’t always mean adding your city into every sentence, but instead demonstrating how your website holds local relevance through location pages, service pages, FAQs, blog articles, project examples, and other types of content that address a local area’s customers. 

This approach gives your visitors useful information, all while also providing Google with added context about your business. 

Mobile-Friendly Website Designs Are Now 100% Essential 

Local searches don’t exclusively happen on desktops, because these days the majority of search engine users are on their phones and looking for service providers while dealing with immediate problems. 

If your website just so happens to have navigation difficulties on small screens, it could cause visitors to leave before making any contact. This is why it’s absolutely crucial for today’s businesses to have fast and responsive mobile site designs that guarantee the functionality of all images, pages, forms, and buttons. 

Mobile-friendly website designs build overall user experience, which is important no matter how exactly people find your business!

Customer Experience Is Often Influenced By Page Speed

Beautiful websites don’t matter much for visitors when they take a long time to load. Features like unnecessary scripts, large images, outdated technology, and unoptimized pages can all create slow site performance. 

This is why site performance has to be a huge consideration for Ohio businesses of all sizes during the design and development process, as opposed to being an afterthought. 

Cleaner and faster websites make it far easier for visitors to find information and take valuable action!

Website Designs Should Naturally Guide Visitors Toward Taking Next Steps 

Local SEO can get people to your website, but what exactly happens next depends on your site’s overall strength and how it paves a clear path forward. 

Depending on your business, this could mean any of the following:

• Requesting a quote
• Calling your business
• Scheduling an appointment
• Visiting your location
• Filling out a contact form
• Learning more about your services

Your site’s calls to action need to be noticeable, but at the same time not too overwhelming—because this fine balance gives visitors a more natural inclination to continue going through their buyer’s journey with your brand.

Trust Is Equally As Important As Visibility 

Just because a site ranks well on Google doesn’t automatically mean that people will want to choose your business over your competitors. 

Once people arrive on your site, they’ll be quickly searching for reasons to trust you. Clear service descriptions, professional designs, testimonials, customer reviews, project photos, business information, certifications, and contact details all help establish credibility. 

This is another intersection between SEO and site design, because online visibility will create opportunities and your site’s presentation and content will turn those opportunities into customer relationships.

Turning Local Search Visibility Into Real Business Growth For Ohio Companies 

For Ohio businesses, it’s only just the beginning to show up at the top of valuable search results. This is because your website also needs to deliver on the inevitable promise that comes with attracting online visitors in the first place. 

When local SEO and thoughtful website design work together, businesses create the type of online presence that’s easier to find, navigate, and generate leads. And just remember that the goal here is to create digital experiences that connect both marketing tactics together by linking you to local customers and giving them a compelling reason to take next steps. 

Reach out to us online or give us a call at 855-935-4999 to get in touch with the Big Fish Local experts today and start creating a comprehensive digital strategy that’s built around your unique business goals!