While business competition is tough and reflects significantly on organizations of all sizes, it often tends to be especially complicated for small businesses. Apart from the general hardships of competition, small business owners typically face many additional challenges, including a lack of human resources, limited budgets, restricted access to the needed technology, and many others.
Dealing with all these challenges while also overshining your competitors can feel like a tough task. However, there is one tactic that can give you an edge. Unlike traditional search engine optimization, local SEO is there to make your business visible in area-specific searches and help drive both online and offline traffic. For a small business, it can be a good chance to shine brighter than your competitors and facilitate growth with minimum investment. In this article, we’ll guide you through the topic of local search optimization and share tips for success!
What Is Local SEO?
Search engine optimization spans a wide range of on-page and off-page techniques to optimize a website for search engines and users alike to ensure higher positions in search engine result pages (SERPs) and, respectively, drive a larger volume of targeted organic traffic. Some of the baseline SEO tips companies use to rank high include:
- Find high-potential keywords and target them in your content to get ranked for relevant queries.
- Optimize the technical aspects of your site, such as loading speed, navigation, and others, to ensure an impeccable user experience.
- Create a more conversational copy to rank in innovative types of searches, such as AI overview. You can leverage specialized tools like an AI overview analyzer to unlock AI search insights and gain a competitive edge.
- Create quality, share-worthy content and leverage other link-building strategies to gain backlinks and establish yourself as a credible source.
Now, how is local search engine optimization different? While traditional SEO aims to improve your overall rankings, geo-based optimization is used to make your brand visible in local searches. It helps you get noticed when prospects look up products or services you offer in their specific geographical area.
Why Do Small Businesses Need Local Search Engine Optimization?
Small businesses often have a physical office or store. Given this fact, their entire marketing strategies should be tailored to reach and attract nearby customers who are actively looking for products or services like those they offer.
By leveraging local search marketing tactics, your company can increase its visibility in “near me” searches in your areas. This can mean more foot traffic to your store/office and, respectively, more potential sales. But that’s not all.
Apart from more potential store visitors, local business SEO can bring you many additional benefits, such as:
- Better brand recognition in your community.
- More online traffic and (possibly) online orders.
- Stronger brand reputation and authority.
- More conversions both online and offline.
- Greater revenues and customer loyalty.
- Cost-effective marketing.
- Competitive edge.
SEO for Small Businesses: 7 Tips to Dominate Local Search
Now that you know what it is and why your small business should care about local search SEO, the big question is how to start using it to your benefit.
Here are some hands-on tips that should help you take your efforts off the ground:
1. Create and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is basically the listing of your company in Google. It’s easy and free to create and lets you start appearing in local SERPs and Google Maps. Hence, creating it is the first stage in any local business SEO strategy.
If you don’t have a profile yet, there are a few ways you can obtain one:
- If your business isn’t in Google yet, sign in to Google Maps from your computer and use any of these three ways to add it:
- Click anywhere on the map with the right button of your mouse and click Add.
- Type or paste your physical address in the search bar and click Add on the left.
- Find the Menu in the upper left corner and click Add.
- If your company is already listed, use the search bar in Google Maps to find it by the name, find your company’s name, click Claim this Business, and then Manage Now. Then, confirm your ownership through a selected verification option.
Once you have a profile, you need to optimize it for maximum impact. To do this, make sure you add the correct name, address, and contact info. Also, provide clear and engaging descriptions optimized with target keywords.
2. Target and Integrate Local Keywords
Local keywords are the same search queries people use to find something on the web but those that include a specific location. For example, instead of the keyword “buy best dog food”, a local query might look like “buy best dog food in New York.”
Just like in regular SEO, you need to find and target relevant geo-based keywords for your local SEO strategy. Finding them should be easy with tools like Google Keyword Planner. Simply enter keywords that align with your organization and specify your area of operations to explore dozens of keywords. Once you find high-volume and low-competition queries, integrate them into your existing and new content for better rankings.
3. Create Citations and Ensure NAP Consistency
Citations are basically mentions of your company across the web (similar to backlinks). They can be structured (those given at directories and listings) or unstructured (those from blogs, news sites, etc.).
To create citations, you can first create listings across popular directories, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and others relevant to your niche. For unstructured citations, reach out to blogs, influencers, and news sites in your area and network with them to earn mentions.
Most importantly, pay attention to the accuracy and consistency of your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) details. Whether creating listings on your own or encouraging citations, you want to keep your data consistent everywhere to drive potential buyers to your doors.
4. Generate New, Geo-Based Content
Like with regular optimization, content will play a significant role in your local SEO strategy. To craft excellent copy capturing users in your area, you should go beyond simply using geo-based keywords. On top of that, you need to understand and address the specific needs and preferences of the audience in your area.
After conducting audience analysis to identify specific behavior patterns, craft specialized local content, including landing pages, blog posts, and other forms of content, and optimize them with your keywords. Possibly, you may not have a specialist who is well-versed in content creation in your organization, but you can always hire a ghostwriter to delegate this matter.
5. Encourage Customer Reviews and Manage Them Effectively
When users look up companies on Google Maps, the results are shown as profiles with general information and a rating with customer reviews. Needless to say, companies that have reviews tend to look more professional and trustworthy. Moreover, surveys reveal that 84% of consumers check online reviews before making a purchase, which is why they make an important part of local search SEO.
In order to use them to your benefit, follow two simple rules:
- Always encourage customers to share their feedback about your company, products, and services, and don’t hesitate to offer them special discounts or incentives to make this beneficial for them.
- Manage your reviews by answering both positive and negative ones. This also demonstrates your professionalism and trustworthiness.
6. Optimize for Mobile
Although mobile friendliness is generally crucial for search engine optimization, it is even more important for local business SEO because most people tend to perform “near me” searches when they are on the go and looking for a specific store, office, or another facility right now. This, in most cases, means using a mobile. So, if you fail to make your site mobile-friendly, you risk losing a huge number of potential clients.
To make your site look great on mobile, you need to ensure that your design is responsive enough to adjust to every user’s screen size and that all elements on your page look and function well on mobile, too. You can use a mobile-friendliness test to assess the current state of your site and hire professional web developers to help you optimize it for mobile users.
7. Track Results and Adjust Your Local Business SEO Tactic
Finally, after implementing all the tips shared earlier, you can’t stop on what’s achieved so far. It’s important to remember that SEO is incredibly dynamic and changing, meaning that even if you take the first spot on SEPRs once, it doesn’t mean that your ranking can’t change over time.
To ensure a consistently good ranking, you need to continuously track the results of your local search optimization strategy, detect gaps and weak spots, and adjust your tactic for greater outcomes. To do this, identify the key performance metrics you’re interested in and equip yourself with reliable analytics software. Then, interpret results and find areas for improvement. For example, if you have a high ranking and receive lots of traffic but don’t get conversions, you might need to work on your content or upscale your e-commerce visuals. Or if people find you in local search but quickly leave your site, you might need to improve mobile friendliness, loading speed, etc.
Conclusion
These days, local SEO is an important part of business success, especially if we’re talking about small companies with physical stores or offices. For such organizations, optimizing for geo-specific search can help boost brand awareness, drive online and offline traffic, ensure conversions, and bring many other benefits.
In this article, we shared practical tips on leveraging this type of SEO to your benefit. Don’t wait any longer, and use this guide to gain a competitive advantage and facilitate growth!
