Guides
Specialty food local SEO: fix the stockist page before anything else
Local SEO checklist for specialty food makers: the listing, the location problem of a maker with no storefront, the stockist page, photos, and honest reviews.
What to take away
- A food maker's local visibility problem is unusualyou may have no storefront, several market locations, and stockists whose addresses are not yours. The checklist is built around that.
- The listing rewards complete, accurate, current information. For a maker that means hours that change with the market calendar and a service area that matches where you actually sell.
- The stockist page on your own site is the local content a maker can produce that nobody else can, and it helps the stores as much as it helps you.
- Reviews are asked for from everyone, the same way, with no incentive. That is the rule and it is not negotiable.
The maker's location problem
A shop has one address and one set of hours. A maker may have a production kitchen the public never visits, a market table on two mornings a week, a pickup window on one afternoon, and forty stockists. Before touching any listing, decide what your public location is.
Public location or service area
Can the public visit at a stated time?
Show that address and hours
List as service-area business
If the public can visit somewhere at a stated time, that is the location. If they cannot, you are a service-area business and the listing should say so rather than showing a kitchen address nobody may visit.
The Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google page states that local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and recommends complete business information, current hours, reviews and photos. For a maker, "complete and current" is the hard part, because the answers change with the week.
The listing
- Business name as it appears on the label, with no keywords added.
- Primary category that says what you make, and secondary categories only where they are true.
- Address shown only if the public may visit it; otherwise a service area that matches where you actually deliver or sell.
- Hours that reflect when the public can reach you, updated for market days and seasonal changes rather than left at a default.
- Phone and email that reach a person who answers.
- A description that says what the product is, where it is made, and where to buy it, in plain words, without claims you cannot substantiate.
- Products listed with the names and sizes on the label.
- The website link pointing at the page that says where to buy, not the home page.
The stockist page
- One page on your own site listing every store that carries the product, by town, with the store's address and hours as the store states them.
- Each market you attend, with the day, the hours and the season.
- Updated within a week of a stockist joining or leaving.
- A line inviting stores to ask about stocking, with how to reach you.
This page is the local content search engines and shoppers want from a maker. It does what no listing can: it sends shoppers to your stockists, the fastest route to a buyer reorder.
Which stores to add next, and the sequence from a target list to that reorder, is the subject of the buyer sequence article in this cluster.
Photos
- The product as it sits on a shelf, in the current label.
- The market table on a market day.
- The production space, if you are comfortable showing it, cleaned and as an inspector would see it.
- No photo that shows a claim the label does not make.
- Refreshed when the label or the packaging changes, so the photo matches what a shopper will find.
Reviews
- Every customer is asked the same way, whether at the table, in the parcel or by email.
- No incentive is attached to a review, and no discount follows a rating.
- Any review from a friend, a stockist or a relative discloses the connection.
- Every review is answered, including the poor ones, with what you did.
- Nobody is filtered out of the request because they seemed unhappy.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission: Soliciting and Paying for Online Reviews: A Guide for Marketers guidance is the basis for every line above. Review requests should go to genuine customers, not merely likely positives.
Incentives, connections, or paid placement must not create a false or misleading picture. A review page that follows the rule grows slowly and is worth something. One that does not is a liability with stars on it.
Review request rules
- Every customer asked the same way
- No incentive, no discount for rating
- Disclose friend, stockist or relative
- Answer every review, including poor ones
- Nobody filtered out of the request
Consistency across the web
- Name, address or service area, phone and hours identical on the listing, your site, the market's vendor page and every stockist's site that lists you.
- The label's address and the listing's address reconciledif the public may not visit the label address, the listing should not show it as a storefront.
- Old market locations and closed stockists removed everywhere they appear.
What the checklist depends on
The listing describes an operation, and the operation must match what the listing says. A market day on the listing is a market day the batch calendar must supply, covered in the operations and workflow guide.
A service area that crosses a state line raises whether you may sell there, which belongs to the licensing and compliance guide.
The stockist page grows at the rate the buyer sequence pipeline produces stores. The pipeline draws on five routes to a buyer, compared in the marketing and growth guide.
It all starts at the sixth stage of how to start a specialty food business, when the first run is sold to strangers at the real price and there is finally something to list.
And when the service area needs to grow, whether a new region can support the product is a question with criteria, worked through in the expansion and market guide.
A monthly ten minutes
- Check the hours against next month's market calendar and change them.
- Add or remove stockists on the stockist page.
- Read the new reviews and answer them.
- Replace any photo that no longer matches the label.
- Search your own name and look at what a shopper sees first.
Common questions
I have no storefront. Should I list my kitchen address?
Only if the public may visit it at stated hours. Otherwise set the listing as a service-area business and put the effort into the stockist page, which is where shoppers will actually find the product.
Should each market I attend be its own listing?
No. One listing for the business, with the markets and their days on your stockist page. Multiple listings for one business cause confusion for shoppers and for the platform.
Can I ask my stockists to review me?
They can review you if they disclose that they stock the product. A review that hides a commercial relationship is the kind the guidance warns against.
How do I handle a bad review about a stockist's handling?
Answer it, say what you did, and talk to the stockist. The review is about the shopper's experience of your product, wherever it happened.
Does any of this matter if I only sell wholesale?
Yes. Buyers look you up before they answer an email, and what they find is the listing and the reviews. A maker with an accurate listing and honest reviews looks like a vendor who will deliver on the day promised.
